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Looking for a particular piece of Sonic Adventure DLC

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Speeps, Mar 15, 2017.

  1. Speeps

    Speeps

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    I've been looking all over for this one piece of SA1 DLC that doesn't seem to be available anywhere and I'm wondering if anyone here has it or could help out here.
    I've tried all the VMU packs I can find, but they're all missing this one and there doesn't seem to be much info on the thing in general.

    "A kadomatsu New Years decoration is placed. Available 12/26/98 - 01/07/99 (a bug fix version was added on 12/29)."

    There's a download for SA1 that would place Kadomatsu (Japanese New Year decorations) around Station Square. The file for it should be something along the lines of "SONICADV_001" and be around 66 Blocks.
    It was only available in Japan for a few weeks, and was given a bug fix on the 29th to fix something that apparently prevented the player progressing through Knuckles' story.
    Fuck, the only things that even mention it that aren't from 17 year old Japanese websites is info from the article on the wiki here. (I've since updated it. Not sure what that icon is doing there though, since I've only ever seen that used for some of the Samba GP packs)

    The closest I've come to finding it is this old Japanese geocities site with a broken email transfer:
    http://www.ceres.dti.ne.jp/~matsu-s/dia/db.html
    There hasn't been that much else come up about it though, aside from the occasional Japanese posts from years ago mentioning it.

    Also, a while back my friend made a page for it on the Lost Media Wiki, which can be found here:
    http://lostmediawiki.com/index.php?title=Sonic_Adventure_New_Year's_DLC_(Lost_Video_Game_DLC,_1998)
    Thought people over there could help, but nothing turned up.

    I'd appreciate anything that you guys have on this.
     
  2. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    Have you gotten someone who knows Japanese to reach out to the owner of that site to ask if he still has the download? He has a newer email address on the main page of the website.

    I have a Dreamcast with DreamPassport & working internet access, if he's still able to send it and has no other way to do it. If I recall correctly, attachments from DreamPassport were either encrypted or encoded in some way. Way back in 2001 there wasn't any way to decode them without a Dreamcast, but that might not be true anymore.
     
  3. Speeps

    Speeps

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    I'm pretty sure my friend tried all the email addresses we could find on that website and none of them worked, including the ones on the downloads and main page.
     
  4. Lythatic

    Lythatic

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    Some SA2 Review that's taking Forever
    Aren't the DLC saved into the VMU? If so, maybe a Japanese VMU (Maybe from Launch to early '99) could have one.

    I need another VMU, so i'll try to find one, VMU's are region free, right?

    Also, love your Content, keep up the great work!
     
  5. PkR

    PkR

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    Been looking for that one too, but yeah, all email addresses found on that page are no longer functional.

    I can help with reaching out to Japanese speakers if we ever get any clues. I did a search for SA1 DLCs in Japanese, but the only worthy thing I found was a blog post by a person claiming to have played it back when it was available. I contacted them on Twitter, and the only thing they were able to share was that it was such a long time ago they don't quite remember what the actual DLC was like.
     
  6. PkR

    PkR

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    This isn't about the kadomatsu DLC per se, but I found something odd I thought I should share here.
    So I stumbled upon this article and it caught my attention with a rather odd-looking screenshot of Gamma in Station Square.
    There are a couple things about that screenshot that seem unusual to me. First of all, the Christmas tree doesn't match the trees from the Christmas DLCs we have: 1, 2. Judging by the trunk and lights, it kinda looks like an early version of the Christmas 99 tree.
    Another weird thing is, there's something behind the traffic light that isn't there in the final version. Compare the screenshot with the one I took using an emulator:
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    What's that thing behind the traffic light? Having messed with Dreamcast landtables myself, I think I know what that is. It's the underwater part of the seashore that is supposed to use a transparent texture, but in that screenshot the parts that are supposed to be transparent are opaque and black. The seashore doesn't look like that in any final release of SA1 (can't say for the Autodemo), so I'm inclined to think this screenshot is from a pre-release version or something.
     
  7. Speeps

    Speeps

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    That screenshot was probably taken in an old version of Demul and didn't have sorting enabled. I don't think NullDC can load the DLC, so it would make sense.
    You can see just about the same thing in 0.5.2:

    [​IMG]
     
  8. PkR

    PkR

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    Ah you're right, it definitely looks like older Demul without sorting. Welp, I'm kinda disappointed. Hope more info on the kadomatsu stuff surfaces someday.
     
