Did you read my guide to setting up SEGA Model 3 emulation? Well, if you did, good job. You can now play a wealth of SEGA arcade classics that were previously locked away in arcades, from the comfort of your own home.
That said, I’m still on a Model 3 high myself at the minute, so I’ve decided to throw together a quick guide to some of my favourite small easter eggs and details in Model 3 games. These are basically just my opinions, so don’t expect an exhaustive list; but there’s some stuff here that’s incredibly easy to miss or just generally pretty obscure. And I live for these kinds of ridiculously hard-to-find details!
And fair warning; the vast majority of these relate to Sonic the Hedgehog. Sorry, it’s just what I do.
Virtua Fighter 3tb – Snowmen in the Desert
Virtua Fighter’s a series with plenty of odd easter eggs, such as the tiny arena code in Virtua Fighter 1, the bird on Jacky’s stage in Virtua Fighter 2, and Virtua Fighter 3… has a few.
The most bizarre of these is probably tied to the desert stage, as if you land Jeffry’s “Splash Mountain” move on the bonus ‘Dural’ version of the stage, you’ll see a train fly through the sky. Because that’s not oddly specific!
Like hell I can manage to get a decent shot of that though (thankfully someone else has), so this other desert stage tidbit will have to do.
Win a Perfect as Shun while facing a certain direction (on the sunset version, your back should be roughly towards the dark area of the skybox), and suddenly, there’s a Snowman off in the distance! It’s such a weird detail that I can’t imagine many people would ever actually see.
SCUD Race Plus – Toy Story
SCUD Race, named SEGA Super GT in North America (apparently due to SCUD Missiles being a thing) is a racing game by SEGA AM2. It was the first racing game released on the Model 3, and… it’s alright, I suppose. I’m not a huge fan of it personally, but it’s generally well-liked.
Anyway, in 1997 an updated version of the game, SCUD Race Plus was released. It’s only in Japan, though there’s a US localisation accessible through the test menu. Anyway, it added a new oval track to the game, a Super-Beginner circuit. This track’s bizarre as is, as it’s set in a giant living room a la Toy Story, but if that wasn’t enough all of the vehicles are toy cars!
If you hold Start when selecting a car, you can play as one of these toy vehicles, as well as one that the AI doesn’t even use. What car you choose depends what you’ll end up playing as:
- The Porsche 911 transforms into a Toy Bus. It looks like the passengers are supposed to be the dev team!
- The Ferrari F40 transforms into a Toy Tank. Pressing Start actually fires the cannon, and the game keeps track of how many folks you’ve shot! Charming, innit.
- The Dodge Viper transforms into a Cat!
- The Mclaren F1 transforms into a rocket-powered Car. Pressing Start gives you a massive speed boost courtesy of said rocket, but it’s also murder to control.
It’s a very weird easter egg, but also pretty hilarious. Playing as the cat seriously harkens back to playing as a Horse in Daytona USA‘s Saturn port.
SpikeOut: Final Edition – Mystery of the Mall Artwork
SpikeOut is a 3D beat-em up from the mind of Toshihiro Nagoshi, the man behind Daytona USA and Yakuza. The latter is pretty evident in SpikeOut, as it plays pretty similarly all things considered (though it’s pretty tedious at times, with some pretty long levels).
Anyway, one stage has you visit a huge shopping mall. You fight your way through a ton of areas, such as the main lobby, an arcade, a children’s amusement section; and towards the end of one route of the stage, you come to a giant statue of everybody’s favourite blue bastard, Sonic the Hedgehog. The walls are also adorned with plenty of Sonic artwork; but there’s something very puzzling about them.
First thing’s first; a running theme across most of the artwork is that it’s all Classic Sonic, but shaded similarly to the artwork for 1998’s Sonic Adventure, which introduced the “Modern Sonic” redesign. But that’s not the weird part; it looks like they actually attempted to update the art at the last second!
Looking closely at the artwork reveals something unlike any other piece of official Classic Sonic artwork; he’s got Modern Sonic’s green eyes! It’s a bizarre fusion of the classic and modern styles (even more evident from the image at the bottom of the texture, which is actually a prototype Sonic redesign) and an interesting oddity to see in an official SEGA title. But that’s still not the weirdest part!
The artwork seen at the top of the texture is very blatantly by Naoto Ohshima, Sonic’s original designer. Ohshima’s style of drawing Sonic is considerably different to the hedgehog’s official portrayal. He draws Sonic with more exaggerated features such as giant hands, and almost always gives Sonic sharp fangs. It’s a unique design, and I personally love Ohshima’s style. But if it’s not the official portrayal for Sonic, then what’s it doing in an officially released SEGA game?
