{"id":12178,"date":"2018-02-06T00:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T00:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/314367"},"modified":"2018-02-06T00:29:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T00:29:00","slug":"sonic-3d-blast-dev-releases-directors-cut-after-25-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/02\/06\/sonic-3d-blast-dev-releases-directors-cut-after-25-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonic 3D Blast dev releases director’s cut after 25 years"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/blockquote>\n

– Traveller’s Tales\u00a0founder Jon Burton on the decision to create a director’s cut of\u00a0Sonic 3D Blast\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In an interview published by Eurogamer today,<\/a>\u00a0Traveller’s Tales founder Jon Burton explains why he chose to create a director’s cut of the game\u00a0Sonic 3D Blast\u00a0<\/em>after 25 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Traveller’s\u00a0Tales was known for working with Sony on creating\u00a0licensed\u00a0Disney games in the late ’90s, starting with the release of\u00a0Toy Story<\/em>\u00a0to coincide with the launch of its parent film. During the early days of the studio, Burton worked as its sole programmer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the success of launching\u00a0Toy Story\u00a0<\/em>alongside the movie, Traveller’s Tales found its niche. “We had found our business model, and people started to emulate it,” says\u00a0Burton<\/a>. “For the next 10 years, we were on seven-month deadlines.”<\/p>\n

Sega eventually approached Traveller’s Tales to make a\u00a0Sonic<\/em>\u00a0game, which would eventually become\u00a0Sonic 3D Blast.<\/em>\u00a0“That got our attention,” Burton recalls.<\/a> “It might be hard to believe now, but Sonic was the biggest thing in the world back then.”<\/p>\n

When the studio began to to expand, Burton stepped into more of a creative director role. But he’s since taken a step back from the games industry and has looked over his portfolio with a new perspective. He admits that while he stands by every game Traveller’s Tale has made, there was always room for improvement.<\/p>\n

Thus came the idea to tweak\u00a0Sonic 3D Blast.\u00a0<\/em>After some time, Burton\u00a0realized he could just make a “ROM hack” for the game and call it a free director’s cut patch for those who owned the original cartridge. After retrieving some old assets and asking the community what they wanted to see, he got to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Burton recognizes that this effort was achievable because as the founder of the studio that made\u00a0Sonic 3D Blast,<\/em>\u00a0he owns the code he’s been refining. This sort of project would usually not be viable without the studio’s blessing.<\/p>\n

“As game developers get older, these issues are going to come up more and more,” Burton explains.<\/a>\u00a0“I don’t think there’s anything in my past that anybody is gonna really clamour to see. But I think a lot of developers do, and if they’ve left those companies, can they legally do it? I think there’s a negotiation that has to take place there.”<\/p>\n

Now that the director’s cut has finally been released to\u00a0Steam Workshop (available as a downloadable patch file for players who own the original cartridge) Burton plans to return to YouTube, where he started a channel mostly for his own amusement uploading prototypes and coding practices he developed years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They get hundreds of thousands of views. Me, waffling on about old technology in a bad British accent. It’s a selfish endeavor. But if people enjoy it, that’s all the better.”<\/p>\n

Be\u00a0sure to read the entire interview\u00a0over at Eurogamer.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

– Traveller’s Tales\u00a0founder Jon Burton on the decision to create a director’s cut of\u00a0Sonic 3D Blast\u00a0 In an interview published by Eurogamer today,\u00a0Traveller’s Tales founder Jon Burton explains why he chose to create a director’s cut of the game\u00a0Sonic 3D Blast\u00a0after 25 years.\u00a0 Traveller’s\u00a0Tales was known for working with Sony on creating\u00a0licensed\u00a0Disney games in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}