Sonic Adventure New Year's DLC (found "Sonic the Hedgehog" holiday-themed DLC; 1998)

Cover art of a Japanese Sonic Adventure promotional disc.

Status: Found

Date found: 08 Nov 2019

Found by: Moopthehedgehog

The Sonic Adventure New Year's DLC was a Japan-exclusive piece of downloadable content released by SEGA to commemorate New Year's 1999.

Details

According to Sonic Retro, when active, the DLC would place a traditional kadomatsu in Station Square. The DLC was initially released on December 26th, 1998 and was removed entirely on January 7th, 1999. On December 29th, it received a patch due to a bug that supposedly made the players get stuck at a certain point in Knuckles' story while the DLC was active. The DLC's file size was 66 blocks of memory, with the filename being "SONICADV_001".

Availability

The main reason the DLC is so scarce and so hard to find is due to it only existing in Japanese versions of the game and for little time. The DLC remained Japan-exclusive due to different traditions and release dates. The Dreamcast itself and Sonic Adventure were only released in North America the following year, making it impossible to obtain the New Year's 1999 DLC in the U.S.

Due to the use of the kadomatsu decorations, it also could not be reused for later New Year's DLC in the United States, considering Kadomatsu is a Japanese tradition for New Year's.

On November 8th, 2019, a user that is known as Moopthehedgehog on the DCEmulation forums found and dumped the DLC. Moopthehedgehog said he found it on a Japanese 4X memory card that he purchased. It was then ported to the Sonic Adventure Dreamcast DLC mod on PC fully translated to English.

Gallery

Screenshots

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Videos

TetraBitGaming's video on the subject.

SPEEPSHighway's video on the subject.

See Also

• Shadow the Hedgehog (lost Teen rated version of platformer; 2005)
• Sister Sonic (lost build of cancelled "Sonic the Hedgehog" localization of "Popful Mail" Sega CD side-scrolling platformer; 1993)
• Sonic 3D Blast (found cassette demo tape of unused game soundtrack; 1996)
• Sonic Boom (non-existent lost episode of animated TV series; 2014)
• Sonic Boom 2013 (lost Crush 40 livestream performance from "Sonic the Hedgehog" convention; 2013)
• Sonic DS (lost Nintendo DS tech demo; 2004)
• Sonic Generations (lost game demo; 2010)
• Sonic Jr. (lost build of unreleased Sega Pico game; existence unconfirmed; 1994)
• Sonic Riders (lost build of cancelled Game Boy Advance port of racing game; 2006)
• Sonic Saturn (lost build of cancelled Sega Saturn prototype of platformer; mid-1990s)
• Sonic Sports (lost build of cancelled Sega 32X sports game; 1995)
• Sonic Synergy (lost original build of "Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric" Wii U action-adventure game; 2007-2013)
• Sonic The Hedgehog (lost build of cancelled Sega CD port of Sega Genesis platformer; 1992)
• Sonic The Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (lost build of cancelled iOS port of Sega Genesis platformers; 2014)
• Sonic The Hedgehog: Awakening (lost build of cancelled "Sonic the Hedgehog" game; existence unconfirmed; late 2000s)
• Sonic X-Treme (found build of unreleased Sega Saturn platformer; 1996)
• Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (found iOS game; 2010)
• Sonic the Hedgehog "2006" (lost complete build of Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 platformer; 2006)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (lost Tokyo Toy Show prototype build of Sega Genesis/Mega Drive platformer; 1990)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (lost Winter Consumer Electronics Show 1991 demo build of Sega Genesis/Mega Drive platformer; 1991)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (lost build of cancelled Amiga port of Sega Genesis platformer; 1992)
• Sonic-16 (lost build of unreleased Sega Genesis/Mega Drive game based on "Sonic the Hedgehog" animated TV series; 1993)
• Sonic Runners (found endless runner mobile game; 2015)