Trivia / Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island

• Approval of God: The Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia openly acknowledges◊ Jon Burton's Game Mod, Sonic 3D Blast: Director's Cut.
• Author's Saving Throw: The afermentioned mod was made by the original game’s director Jon Burton to address several critiques of the original Genesis version, and to add features he planned for the original release:
  • The Game’s controls have been tweaked to be less slippery, and adjustments to levels have been made to reduce instances of Hitbox Dissonance.
  • The Camera is pulled back further during Boss Fights to make it easier to see Sonic and Eggman.
  • The game adds a Password Save when the original version of the game lacked any kind of save feature.
  • Sonic losing all his collected Flickies was a major Scrappy Mechanic in the original, in The Director’s Cut Sonic will only lose one Flicky per hit.
  • The Director’s Cut adds Super Sonic as an unlockable bonus to better incentivize collecting all 7 Chaos Emeralds.
• Christmas Rushed: The Sega Saturn port was scrambled together in four months to make up for the delay and cancellation of Sonic X-treme. All things considered, it ended up being a surprisingly good port, despite showing signs of being rushed.^note Such as the unreasonable load times, the lack of a save feature (in spite of the Saturn having internal and external storage capability), Tails and Knuckles having the same set of Special Stages and thus the Chaos Emeralds being locked to one per act, occasional sound issues, some equivalent music missing like the alternating boss themes, and the Invincibility track playing for the incorrect length of time.
• Cross-Generation Video Game: Released simultaneously on both the Sega Genesis and Sega Saturn.
• Dummied Out: A split screen mode was utilized in very early builds but ultimately discarded. At least one unused badnik (a Crabmeat-esque red crab enemy) also didn't make the final version, though it was revived as a Rusty Ruin enemy in the Director's Cut.
• Fan Remake: Sonic 3 D In 2 D reimagines the game to be more like Sonic 3 & Knuckles and a bridge between the classic and Dreamcast eras.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While the original Sega Genesis version has been emulated many times, neither the Saturn nor PC ports have been re-released. The version on Steam is simply an emulation of the Genesis version.
• Kids' Meal Toy:
  • In late 1996, around the time of the game's initial release, Carl's Jr. released a set of four viewfinders featuring stock art of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Robotnik.
  • In 1999, Jack in the Box released a set of four toys based on Sega PC games. Besides Sonic 3D Blast, which received a pull-back figure of Sonic, there were also toys based on Sonic & Knuckles Collection (Knuckles), Ecco the Dolphin (Ecco) and Bug (Bug).
• Late Export for You: The game didn't come to Japan until the Saturn version was released a little under a year after the Sega Dreamcast was released in Japan, on the same day Sonic Adventure International was released. The Genesis version would later be released in Japan as part of Sonic Mega Collection.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Leaked pre-release builds of the Genesis version contain at least two scrapped music tracks, one of which sounds like an early Special Stage or Bonus Stage and the other either another boss theme or a test demo for Spring Stadium Zone. The latter was eventually reused as the initial boss theme for Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I.
  • As shown in a video posted by Traveller's Tales founder Jon Burton, a split-screen mode was considered to be included in the original Genesis version, and was included in a very early build (shown in the video), but the idea was eventually dropped.
  • In a video posted by Burton, some new information was revealed:
    • The gameplay was meant to better replicate the fast paced action of the previous 2D Sonic games, though slowing down Sonic became a requirement due to scrolling limitations and making many gameplay hazards hard to anticipate.
    • There is another scrapped music track that was cut due to running out of space in the cartridge, but was later reused as "Pleasure Castle ...for Twinkle Park" in Sonic Adventure. Eventually, Burton found and released a demo version.
    • Green Grove Zone was originally known as Green Alley Zone. Along with The Final Fight known as The Final Boss in a prototype (and the Saturn version), this suggests that the rest of the zones did not initially have Alliterative Names.
  • There were plans for a pool style mini-games for the special stages of the Sega Saturn version as a remnant of a scrapped 3D Sonic Game for the Saturn (No relation to Sonic X-treme) but it was never used and the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 style special zone gameplay was used instead.
• Working Title: Sonic Spindrift and Sonic Blast. The latter title would then see use in an unrelated Game Gear game.

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