Karilyn wrote:
I haven't heard of this "Lock On" technology before.

It's a reference to the way that the Sonic 3 cart was plugged in to the Sonic & Knuckles cart so you had the complete game (so the image above is of two seperate game cartridges locked together).
Karilyn wrote:
But somehow it strikes me hilarious saying that a 15 year old technology is too complicated and too advanced for THE COMPANY THAT ORIGINALLY WROTE IT to emulate it.
Well, the locking-on was a physical thing which is probably difficult to duplicate in software-only form.
The GameCube Sonic Collection I had wasn't able to take the Sonic 3 game files and integrate them into a Sonic & Knuckles game file, instead it had separate Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3 & Knuckles game files - which kind of works against the original lock-on concept (you need to have played the original Genesis/Mega Drive games to know what I'm saying here really).