Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure
In August 1999, SNK announced that they were collaborating with Sega to develop a "Sonic the Hedgehog" game for their Neo Geo Pocket Color handheld system. The game was developed by SNK, with supervision from Yuji Naka and Sonic Team at Sega. This marked the first time Sega was directly involved in the development of a "Sonic" game for a non-Sega platform. The team planned for "Sonic Pocket Adventure" to be a return to the classic 2D gameplay style found in the "Sonic" games on the Sega Genesis. In particular, many game design and visual elements are borrowed from "Sonic 2". The game's background music tracks are also 8-bit renditions of music from "Sonic 3". "Sonic Pocket Adventure" was released first in North America on December 4, 1999. SNK released a system bundle with the game included for the holiday season. The game was released in Japan two weeks later, and in Europe in February 2000.
Sega Saturn
Like the Genesis, the Saturn had an Internet-based gaming service. The Sega NetLink was a 28.8k modem that fit into the cartridge slot in the Saturn for direct dial multiplayer. In Japan, a now defunct pay-to-play service was used. It could also be used for web browsing, sending email, and online chat. Because the NetLink was released before the Saturn keyboard, Sega produced a series of CDs containing hundreds of website addresses so that Saturn owners could browse with the joypad. The NetLink functioned with five games: "Daytona USA", "Duke Nukem 3D", "Saturn Bomberman", "Sega Rally", and "". In 1995 Sega announced it was developing a variant of the Saturn featuring a built-in NetLink modem under the code name "Sega Pluto", but it was never released.