Back in the early 90s, computer game publisher U.S. Gold bought the home‑computer rights to produce Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega. Their press release promised the port would arrive on all those lovely home computers: Amiga, Atari, C64 and Spectrum.
Sadly, it never happened. Sega revoked the licence, and although the home computers had some great platformers—fast‑paced ones like Zool included—they never got to see the blue hedgehog. Or so we thought.
One of the best parts of owning an Amiga was the newsagent. Long before PlayStation and Xbox magazines strapped demo discs to their covers, you could head to your local shop and see titles like Amiga Power, Amiga Format, or Amiga Addict. There were probably more, and most came with a demo disk.
The disk contents varied. I always fell for those eye‑catching “software worth over £500 FREE with this magazine” claims. Almost always it was shareware. When it came to games, it was demos—the first few levels, a taster only.
But in this timeline, there’s a recognisable face on the magazine demo disk. In this version of events, Sonic the Hedgehog really did come to Amiga owners. Thanks to some very clever homebrew developers, the timelines have merged and the Amiga demo is real and playable.
You can actually watch the development of this port (and I have) on the Reassembler YouTube channel. This might be a case of good things coming to Amiga owners who wait. The old magazine screenshots of the U.S. Gold release looked more like the 8‑bit Sonic—the one recently ported to the C64. Reassembler has taken the code straight from the Sega original and… well, reassembled it for the Amiga.
His whole process is documented in those YouTube updates, and it’s a great look into the technical side of things. The demo has been released. The full game is being worked on. Amiga owners could soon have their hands on a game they’ve waited almost thirty‑five years for.
… and I thought my Sonic journey was slow.