Sonic & Knuckles lock-on ROMs

[C. V. Reynolds]

Within the Megadrive/Genesis database at No-Intro exists entries for three ROM images related to Sonic & Knuckles. They are meant to be the result of Sonic & Knuckles' lock-on technology: You could plug one of the previous three Sonic games onto Sonic & Knuckles via its pass-through port and get different or altered games. Those three entries are as follows:

Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic The Hedgehog (World)
Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (World)
Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (World)

However, the problem with this is that these three ROM images are from ROM chips that never actually existed. Rather than game dumps, they are merely hacks that append Sonic The Hedgehog/Sonic The Hedgehog 2/Sonic The Hedgehog 3 onto the ROM image for Sonic & Knuckles. In fact, the ROM for Sonic & Knuckles contained all of the necessary data to alter the other games already, and these hacked ROM images only exist for inaccurate emulation purposes (few emulators support the actual lock-on technology at this time, although the upcoming Exodus emulator by Nemesis shall support it).

With this said, I now ask a new question: Should we not remove these three hacks from No-Intro's database? They go against the mission statement of No-Intro, I believe.

[Connie]

I would say yes, but since No-Intro haven't moved to the headerless and split-rom format for NES and other systems, is it really any less accurate to leave them in the database?

If they aren't already, they could just be moved to the "Physical support: all" option of D-o-M.

[etabeta]

(few emulators support the actual lock-on technology at this time, although the upcoming Exodus emulator by Nemesis shall support it).

GenplusGX (originally available on Wii, but also on other OSes through libretro api) supports the lock-on since forever, and MESS supports it since a few weeks... it's not an uncommon feature in 2013