Well as fate would have it, Ohshima-san became pretty active on Twitter recently, so I finally had chance to ask him what the SpikeOut artwork was all about. Turns out the art wasn’t really supposed to be released in any capacity, let alone show up in a game!
So there you have it; the Ohshima-style work that appears in SpikeOut was originally a test of minor design tweaks to Sonic for Adventure. In the end, the redesign was more drastic, but it’s interesting to get an insight into the process of Modern Sonic’s creation; and incredibly strange that said insight comes from an arcade SEGA beat-em up!
While I’m on the topic of SpikeOut‘s mall section, I should also note that Fantasy Zone‘s Opa-Opa, a Bisbein from Space Harrier, and a Tetris block from SEGA Tetris all show up in this bit too. Neat!
Fighting Vipers 2 – Who the Hellsol is DelSol?
Fighting Vipers 2 is already a pretty damn obscure game, and deep within the arcade version are two hidden characters; DelSol and Kuhn. They’re not accessible by normal means, requiring codes or NVRAM editing to be accessed. They were made playable in a one-off special edition of the arcade version that’s unlikely to ever be released to the public, as well as being secret characters in the Dreamcast version of the game, but they’re in the arcade original as opponents. I’ve never encountered DelSol in the arcade version, but I assume he’s just a random encounter in Survival and the like, as in the Dreamcast version. Kuhn is basically a parody of Dural from SEGA’s Virtua Fighter series, and actually uses moves from Virtua Fighter 3; only jacked-up to all hell thanks to the FV2 engine.
Anyway, DelSol’s a bit… weird. And he’s not an AM2 character! DelSol was actually designed by Anchor Incorporated, an animation company who assisted with Fighting Vipers 2. His masks (both 1P and 2P vers) actually later showed up in WWE Raw‘s Create-a-Wrestler mode, which is… an odd connection, to say the least. Anyway, Del Sol’s pretty much just a skin of Mahler, which means he’s actually pretty damn good.
If you want to know more about Fighting Vipers 2 in general, as well as further trivia and a far more extensive take on Del Sol, check out Shoryuken’s DEATH CRUNCH! feature on the game. You should also follow Zerochan (who the DEATH CRUNCH! feature is an interview with), because.
Le Mans 24 – Unlocking Sonic the Hedgehog
This is the coup de grâce of this article, because I wound up doing a chunk of the research into it myself.
Le Mans 24 is a SEGA arcade racer based on, shockingly, the Le Mans 24 Heures racing event. The idea of the game is just to race for ’24 hours’ and try to be in first when time runs out. There’s an array of sports cars to use, and if you feel particularly ballsy, you can set the race to last up to 16 minutes. So that’s fun.
Anyway, you could play as the sports cars, but there’s something far more amusing lurking in this game. It’s… Sonic the Hedgehog!
SEGA’s Golden Goose is actually a playable character in the game, in his own little red buggy. The method of unlocking him listed on just about every site ever is wrong though. Unlocking Sonic depends on the cabinet ID you’ve got set up in the test menu:
- For the TWIN-LEMANS setting, highlight the Nismo R33, turn Left, hold the Start, Brake and VR Buttons 1 and 3, then press the Accelerate pedal.
- For the TWIN-NORMAL setting, highlight the Nismo R33, turn Left, hold the Start and Zoom In buttons, then press the Accelerate pedal.
Even then though, if you’re playing in the emulator be prepared for a battle to get this working. As far as I can tell, Supermodel cancels out the brake pedal when the acclerator pedal’s pressed, meaning getting the inputs to overlap (so you’re pressing gas and brake at the same time as required) is nigh impossible. It can be done (else I wouldn’t have screenshots), but if you manage then for the love of god just make a savestate for next time.
There’s one more tidbit about this though; at the pit-stop, Sonic actually transforms into this weird rabbit… dog… thing. He looks kind of like ZOOM’s mascot, NECO. Anyway, I’ve no idea what the hell this thing’s supposed to be, so if you’ve got any idea, I’d love to finally box off this mystery.
Worth noting this was mentioned in the UK’s SEGA Saturn Magazine, #30. But the code they list is actually wrong, as it misses out pressing VR Button 3! The part of the code most sites miss out is needing to keep steering left as you press the gas, rather than just highlighting the leftmost car.
So, those are just a few of my favourite Model 3 game easter eggs. Any particular ones you want to slap me for not including? Let me know, and I’ll look into getting them added if possible.
Tracker_TD 
