Soleanna (sonic06-recomp)

Soleanna (sonic06-recomp) is an unofficial PC port of the PlayStation 3 version of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), made by static recompilation.
No emulator at runtime, and no game files in this repository: the launcher builds the game on your PC from your own disc.

Download 0.1.0 · Screenshots · Getting started · Status · How it works · FAQ · Report a problem

Screenshots

Wave Ocean, running on the water	Crisis City, on a rail
Wave Ocean, a jump over the sea	Soleanna, the town

_{Captured with F12 in this port, on Windows, from the author's own copy, at an internal resolution of 3840×2160 and shown here at 1920×1080. The game and its images belong to SEGA. The pictures are attached to the release, not kept in git.}

Status

Area	Where it stands
✅ Menus and story	The title screen, menus and movies, and the story up to Soleanna's town, with music and voices
✅ Stages and bosses	All 83 stage entries and 18 bosses start without a crash, in tests of about a minute each
⚠️ Playthrough	No stage has been played to the end by a person yet
✅ Speed	The story scenes hold the game's own 30 fps cap; Wave Ocean runs at 57–59 fps
⚠️ Controllers	Supported through SDL2, but not yet tried with a real controller
⚠️ Hardware	Tested on one Windows PC

What is in each version is in CHANGELOG.md.

The launcher

The project and its launcher are named Soleanna, after the game's city; sonic06-recomp is the repository's name. The launcher copies your disc, decrypts it with your RPCS3, installs the build tools, downloads FFmpeg, SDL2 and ps3recomp, builds the game, and starts it. It ships no artwork of the game: once your disc is copied, it shows the pictures from the disc itself.

Play: one button once setup is done	Setup: everything the build needs, in order
Graphics: presets, resolution, filters and colour	Keyboard and mouse: two keys for every control

It speaks English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese, Russian and Arabic, and starts in your Windows language. The translations have not been checked by native speakers yet: corrections to launcher/Strings/*.json are welcome.

Getting started

You need

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, with 8 GB of RAM or more, and about 10 GB of free disk space
• RPCS3, to decrypt the game's EBOOT.BIN on your machine
• Your own BLES00028 disc, as an ISO or a folder

Then

1. Download Soleanna-0.1.0.exe from the release and run it. It asks where to install (a Soleanna folder next to it, or one you pick), unpacks the build scripts there, adds a desktop shortcut and opens the launcher. The file is not signed, so Windows may warn about it first: More info, then Run anyway. Running it again opens your install, and a newer version offers to update it. In a git checkout, run Sonic06.cmd instead, which builds the launcher first (it needs the .NET SDK).
2. Open Setup and press Set up everything. It lists what it will do and asks before it installs or downloads anything. Then it:
   • installs the missing build tools: LLVM, CMake, Ninja, Git, uv and PowerShell 7 with winget, and Microsoft's C runtime and Windows SDK (about 630 MB, with xwin) once you accept Microsoft's license. Visual Studio is not needed; if you have it with the C++ tools, the build uses it.
   • copies your disc into game/ and decrypts it with your RPCS3,
   • downloads FFmpeg 8 (LGPL) for the movies, SDL2 2.32.10 (zlib) for controllers, and ps3recomp,
   • translates the game code and builds it. This is the long part: about 17 minutes on a fast PC with 32 GB, longer on a slower one or with less memory.
3. Press Play.

From a console, tools/launcher.ps1 has the same steps without the window.

How long the build takes, and how much memory it uses

The launcher builds as many files at a time as the memory allows: one with 8 GB, four with 16 GB, ten with 32 GB. On the 20-thread PC it was made on, ten at a time took 14 minutes, and two at a time took 23 minutes with a peak of 5 GB. A PC with less memory has not been tried yet.

Controls

Controllers work through SDL2: Xbox, DualShock 4, DualSense and Switch Pro. Without SDL2 the game falls back to XInput, which sees Xbox-style controllers only. Without a controller, the keyboard and mouse are the pad:

Action	Keys
Move	W A S D or the arrows
Jump, confirm (✕)	Space, Enter
Back (○)	Left Ctrl, right mouse button
□ / △	E or left mouse button / F
L1 / R1 · L2 / R2 · R3	Q / R · 1 / 2 · middle mouse button
Pause (START) · SELECT	Esc · Tab
Camera	the mouse

Every control takes up to two keys or mouse buttons on the Settings page, which also has the mouse sensitivity, a switch to invert either camera axis, and the stick dead zone.

