Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: BlazeHedgehog - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

So talking to a friend on IRC and they were like "Hey did you know Blaze the Cat was the original design for Shadow the Hedgehog" and I was like "What". I get handed this link which is already setting off warning bells: http://sonic.wikia.c...the_Cat/Artwork

The artwork in question are these two images, which allege to be a "prototype design" for Blaze the Cat made for Sonic Adventure 2



I skimmed Sonic Wrecks, saw nothing about this artwork. So what's the scoop? Where is this artwork actually from? Anybody know? My bullshit-o-meter is going off something fierce.

With talk of Sonic Generations getting Mario Galaxy levels I decided it was probably time I stop hoarding these for myself like an asshole and post them up for download.

The original video description follows:

angelXwind, on 29 April 2012 - 01:56 AM, said:

This is my first time using Dropbox so hopefully I did this right. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep saying, "I should have gotten Damizean's permission" but considering they're just ports it's probably not a huge deal? I give him all the credit, too.

If I sound cold in the video description, my apologies; I just don't want to play tech support to a bunch of kids asking dumb questions. That's less of a problem here, since we have a lot of the original creators for this stuff active

http://blaze.letsvid...er_4-1-2012.rar (18.1mb)

Looks can be deceiving.

Everything's a work in progress, especially the music. Tweaker offered to do music for me months and months ago, but I told him I wanted to wait until the game was a lot farther along before I worried about music. But, uh, well, yeah. I will probably need a new musician at some point, but I'm not even going to think of that just yet.

Obviously, the boss isn't done. I have concept art sketched out, but it's just a matter of finding time to implement him. I really need to get off my ass and do more on this game, really, but I've had other commitments that have come first.

Four years ago I lost the source code to this in a HDD crash. A little over a week ago, I recovered it. I've spent this last week fixing up the game to get it in to a functional state so I could release it. There's a ton more information about the game in its readme.html file. I highly suggest you read it while the game itself downloads.

DOWNLOAD:
SONIC2K62D_FINALVERSION.rar (33.6mb)

FEATURES:
3 zones, for a total of 5 levels, plus one boss encounter. Also lots of digital music (hello file size), Mission Mode, and a very basic leaderboard system.

SCREENSHOTS:







VIDEO:


So yeah. Enjoy!

Been awake almost 24 hours straight, here, so forgive any spelling errors or a lack of coherence on my part. Infact, I'm so far gone that posting this thread may actually be a bad idea!

Okay, so, there's something that's been bothering me for a really, really long time. Information I've vehemently clutched to as long as I can, and tried to make sure has never died. I hav basically burned this information in to my brain. Looking now, this information does appear to be in the Wiki, even using text I know that I personally wrote - except that I didn't write it for the Retro Wiki; it was likely pasted there from somewhere else I had written it.

The information pertains to an early, apparently very different version of Sonic Adventure 2. All of my sources on the matter came from Sonic HQ's news archives of the time, and the first incarnation of TSSZNews.

WHAT I REMEMBER

1. An employee of either Electronics Boutique, Babbages, or Gamestop visited some sort of retailers conference, where he viewed and later described several pieces of Sonic Adventure 2 concept art. Among them were Good/Evil Chao, a character he called "Nails the Bat", several pieces of concept art for "Dark Sonic" showcasing everything from full-body scars to a missing eye and missing appendages, an angelic-like girl, a troll-like creature with a big nose, and a monster made up of thousands of eyeballs.
2. A magazine was given a preview of Sonic Adventure 2 where they described a branching storyline system, where at several points in the plot the player would be offered a choice in what they wanted to do. The given example was Sonic trapped in a submarine; the player was given the option to attempt piloting the sub to safety or to pop the hatch and take their chances in the water. This magazine also stated that "Chao would play a larger role in the game."
3. That Sonic, Knuckles and Dr. Eggman were originally the only playable characters until outcry regarding the status of Tails and Amy Rose forced them to go back and rework the game a little bit.
4. Early versions of Sonic Adventure 2 featured Adventure Fields like the original Sonic Adventure.

What I would like to do with this thread is discuss the plausibility of the above while at the same time seeking out the original sources of this information and attempting to verify it beyond "Blaze remembers it". Considering anybody could submit news to SonicHQ's news system, the validity of that should come in to question, too.

My statements on the matter are thus:

#1. is most definitely true. This was when the news broke about their being good/evil Chao, and "Nails the Bat" was obviously either a name this employee made up for Rouge or it was actually going to be her name at one point. I distinctly remember this guy describing that "Dark Sonic" and "Nails the Bat" were going to be evil versions of Sonic and Tails.

I've always been sort of skeptical about #2, considering I never remember any specific credible source being behind the information besides "some magazine somewhere that I've never heard of and can't remember the name." What gets me, though, is that a vaguely similar branching storyline system eventually turned up in Shadow the Hedgehog, a game which revisits a lot of Sonic Adventure 2's ideas in some way.

#3 is based strictly on the initial batch of screenshots and media featuring Sonic, Knuckles, and Eggman exclusively. I distinctly remember a lot of hullabaloo regarding the existence of Tails in Sonic Adventure 2, and members of Sega and Sonic Team were questioned at multiple trade shows. I remember a SonicHQ news headline stating that Sonic Team was going back and adding more "familiar faces" to Sonic Adventure 2, including Tails. Later interviews with Sonic Team regarding games like Sonic 2006 seemingly referenced this event, touching on receiving lots of fan-mail if "a favorite character does not make an appearance".

On a personal note, I think the idea of S/K/E as playable characters works remarkably well, because Sonic represents good, Eggman represents bad, and Knuckles is painted as a wild card that can be on either side at any given time. He is, after all, Sonic's "friendly nemesis".

#4. comes off of a hazy memory that Sonic Adventure 2 was originally slated for release in February of 2001, but was delayed, with the mention of Adventure Fields being among the reasons for delay. Out of everything I've posted here, this is the least likely to be true.

WHAT WE KNOW

Early trailers for Sonic Adventure 2 were kind of dark, and prominently featured creepy music and a generally unsettling atmosphere.



The first teaser for the game even outright says the world "Evil", even though the final version of the game uses the much more kid-friendly "Dark" term.



And let's not forget the game's own logo.



When we first see the game, this is the logo we are shown. The themes of light vs. dark, good vs. evil were always at play, right from the beginning. We have a logo that is literally divided in half, with white hedgehog spikes and black hedgehog spikes, with a gray outline. Every element, every shade of this logo was designed a very specific way to convey a very specific message. Sonic Team certainly made a big deal about their designed logo:





Frankly, I've always felt the new logo was a bit garish.

WHAT THIS MEANS

Rumor content suggests a pretty big shift in the game's projected game design. Differences between official early material and the finished game only slightly hint at a pretty big shift in the game's projected game design. Was Sonic Adventure 2 and even darker, more serious game than what we got? Were Shadow, Rouge, and Tails originally intended to be playable from the start (maybe exclusively in multiplayer)? What about a branching storyline? Could levels like White Jungle and Green Forest have originally been both for Sonic, split up via a plot choice?

That's what I would like to discuss, to get to the bottom of this, and figure out if the information I've been holding on to mentally has been worth holding on to for this long. The last thing I'd like to be responsible for is wide-spread misinformation just because I think a few ideas "sounded cool".