How did we all miss this one!? We now know that a port of Sonic Generations, intended for Sony’s PSP handheld, was once in active development – thanks to a long-undiscovered Facebook post from a video game preservation group that claims to have a debug build of the game.
Obscure Gamers first posted about the existence of the cancelled project – titled ‘Sonic Anniversary’ – back in May 2017. The debug backup disc (pictured above) is dated November 2009, meaning that SEGA was clearly exploring ways to include PSP on the list of platforms for Sonic Generations.
At the time, the group did not share any assets as they feared they would be unable to pull anything off the disc. “Sadly the disk was damaged as it was stored on rubbish media,” reads the ancient post. “Philips disks are prone to this having found the same issue with a Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 360 build. Half the data was lost again.”
The post was updated shortly after claiming that around 14MB of data was recovered. Now, in a new post discovered tonight (but posted in July 2020), the Obscure Gamers forum updated with some new assets, including a logo and some textures which appear to be from either Green Hill or Mushroom Hill Zone.
“Not sadly as exciting as people expected I feel but it’s good to finally see proper images released,” reads the statement last night. “The data was a 100% loss and even a specialist couldn’t save anything.”
Sonic Generations eventually released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC following its launch in 2011 to coincide with Sonic the Hedgehog’s 20-year anniversary. A Nintendo 3DS version was also developed, which was significantly different from its home console counterparts. Whether the PSP version would have been more like the 3DS version or the PS3/360 versions remains to be seen, but we’ll let you know if any more details come to light!
“Sonic the Hedgehog’s 10-year anniversary”
Wow, were they celebrating it 10 years late?
Haha! We clearly need more coffee! Thanks, error’s been fixed. 🙂
This is crazy. I remember clearly rumors of Sonic Generations Vita port back in 2011, and now seeing that a PSP version was in development is surreal to me. 12 year old me would’ve played this to death if it actually happened.
I remember the 2010 leak with details on Generations before reveal using the name “Sonic Anniversary.” Cool stuff.