I've never seen that render of Fang before. Neat! His belt buckle is a solid gold rectangle, unlike the final. EDIT: Also, the AM2 section at the bottom says that Bean kicks his bombs because he likes soccer. His profile in the Fighters Mega Official Guide said that he liked soccer, which seemed like it could have been a reference to his role in Virtua Striker 2. But this confirms that it was one of Bean's character traits from the beginning, which must be why he was chosen as a guest star/mascot in VS2. Of course, Bean was based upon Dynamite Dux's Bin, who was named after Satoshi Mifune (who went by "BIN" before real names were used in game credits). In fact, in Dynamite Dux's credits each staff member is represented by a caricature - with Satoshi Mifune represented by Bin himself (riding a motorcycle). Mifune was one of the head honchos behind the first two Virtua Striker games. So since Bean is, in a way, a representation of Satoshi Mifune, his love of soccer could be seen as a reference to his work on Virtua Striker. Is Mifune known to be an avid soccer fan? Not sure if there are any other interesting details on the page.
Thank you for your investigation Black Squirrel. If I knew how to use the CDN and Wiki better I would love to help out. I actually found out that the blue and yellow health bars are still in the game's code and explain how here. I really should get off my ass and just bite the bullet and redo Retro's StF page. There's a bit wrong, and tcrf seemingly updates their StF page from this wiki and not my notes so...
https://sega.jp/fb/creators/vol_1/1.html Interview with Satoshi Mifune. He's been a soccer fan since childhood and even joined Sega's football club after joining the company. Next to this section of the interview, there's an image of Bin with a soccer ball (is the ball an original sprite?).
The good news is we've gone from having no prototype coverage of Sonic the Fighters, to the best prototype coverage of Sonic the Fighters on the internet within less than 24 hours. Someone else will have to mirror and translate all the interviews*, and yes bsf's hacking findings ought to be up there too. *Many moons ago I started working on this so the Satoshi Mifune one is up on Sega Retro, but I ran out of patience and left it on the list. This is a recurring theme - there's just a lot of content out there.
They were crushing your tool-assisted speedruns back in 1996. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDV5dINscyU&t=3m Found some footage. I've already pointed out the big graphical differences (spoilers: there are a lot), but I can't tell if it's playing the same.
https://twitter.com/tailchana/status/1094537956881125376 SegaSonic Popcorn Shop container. Like seen in the catalogue. EDIT: And these: https://twitter.com/tailchana/status/1094155067001733120 Has the soccer and Tornado art been seen before?
I wonder if this could be true of Bark in some way, as in one of his defining traits being an affinity for winter sports could have been inherited from an AM2 staffer. And if so, then could his name be an allusion to this person. I mean, it's one hell of an unusual name. Casually researching the word yields a number of dubious possibilities. One, is that the noun form -- that is the stuff covering trees -- originally referred to birch trees specifically, and derived from a Proto-Indo-European word for white. Second is a type a candy typically made from white chocolate. Third -- and this is the biggest stretch -- it can mean "shoulder" in Polish, which would fit the convention of eponymous body parts. Or perhaps he actually barks, like a seal or dog... EDIT: Had the bright idea of feeding ??? into the Japanese Wikipedia search and the page for Paul Berg showed up in the disambiguations, suggesting that "???" is an alternate transliteration of Berg which is otherwise rendered "???". So is it possible Bark's was intended to be (ice)Berg the Polarbear, but it was mistranslated?
Recent events have inspired me to seek out better (and more) screenshots of Sonic 2 prototypes - see here. As fun as it is to hint that others could do this job and share the load, I am quite efficient these days, so idk, maybe I'll just take the credit and you can erect me a statue at some point. I've been able to source the majority of those old screenshots from the SWS2B days (and earlier). Two sources remain - "unknown French magazine" and The Official Sega Solid Gold Guide: Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The book is where our good friend Neo Green H-bubble-bubble-bubble comes from: as well as some early Sonic CD shots. While that magazine is annoying me, because we have loads of French magazines and none of them line up. Consoles+, Joypad, Joystick, Mega Force, Player One - I think I've checked them all and still nothing. Any clues/scans?
The Wiki says that Sonic's birthplace is the Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. But Yuji Naka mentioned nuclear weapon testing, which would make Sonic's birthplace the Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean, also known as Kiritimati.
Question: The Wiki identifies Takumi Miyake as the artist of the hidden Batman-styled image in Sonic CD. How was this determined? This is really interesting stuff! Great finds! Have those patent images ever been seen before? It'd be great if someone could translate any pertinent pieces of information from the Honey the Cat article.
Some months ago I pointed out a "Sega Video Magazine" where an earlier Game Gear version of Sonic Chaos used the Master System version's plagaristic Gigalopolis Zone music. Well, this one has a slightly different boss tune and a completely different, Gigalopolis-esque, stage clear jingle.
http://retrogamingdailyshow.libsyn.com/171-an-interview-with-bill-harbison Stumbled upon this interview of someone who has worked on official Sonic games, I think entirely handheld/mobile titles. I had it on as background noise so I wasn't paying full attention, but I think he said he worked on one of the ports of Sonic 1, Sonic Dash, a pitched golf game, and both versions of the first All-Stars racing; he goes into some amount of detail into making new tracks for the DS version. They repeatedly mention a game that "was split into two," but I'm not all sure what it could be. I'm not guessing S3&K, unless he partially worked on that DS compilation. Sonic 4 was done entirely in Japan, I think. Maybe he considers Sonic Dash 2 to be adjunct to the first. Consulting his MobyGames page yields only All-Stars Racing, so *shrug*.
Surp I didn't bother mirroring Consoles+ #13 because the scan is missing pages. Later in the magazine they seemingly review a copy of the game that's older than our CENSOR prototype. Because it's fun to review a game 2½ months before launch - I would hazard this build came from late August or early September. So that's a thing. For the record, Beta 4 is dated 18 September, CENSOR is... before then.
Oh that's my scan from a decade ago. It comes from "MegaForce Hors-série : Le guide Sega" from 1992 released in November 1992.
Ahh that's slightly annoying - the image I was looking for isn't in that mag: This screenshot does appear in the main magazine... but not with a red border like above, which means it was printed somewhere else too. This is classic SWS2B - the mysterious green watermark in the bottom left, most likely from a television. I hadn't banked on more than one magazine printing the same watermarked screenshots. So I went digging. "Joypad" was a multi-format sister magazine, and issue #14 (which is missing loads of pages) has Sonic 2 coverage https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/affiche_mag.php?mag=84&num=4080&album=oui What are you, mysterious green watermark? It would suggest to me that these screenshots were sourced from a video or TV show, which means we could have some prototype footage (of Hidden Palace!) to find. This watermark isn't clear enough to be a channel DOG (and apparently only one French channel was rendering one on-screen at all times in 1992 - La Cinq) - it must be indicating something else, but what?
I'm convinced the SMS version was based on an earlier version of the GG one. The music, the seemingly incomplete end of act screen, the more basic title cards, the more-obvious ring placements in Act 3s, the not-quite complete intro, Sonic's bad ending missing animation etc.
One of my old scans again. It comes from MegaForce issue 17; from May 1993. They used to use pictures of Hidden Palace even after the game's release, like in issue 16, April 1993.
