Sonic 3D Blast/Flickies’ Island file modification date research

[Danthrax]

So I was looking into the “last modified” dates on all the files of the various versions of Sonic 3D Blast/Flickies’ Island, as you do, and I noticed something interesting. Based on the dates that files were last modified on them, it looks to me like they originally intended to release it in Japan in early 1997 before tabling it for some reason.

Of course, Sonic 3D Blast didn’t release in Japan until Oct. 14, 1999, almost three years after its launch in North America and Europe. It was Sega’s final first-party game for the Saturn and coincided with the “international” version of Sonic Adventure in Japan.

According to the game’s header, the North American Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast was finalized on Nov. 8, 1996, a couple weeks before it hit stores on or around Nov. 21. The files inside show that most of them had final modification dates throughout October, with the rest in September or the first few days of November. Makes sense.

The European version, named Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island, hit store shelves on or around Feb. 13, 1997. Accordingly, quite a few files were modified later than the North American version: BONUSMAP.BIN was modified Dec. 5, 1996; some of the files in each of the eight LEV folders were modified between Dec. 5 and Dec. 18, 1996; CREDIT.BIN was modified Dec. 16, 1996; SOUNDC.BIN was modified Dec. 18, 1996; BTESTTON.BIN was modified Jan. 2, 1997; 0.BIN was modified Jan. 3, 1997; SONIC.BIN was modified Jan. 6, 1997; and TITLE.PIC was modified Jan. 10, 1997. Jan. 10 is also when all the folders were last modified, indicating that the game was built on this date, even though this contradicts the Jan. 6 date written in the header.

While many of the files on the Japanese version have the same “last modified” dates as the European version, several others are from much later. The opening cutscene, SOP.AVI, was last modified Nov. 17, 1998; TITLE.PIC was modified April 18, 1999; CPY.TXT was modified May 13, 1999; SONIC.BIN was modified July 9, 1999; SSSS.BIN was modified Aug. 19, 1999; and the four new SonicCD JPG desktop background images in the new EXTRA folder were modified Sept. 8, 1999, the day before the game’s final build date.

So it looks like Sega didn’t start working on a Japanese version of Sonic 3D until late 1998. But there’s one file on the Japanese version that doesn’t quite fit with that timeline: HELP.BIN was modified Jan. 30, 1997. In both the European and North American versions, that file has a last modified date of Oct. 30, 1996. Why did they change this one file only for the Japanese release but in early 1997?

Of course, “last modified” dates mean that we don’t know if other changes were made to those files earlier. Perhaps the files modified in late 1998 and throughout 1999 were edited in early 1997, too?

So it’s speculative, but I think Sega was beginning to get the game ready for an early 1997 Japanese launch, then sat on it for nearly two years before picking at a few files here and there starting in late 1998 (around when Dreamcast launched in Japan) up until it finally came out in October 1999.

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