If anyone here has anything to add to this discussion please do, all feedback is appreciated.

Recently a discussion between Keverage and I arose, about the difference in the PC port and the Gamecube port of Sonic R, and what to do about it because eventually we will have to anyway.

Nobody should run any other version than the PC or Gamecube version. The PC version is an all around upgraded version of the original and slower Saturn version with upgraded draw distance, faster menu transitions, and better controls, and loading times based off of hard drive speed. (which with any modern hard drive makes loading times non-existent nowadays) The Gamecube port put on the Sonic Gems Collection goes one step further, making menu selection faster, and draw distance not even a problem, while not having as great loading times as PCs.

As far as convenience goes, I'm not sure which version is more accessible to others. I have both a copy of Sonic R for the Gamecube and PC, but don't have a CD drive to play it on my PC, so I use Daemon Tools Lite, a program that emulates a CD drive allowing you to mount .cue and .iso files. (copies of CDs, ideally a 1:1 copy) Although I plan to buy an external CD drive soon, I wanted to discuss how people felt about this approach, since it may be easier for people to simply download the CD copy, and play it off their PCs that way, since I believe Sonic R is arguably abandonware and not legally protected anymore by copyright laws.

As far as I know, the PC CD serves two main purposes. 1.) To install Sonic R to the computer. 2.) To play music off the CD for the game while it is running.

If the CD is not in the computer when the game is launched, it will launch fine, but the main menu will show red X's over all the menu options except for the settings menu. This was definitely just to counteract piracy at the time, but like mentioned earlier, this probably isn't even an issue with Sega any longer, so downloading a copy of the game and emulating(?) this way isn't an issue. There are also noCD cracks out on the internet that allow you to play the game without any disc at all, but you won't get music this way since the music runs off the disc like mentioned before.

Now you CAN buy a copy of the game and receive a physical copy in the mail. The only problem is, there are a million different variances that the game actually comes in.. A stand-alone version, a version with Sonic R and three other games packed on one CD, and others types exist. I can't vouch for these versions, and they might have version differences on them specific to them. This is a huge problem, because unless someone wants to buy all kinds of different versions and test them, PC is a lost cause.

The fastest version of the game is assumed (by me) to be the ValuSoft version of the game, which is not only not sold anymore, but extremely hard to find. I snagged a copy of it off of Ebay from an Australian seller just to see if it was true. Supposedly, the ValuSoft version has multiple what seem like unfair version differences, including but not limited to - native Windows XP support, native windowed mode (through command parameter) and compressed sound files that apparently play without the disc in the computer. When I buy or borrow an external CD drive I will definitely update this post.

On the other hand, Sonic Gems is the version most used, and is readily accessible with no variance at all compared to the PC version. It might also save us from having to move to an IGT system.

That's all I can think of to say at the moment. I've typed this all out in one big go and have done very little actual thinking between paragraphs so I'll come back to this later I'm sure. If anyone has any information, please let me know.