Graphics

• Window or borderless fullscreen, window size, aspect ratio (keep 16:9 or stretch) and VSync
• Internal resolution: the size the game draws at, from 1280×720 as on the PS3 up to 3840×2160, or automatic, which matches your window. Set above your window, it is supersampling: every pixel is the average of everything drawn under it, which smooths the edges.
• Upscaling filter (smooth, sharp pixels, bicubic, nearest), sharpening, FXAA and texture filtering
• Brightness, saturation and contrast
• Performance, balanced and quality presets, and one of your own
• Shaders are kept on disk after their first use. The first time a scene appears there can be a short pause while its shaders compile; "Compile shaders in the background" removes it, and some objects can then appear a few frames late.
• F12 saves a screenshot in Pictures\Sonic06.

Measured

	RTX 4070 SUPER	Intel UHD 770
First story scene	30 fps, the game's cap	30 fps
Wave Ocean, one player	57–59 fps	not measured
Wave Ocean, split-screen	59.5–59.8 fps	about 47 fps
3840×2160 internal resolution	as fast as 1280×720	not measured

Weaker graphics cards and AMD cards have not been tried.

How it works

flowchart LR
  disc["Your disc<br/>(BLES00028)"] --> copy["The launcher<br/>copies it"]
  copy --> dec["RPCS3 decrypts<br/>EBOOT.BIN"]
  dec --> lift["ps3recomp translates<br/>the PowerPC code to C"]
  lift --> build["clang-cl builds<br/>sonic06.exe"]
  build --> play["Native x86-64<br/>with Direct3D 12"]

The game's PowerPC code is translated ahead of time into C and compiled for x86-64. The PS3's system libraries are reimplemented at a high level, its SPU programs run on host threads, and the RSX graphics commands go through a Direct3D 12 renderer. The port builds on ps3recomp, with 47 changes of its own kept as patches in patches/ps3recomp. Everything made from the game stays in game/, work/ and build/ on your PC, and git ignores them.

FAQ

Is this legal?

The repository holds only the project's own code and patches: no SEGA code and no game assets. You need your own copy of the game, and the launcher builds it on your PC. This isn't legal advice, and the project isn't affiliated with or endorsed by SEGA.

Where do I get the game files?

From your own PS3 disc (BLES00028), as an ISO or a folder. Please don't ask for game files, or share them, in issues or discussions.

Why not just use RPCS3?

RPCS3 is excellent, and this project uses it to decrypt your disc. A native port runs without an emulator, so it can be changed at the source level: so far PC options like supersampling, a mouse camera and remappable keys, and later fixes and mods.

Does it work with the US disc, or the Xbox 360 version?

Only the PS3 BLES00028 release has been tried. Other PS3 releases may need changes; the Xbox 360 version is a different program altogether.

Linux, Steam Deck, Mac?

Windows 10 and 11 only for now: the renderer is Direct3D 12, and the build uses the Windows toolchain. Nobody has tried it under Proton yet.

Does it fix the original's bugs or loading times?

Not yet. It runs the original game logic, so the game's own bugs are still there, and loading times haven't been compared with the PS3.

Will it run on my PC?

It has been tested on one PC: an RTX 4070 SUPER, plus a short run on Intel UHD 770 graphics. You need 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, 8 GB of RAM or more and about 10 GB of disk. If you try it, a hardware report helps a lot, whether it worked or not.

Was this made with AI?

Yes, with a lot of help from Claude, and the commits say so. Every claim in this README and in the docs comes from a run, a log or a measurement.

Reporting a problem

On the Support page, Create a bug report saves a zip on your desktop: your PC's specs, the setup status and the last game logs. It has no game files, and your Windows user folder is replaced by %USERPROFILE%. The launcher then opens a new issue: attach the zip, with what you did and what you saw.

Contributing

The most useful help right now needs no code: a hardware report from your PC, or a stage played to the end. For code and translations, start with CONTRIBUTING.md: building from source, where things are, the toolkit patches and the tests. docs/HANDOFF.md (in Hebrew) has the state of the project and the test recipes, and docs/PHASE1.md the history of every fix, with its measurements.

Keep game files, and anything derived from them, out of git: the ISO, game/, work/ and the built executable. A check on every pull request looks for them.

Credits

• ps3recomp by sp00nznet, the toolkit this port is built on (MIT)
• RPCS3, which decrypts your disc
• FFmpeg for the movies, SDL2 for controllers, xwin for Microsoft's C runtime and SDK, and LLVM for the compiler

License

The code in this repository is under the MIT license. It does not cover the game, which belongs to SEGA, or the tools the launcher downloads, which have their own licenses. Sonic the Hedgehog is a trademark of SEGA, and this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by SEGA.