What is Sonic 3 Unlocked?

About the author

Hi, I'm Fred, the author of this blog.

I've been a part of the Sonic community since the early 2000s, when I joined the Area 51 forums over at the Sonic Stuff Research Group. In late 2004, after the SSRG went under, I migrated over to the Sonic Retro forums (then Simon Wai's Sonic 2 Beta), though back in those days, I actually spent most of my time working on custom content for the fan game Sonic Robo Blast 2.

In 2011, I began contributing to the Sonic 3 Complete ROM hack. Originally doing only graphics work, I finally made my first commits to the project's codebase in early 2015. I started by porting unique behavior from S3A, soon moved onto fixing bugs, and eventually began adding my own pet features to the project.

At the end of 2016, I stopped working on Sonic 3 Complete due to creative differences, but the knowledge I acquired in the meantime left me wanting to pursue two projects of my own: an original ROM hack, and this blog.

About the blog

Sonic 3 Unlocked is a blog which aims to explain, through analysis of the game's code, how various aspects of Sonic 3 were achieved within the limitations of the time, why surprising behavior sometimes occurs, and what was left lying on the cutting room floor.

Posts are roughly organized into categories based on their content. Feel free to start with whatever interests you most, but for prolonged reads, I recommend starting from the first post and working your way to the top. Later posts assume the reader is familiar with concepts discussed prior; when this occurs, I generally link to the recommended reading.

If you have a blog suggestion, or a follow-up question to one of my past posts, drop me a line in the comments section below, or in the comments of the relevant post. Answering my readers' questions has been the most enjoyable part of writing this blog, so I'm always open to that sort of feedback.

About the hack

Sonic 3 Unlocked is now also a ROM hack! Currently still very early in development, I will share more information about this project in the future.

Contact

If you ever feel the need to reach out to me personally, you can always find me over on Twitter. It's also the best way to keep up to date on both the blog and the hack.

Thanks for reading!