A lost Tails game just surfaced in a former Sega developer's floppy disk archive
Ken Rose has shared rare Sega STI materials, including a cancelled Tails game, a Jester build and Segapede code.
One of the more intriguing pieces of 1990s Sega history has resurfaced from a personal stash of floppy disks. Former Sega Technical Institute developer Ken Rose has shared archive material tied to several cancelled Mega Drive and Genesis projects, including remnants of an unreleased game starring Tails.
What changed
Rose, a former Sega of America employee who worked with the STI team, shared the material after discussing his time at the studio during the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive era. The collection was passed along through The Hidden Palace and includes screenshots, design documents and, for some projects, source code.
The archive comes from disks Rose kept from his own collection and offers a look at games that never made it out of Sega's Redwood City offices. For fans of 1990s Sega, the change is immediate: projects that once existed only as rumors, internal concepts or fragments can now be examined in much more detail.
One of the biggest finds is Jester, a platform game that had been positioned as a major system release in 1994. Players controlled a clay character whose flexible body was used to get through traps and hazards. The project drew substantial development work, but it was dropped after lead programmer and STI founder Mark Cerny left Sega. Rose's archive adds a playable build to the small amount of surviving material linked to that game.
Why Tails fans may care most
The most eye-catching item for many Sonic fans is Treasure Tails, an isometric puzzle adventure built around Miles "Tails" Prower. Sega had asked Rose and the STI team to move quickly on a Sonic spin-off aimed at the 1993 Christmas market. The game was cancelled when it became clear the schedule would take longer than planned, and the team shifted to Sonic Spinball.
What survives from Treasure Tails is limited, with Rose's materials described as small remnants, alongside a very simple surviving video of the project. Even so, it offers a rare glimpse of a Tails-led game that never reached release.
Another title in the archive is Segapede, a Sonic spin-off in which players would control one of Dr. Robotnik's mechanical hybrids. The project was later retitled Astropede and was eventually scrapped after Rose left STI. Rose has said he remains very proud of the ideas behind it and of the work completed up to that point.
Beyond the nostalgia factor, the archive also matters to preservationists and hobbyist developers. With design papers, images and code now available for some of these unfinished games, the material could give the homebrew community a starting point for exploring what these abandoned Sega projects might have become.