  9. Speeps

    Speeps

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    This isn't about the Kadomatsu download, but it concerns SA1 DLC so I figured I'd put this here.
    So I was browsing an archive of the SA1 Homepage and while looking through the images I came across this:

    [​IMG]

    I've never heard of this before. The only track download I'm aware of is the one for the Samba GP course, which wasn't made available until 2000 whereas this seems to have been talked about before the game even came out in the US:
    http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/alley/9527/news/archive01.html
    http://uk.ign.com/articles/1999/08/25/sonic-adventure-internet-gaming
    http://www.doorsclosing.com/lursk/GHZ/ggibbon/sega/news/stuff3.htm

    Does anyone have any info on this? Judging from the articles it may have just been a page on the SA1 website, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything here.
     
  10. Titan

    Titan

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    Hm, could this perhaps be one of the 'unused' courses you recently found?
     
  11. Speeps

    Speeps

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    There is a track in a slot between the normal course and the Samba GP one, so I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be the case.
     
  12. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    As far as I know, all archives of the US SA1 site out floating around online were the ones I made. There are basically 2 versions:
    1. The "reconstructed" site where all references to files on the disc were pointed into an sadisk folder, and the .adx files were converted to low quality MP3s and the tags were updated so web browsers from 2004 could play them. GoodCow has hosted this version on his site since mid-2000s. That archive sits here: http://www.sappharad.com/junk/sa1site.zip
    2. An older dump of the same thing that I found in one of my backups a few years ago, with older files and in some cases fewer modifications made. There were a few files where I didn't make any changes at all. That version is here http://www.sappharad.com/junk/sa1site2003.zip


    For some reason search isn't turning up any results, but I'm very certain that I mentioned Mercury GP here a few years ago. It was a huge disappointment when I was looking through my archived copy of the site years later and discovered that image. When I did the initial dump, I had noticed some of the obvious things like the site template for the design of dreamcast.com from 2001, but completely missed the Mercury GP image sitting there. The only reason I had that image in the first place was due to a bug in the browser that I used to dump the site, it was grabbing images referenced via commented out HTML. Unfortunately, the browser I used only followed links, and the reference to the Mercury GP page was a commented out form submission. (Several of the pages were opened via HTML buttons instead of link tags, and the browser wouldn't pull those because they were form submissions)

    There were a handful of other hidden pieces that I missed because I didn't review the comments, such as the link to the admin section hidden at the bottom of the FAQ page.

    I don't believe anyone ever got a copy of Mercury GP. By the time I noticed it, the site had already been offline for several years.
     
  13. Blue Spikeball

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    I propose we contact the author of that IGN article. There is a high chance he played Mercury GP back in the day, given that he describes himself as Sega's "hardcorest fan" in that article. He may be able to tell us more about it. If we're really lucky, he may still have the DLC.

    We should also ask if he tried and possibly has the Kandomatsu DLC, just in case. He's an enthusiast of Japanese games, given that he's the founder of a website centered on them, so he may have played the Japanese SA1 and tried the DLC.
     
  14. PkR

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    Interestingly the PVM that comes with the Christmas 99 DLC has a texture that goes unused:
    [​IMG]
    A bit odd to have an unused texture in downloadable files where size matters. But I confirmed that it doesn't show up ingame.

    I edited out my speculation on its similarity with shimekazari because, well, this actually looks a lot like an ordinary wreath, lol.
     
  15. Blue Spikeball

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    Have you checked if there are any possible leftovers in the other DLC files? Particularly the QUO Contest (the first DLC released after the kadomatsu event), the Japanese DC Launch Party (first event to come out after the kadomatsu one) or the Japanese Halloween event (whose filename places it between the kadomatsu and Launch Party events).
     
  16. PkR

    PkR

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    I didn't see any leftovers in those as far as texture and model data is concerned. I'm not aware of a Halloween DLC released specifically for Japan, I only know the one that goes by SONICADV_505.
     
  17. Blue Spikeball

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    From what I understand, the file of the Japanese Halloween event is identical to the US one, but its VMU filename is SONICADV_500 rather than SONICADV_505. So you may want to look into it.

    Beware that the US/JP Halloween DLC file is different from the EU one (which also uses the filename SONICADV_505), though. There's a chance that's the one you have. So just to be sure, I uploaded the US/JP version here.
     
  18. PkR

    PkR

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    I've compared the files, and they are identical. The decrypted Halloween VMS file also contains strings in English, Japanese and other languages, so I'm going to say the actual content is the same. Although the VMI file has a string "SONICADV_500" there's a "SA1_505" string right next to it.
     
  19. Blue Spikeball

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    Like I said, the file is identical for US and Japan. So, you had already looked into it for remnants?

    As for SA1_505, that's just the name of the corresponding .vms file so that the Dreamcast knows what file to fetch from the server. SONICADV_500 is the name it's supposed to get assigned in the VMU. And I could be wrong, but I don't even think "SA1_xxx" is the official naming scheme of these files. Many of the .vmi and .vms files that are floating on the web aren't using the original filenames from the official servers.