This one: It was used. Nearly: http://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File%3AVideoGames_US_67.pdf&page=46 ...for Triple Trouble on the Game Gear. This is coverage in VideoGames #67 (August 1994) of Sega Gamer's Day 1994. It's one of the most wacky events Sega have ever hosted, announcing tons and tons of games, as well as the 32X. Better yet, everything was given artwork - the vast majority of it being non-final placeholders. It pre-dates any decent announcements of Sonic & Knuckles - the game was in development and said to be backwards compatible, but no screenshots or prototypes were given to the press.
That actually makes a ton of sense. Good job tracking it down! I prefer that version much more than the final, though I understand why they made the change. The lack of Nack causes the exact situation we fell into, assuming it was S3&K art.
Had I not been told otherwise, I would have thought that was a sketch for Sonic and Knuckles. The mushrooms scream S&K!
Ya'll artists know what you gotta do now I guess. :v: If I remember correctly we had some nice touchup work done when that first got posted, but I'd love to see a Triple Trouble reinterpretation now that we know this.
Nuh uh, my colourization skills are nowhere near good enough! :v: Would be beautiful to see it 'finished', either way.
If the Sonic Triple Trouble Master System port ever continues, I'd love to see this used for digital box art in place of the original.
I was thinking that whis may have been made before Nack was implemented into the game, as it would be really odd not to have the new villiain being shown or hinted at, in the cover... But who knows.
From what I've seen, Nack's existence in Triple Trouble was announced before Knuckles - back when it was called "Sonic Chaos 2". Truth be told, the only game this cover really makes any sense for is Sonic 3... before Sonic 3 was split into two games.
I agree with that, Black Squirrel. The art depicts the three main characters on S3 in an S3K level. There's no other location in the series that it could be. Just because it was used in an early, obviously placeholder TT boxart doesn't mean that it wasn't originally designed for S3 instead.
That's a really good point. I think we made mention last time that the only zone this artwork actually matched up with was MHZ. I think the theory was this was an S&K proposal. What completely threw me off here was that I forgot about the existence of Knack (I didn't really grow up with the GG/SMS games) so this does seem kinda' odd for a boxart choice. This may be one of those neat things where we never get a straight answer.
I remember seeing this art as a kid - and I could have sworn I traced it as well, meaning I would have seen it reasonably large. Hmm.
Found this one mixed in with other papers. It is a color comp but doesn't match the one used in the ad.
I doubt it was an earlier S3 box art, as it depicts Knuckles with separate eyes. He has conjoined eyes in the final box art, implying that Greg Martin didn't have a full grasp of his character design yet. I'd say it's more likely that it was drawn for S&K. Yeah, it depicts Tails, but Greg may have taken the Lock-on feature into account when he drew it. Alternatively, there may have been plans to release S3&K as a single cart in USA at some point (just like they planned to do in Japan), but then they abandoned these plans, resulting in the box art going unused.
Somewhere I have some Creative Antics sketches that like this ad include Toe Jam and Earl. Here is the final painting that would have been the cover of Ratchet and Bolt also pictured in that PDF. The paperwork I had indicated it was going to be a 32X title and not Genesis.
He was originally going to be called "Nack" in Japan as well, but they changed it because it would look/sound too similar to the other new Sonic character at the time, "Knuckles". So it seems that Knuckles may have been a later addition to the game. He was fairly inconsequential, and his one boss fight was in a machine.
