Sonic Crackers is not a Beta, it's a joke

So that's what the unused sphere graphics were supposed to be! :v:

 

Hmmm...Clackers and Crackers.... A lot of Japanese friends I had in the past made the mistake of using an R instead of an L. And just recently there was some concept art from Xtreme that used R (ROG) to spell Log . the R was crossed out and replaced with an L. The R sounds kinda like the L to them.

 

Plus Sega is bad for English to Japanese name conversions. Over the years we've had Emi Rose, Knackles, Metru Sonic.... Crackers is not much of a stretch.

 

You keep bringing this up but Crackers itself is, once again, dated as April 1st, 1994. It being out in the wild in 1995 means nothing.

If that was the case no protos would ever be released.

 

This makes so much sense. Why have I never heard this mentioned before?

 

Well, that actually sorts out the Crackers name, well done Neo!

 

Yep, mind completely blown on that. Sonic Clackers makes perfect sense.

 

We still have some unanswered questions though. Who are Morgoth and Gandalf, how come they have no digital trace?

And how come they got their hands on such an early prototype of Chaotix only a few months after the game's launch?

 

Clackers :v: :v: :v: :v: amazing

 

Sonic "Clackers". That does make a lot more sense, haha.

Whatever you do, do not look up the Australian meaning for Clackers XD

 

As I understand, Japanese doesn't have the letter l in their alphabet. So they have to substitute with another letter and they often use R. (E.g. London is often misspelt as Rondon).
So for a Japanese speaker who doesn't know much English, Crackers would be fine for Clackers.

That's why Metal Sonic is sometimes spelt as Metru Sonic in Japanese books. Going by the Japanese alphabet, Ru is actually a fine substitute for 'al', even though it's wrong in English.

 

I think it's a tad funny you use "wow look how silly and immature this pirate group acts" as evidence, considering the history of the Sonic hacking scene.

Anyway, the lack of info on Morgoth and Gandalf seems to be more of, in general, we don't have much info on that time period. There's too many connections between Crackers and the Chaotix prototypes to call it a hoax, even an "official" one.

 

Or, also, Genocide City. :v:

EDIT: This is a ridiculous argument, as DigitalDuck explains below, and I know the L/R mixup is common because I work with the Generations engine where a lot of internal files have it.

Spoiler

So... yeah, it's an actual thing. :specialed:

 

No, that's not the case at all.

Japanese don't deliberately put Rs where Ls belong, but they can (and frequently do) do it accidentally, as ??, ??, ??, ??, ??(la, li, lu, le, lo) are rarely used, instead sticking with ?, ?, ?, ?, ? (ra, ri, ru, re, ro); many Japanese people do not distinguish between an English R and an English L, as the nearest sound to both in Japanese is the ?-set of syllables. As a result, Crackers and Clackers are both pronounced the same in Japanese: ?????? (kurakkaazu) (Cluckers is also pronounced this way).

It's not because "they can't say Clackers" at all; it's that the two words are pronounced the same in Japanese, and if you don't speak English (as is common for Japanese people, being, y'know, Japanese) you might think that because it's pronounced the same it's also spelt the same. They call it Crackers because Crackers is a word that sounds exactly the same to the word they want to use.

 

The correct sound is something between "l" and "r". It's one of the most common symptoms of dodgy Japanese -> English translations.

 

The R/L phenomenon with East Asian dialects is perhaps the best known example of common translational mixups. As pointed out by others, it happens constantly. It's no coincidence that Sonic and Tails are tethered like a pair of clackers, and the game is called "crackers". If anything, it only acts against your argument.

 

p.s. I'm doubtful I can dig up much for the reasons I've already described but here's CVG pointing out that development of Chaotix started in January 1994:

http://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File%3ACVG_UK_160.pdf&page=32

I think it's conceivable that Crackers represents about three months of effort. From what I can gather, game development around this time took between 8-12 months on average, though in this case there's a platform change to take into account and the very real possibility that it was only a pitch (as opposed to a fully staffed and funded project) in April 1994.