Sonic Jam wasn’t an entirely original game for the Sega Saturn—it was essentially a repackaging of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Sonic & Knuckles. However, it did feature a 3D environment called Sonic World, which served mostly as an interactive museum celebrating Sega’s iconic mascot.

Sonic World also acted as a prototype for how Sonic could function in 3D, with Sonic Adventure later building heavily on what was learned from it.

Interestingly, Sonic World was developed using the same game engine as Sonic Team’s previous title, Nights into Dreams.

All the classic games were slightly updated to run on Sega Saturn hardware, with improvements such as the addition of the spin dash in Sonic the Hedgehog 1.

While the Sega Saturn version is the most well-known, another version was released in 1998 for the Game.com handheld system.

Sonic Jam was also released to help generate excitement for Sonic in Japan, where he had not yet achieved the same level of popularity as in the West.

The game was originally going to be titled Sonic Ages.

Sonic Jam lists Sonic’s age as 16 years old.

Unlike Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R, Sonic Jam was never ported to Windows PC, making it the only Sega Saturn Sonic game that didn’t receive a PC version.