Sonic CD and Sonic Mania Are Being Ported to Sega Saturn and 32X by Homebrew Developers

A trio of homebrew Sonic projects slipped under our radar in late August, and they are doing something wonderfully unnecessary in the best possible way: bringing Sonic CD and Sonic Mania to Sega hardware that never officially received either game.

Developer orca_earth_md is working on two separate Sega Saturn projects, one for Sonic CD and another for Sonic Mania. The first footage of the Mania port appeared on August 20, followed several hours later by a look at Sonic CD running on the Saturn. Both remain works in progress rather than finished releases.

Here’s the latest progress on my Sega Saturn port of Sonic CD!
Sorry there are still so many unfinished parts!
This video shows Salad Plain, Special Stage 1, and Metallic Madness Zone 3!#segasaturn #soniccd pic.twitter.com/FHJ123GoMV
— しゃち/Orca (@orca_earth_md) August 21, 2026

The Sonic CD project fills a particularly odd gap in the Saturn library. Sega’s 32-bit console never received an official version of the 1993 Mega CD/Sega CD game, despite the series appearing on the system through titles including Sonic Jam, Sonic R and the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast. Decades later, orca_earth_md is now showing the game running on the hardware as an unofficial homebrew port.

At the same time, the developer has Sonic Mania running on Saturn too. The 2017 game naturally arrived long after the console’s commercial life had ended, but its classic 2D design makes the idea of seeing it squeezed onto Sega’s older hardware especially fitting.

Here’s some progress on my Sega Saturn port of Sonic Mania! It still has a lot of slowdown and graphical glitches, but I just wanted to share my progress, haha. I’ll try to improve it before the next upload! pic.twitter.com/TzOD9tCubv
— しゃち/Orca (@orca_earth_md) August 20, 2026

And the Saturn is only half of this little hardware experiment. Developer chaos_migu has also been working on a separate Sonic Mania port for the Mega Drive/Genesis 32X, showing an early build running on the add-on on August 23.

https://t.co/ooa0FLFvpv pic.twitter.com/ZIizeVxM22
— 🔷⭐️Chaos_Migu⭐️🔷 (@chaos_migu) August 23, 2026

The 32X project is completely separate from orca_earth_md’s Saturn work. The two Saturn ports belong to orca_earth_md while chaos_migu is responsible for the 32X version. All three are still in development, so there are no finished releases to download yet.

None of these projects are affiliated with or endorsed by SEGA. For now, they are simply ambitious homebrew experiments aimed at getting two Sonic games onto original hardware they were never built for.

Between Sonic CD finally being shown on Saturn, Sonic Mania following it onto the same machine, and a separate 32X version taking shape at the same time, late August turned out to be a surprisingly busy few days for anyone who likes seeing old Sega hardware asked to do things it was never supposed to.

Stay tuned to Sonic City for more Sonic Fangame and Homebrew News and Updates!