At this point, retro-game lovers are well used to fan-made "hacks" of classic titles that can do anything from adding modern players to Tecmo Bowl to adding an egg-throwing Yoshi to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. What we can't recall seeing before, though, is the original developer of a decades-old console game returning to fix it via a downloadable, emulator-friendly patch.

That's exactly what Traveller's Tales founder Jon Burton is planning for Sonic 3D Blast. Burton announced via video that he's going to make a "Director's Cut" that fixes gameplay problems and adds new features to the original Genesis title (which was also ported to the Saturn). Burton's roadmap includes fixing the game's infamous slippery momentum (which often makes Sonic feel like he's running around on ice), enabling a pre-existing hidden-level editor, adding Super Sonic, adding an in-game save system, and more. A follow-up video shows more specifically how Burton is removing many of the control and gameplay frustrations that helped lead to middling reviews for the 1996 release (and subsequent ports to more modern platforms).

Burt notes explicitly that this is "something I'm doing on my own time, for fun, and not connected to Sega or anyone else," so it's hard to call this an "official" remastering of the original game. That said, Burton's history with the title and his pedigree with Traveller's Tales set this effort apart from other unofficial retro-game mods. And Sega's wholesale embrace of 16-bit game modding via Steam is practically a stamp of support for this kind of modern rejiggering of classic titles.

Anyone with even slight interest in how classic game development works should take some time and dig through the rest of Burton's GameHut channel on YouTube, too. Besides revealing the secret behind gaming's weirdest Easter Egg , the channel includes fascinating deep dives on early FMV compression , a trick for generating more colors on stock Genesis hardware , and a collection of demo-scene-style graphical tricks that push the Genesis to its limits. Well worth the time, even if you don't have a deep understanding of the underlying programming tricks being discussed.

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