In “Sonic 3D Blast”, why does the stage selection screen appear when you chop up the Mega Drive? -Gegazin

The action game ‘Sonic 3D Blast’ released for the Mega Drive (Genesis) in North America and Europe in 1996 features a trick that displays the stage selection screen when you slice the main unit during gameplay. Coding Secrets, a YouTube channel that summarizes different gaming tricks and tutorials, explains why these tricks are done.

Why does PUNCHING Sonic 3D trigger secret level selection? – Youtube

“Sonic 3D Blast” differs from the previous Sonic series, which were 2D scrolling action, in that it is 3D action with a quarter-diagonal view. It was released in Japan in 1999 as software for the Sega Saturn under the title “Sonic 3D Flicky Island”.

If you click on the game controller while Sonic 3D Blast is playing, the screen will turn black momentarily.

However, the screen soon returned and the message “Congratulations! You have discovered the secret stage selection screen” appeared.

The origin of this mysterious trick was the “Seal of Quality” license tag that was attached to the software of the Genesis, the North American version of the Mega Drive.

This license indicates that it has been officially approved after passing strict checks by SEGA, and the process of applying for certification and testing can take weeks, and if there is a problem along the way, you have to start from the beginning again. that it.

If an error occurred during testing, it would be sent back to the developer with a report, but if the game itself crashed, an error report would be attached indicating that the cause was unknown, so it was often difficult to reproduce. Therefore, it seems that the game has been designed to display an error screen corresponding to errors that occur while playing in debug mode.

As shown below, a corresponding error message is displayed when too many sprites are displayed or when the file fails to decompress.

However, when it was released in 1994,Mickey mania“, when submitting a Quality Seal Certification inspection, the software is programmed to display ‘Mickey has detected a time anomaly that triggers a secret bonus stage!'” instead of an error message. By doing this, even if an error occurs during the inspection, the important point is that it can be demonstrated It is a hidden user specification and not an error. If you have already selected a phase from the time warp screen, a new phase will start, so the cause of the error will disappear.

The programmer’s desperate plan to evade strict scrutiny was a huge success, and has since been used in other works.

This is why the stage selection screen is shown in “Sonic 3D Blast”. In “Sonic 3D Blast”, the stage selection screen will now be displayed when something happens that hinders the game’s progress, for example when an interruption occurs under certain circumstances while the game program is being processed.

Therefore, when you trim the main body, the connection between the cassette cartridge and the main body is temporarily lost, an error occurs, and the phase selection screen is displayed. This phenomenon became a hot topic on the internet around 2017, and came to light when developer John Burton himself admitted how it worked.