Last week, a working Genesis cartridge that tied into the upcoming Sonic 3 movie was delivered to press and influencers. Among the features were character select screens, movie posters, and a sequence involving Shadow chasing Sonic on his motorcycle, and a cheat code that unlocked the November 25 release date for the next trailer.
Now, its creator Brielle Garcia has revealed to GamesRadar+ what had to be cut from the Genesis cart’s measly 4 MB of storage.
“Earlier versions had more full motion video and I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the best balance for quality and size,” Garcia tells us via email.
“Genesis carts can (generally) only be 4MB, and a 60-second video was taking up nearly 2.8MB of that alone. We ended up just focusing on making the rest of the content really shine with the extra space saved. So we could’ve kept it, but we [would have needed] to start compressing everything else too much.”
Despite the technical workarounds, Garcia – who produced an entire music video featuring characters getting trapped in a Genesis as an early test – found working alongside Paramount to be creatively freeing.
“Paramount was really awesome to work with and were open to ideas for how to make it as cool as possible,” Garcia said.
On the reaction to the cartridge from the ever-passionate fanbase, Garcia added, “The sheer joy from people as they realize it’s a real working cartridge with new content has been my highlight… I really wanted it to be something that Sonic fans would appreciate, as I’m a huge Sonic fan myself.”
Sonic 3, starring Ben Schwartz, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Idris Elba, James Marsden, Krysten Ritter, Tika Sumpter, and Colleen O’Shaughnessey is hitting cinemas on December 20.
For more, check out our movie release dates calendar and ranking of the Blue Blur’s best Sonic games.