Adventures with Chaotix

I like how in one paragraph this says Knuckles is the sole remaining descendant of the inhabitant of Angel Island, and then a few paragraphs later, it says he's the strongest of the natives on the island, lol.

 

... What even is the context of that photo??? And does Knuckles even have a nose? Why does Sonic have weirdly pronounced lower eyelids that are too high up? Why is there a guy wearing business casual attire holding a SEGA Channel cartridge posing with these bad mascot costume wearing dudes outside on a public street?

I am so confused.

Those two things aren't necessarily contradictory. Since he's the only surviving one, he is the strongest. :P

 

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Channel

It's Andi Peters at the UK Sega Channel launch...

Do you think those mascot costumes are bad?... what about this one?

https://segaretro.org/Sponsorships/Football

 

The costume was also used in the 1995 UK roadshow.

 

It's amusing to me that at one point they wanted Knuckles to be younger than Sonic. Classic Sonic stuff seemed to always have him aged 16-18 iirc. Knuckles as a 12 year old is a whole different energy from the "older cooler warrior" thing they landed on, lol.

 

I've found the artwork that must have been used as the basis on the Chaotix prototype title screen shot!



It was used on a sticker included in Crackerjack in 1994.

 

They are both based on the same image, but the cracker jack image is not the same as the one in the title screen. This was posted a few pages ago, but if you look at the extreme details, things are different. Example: In the title screen, Knuckles pupils extend down to his muzzle and have a solid black iris/pupil, in the sticker they have a gap between them and the bottom of the muzzle and a light reflection in the pupil. They all seem to be based off of the official model sheet pic that was posted a page back but none of them are the same exact picture.

 

They're definitely different images, but it does seem like one is possibly a trace-over of the other. While some things are different (mostly the shapes of his pupils and chest marking), the overall body shapes - even things like the asymmetrical dread shapes and one arm sticking out awkwardly - are consistent between the two. Having looked up the stickers in question, it seems the whole set uses western stock art for the illustrations - based on this, my bet would be that the Knuckles' Ring Star graphic is based on an earlier version of his official model sheet, and that the Crackerjack sticker uses a trace-over/redraw of this created for SoA's stock art library.

 

Here's yet another observation, which I don't believe has been brought up yet:



This is the background used for the boss fight against Metal Sonic Kai. Firstly, the clouds kind of look like they were set up for parallax scrolling, but no such parallax is implemented in the final game. I assume this is a similar case to Marina Madness, though I'm not sure if this background has parallax implemented in any of the prototypes. Secondly, doesn't this background look kind of... odd? Well, there's a good reason for that. The image above is how it appears in-game. But if we replace the dark grey colour with black...



Suddenly it looks way better. The elements which sharply contrasted with the dark grey now fade seamlessly into the black. I have no idea why they used the wrong colour in-game; the only thing I can think of is that some areas of Metal Sonic Kai (particularly the back of his head) use a lot of solid black shading, so maybe the developers thought he would blend in too much if the background was also mostly black.

One final thing: the two middle pillars on that big dome thing seem to be missing some tiles, causing square holes on their inner edges.

 

The backgrounds in the game are pretty bizarre but that one in particular has always been so weird. What is it? Where exactly is that supposed to be on the island? The cutscene before it is pretty weird too. Robotnik is in a black void, Metal Sonic gets busted up in front of him and loses rings (?). He pushes some buttons, a cube appears around the giant golden ring, then metal sonic and he slink off to the right, with metal sonic glitching... then boom, you're there with a giant transformed metal sonic with no transition.

ACTUALLY, omg, I just noticed this rewatching the final battle -- that black void where they are is the same arena the boss fight takes place in. I always thought those glowing green dots in the void were like... eyes or some shit. IDK, this game is weird. Turns out they're the lights on those spires in the back, the entire background is just pitch black at the beginning. I also notice that the giant red metal sonic actually does not come from the same direction Metal Sonic exited. Metal Sonic exits to the right, and the next screen has the giant metal sonic on the right, too. But if you slow down the scene, that giant metal sonic actually quickly descends from the ceiling. Perhaps that's not meant to be the same metal sonic at all??

Just what is this? At first it looks like it's some sort of giant dome, but you can see stars in the distance. It looks more like a circular platform of pillars holding something up. It's so bizarre.

speaking of locating this... place on the map, let's take a look at some neutrogic high zone renditions from the game and manual:






landmarks on the title screen and in the render seem to align, and you can seemingly notice zones in the game there, perhaps better seen in the render. Easiest to spot is the boat from Marina Madness at the top. To me, it looks like the roller coaster on the bottom right is Speed Slider, with the merry-go-round that launches into the air next to it. You can see a big greenhouse in the back with palmtrees growing out of it that would be Botanic Base maybe. Next to the roller coaster, you see techno tower zone under construction, one tower is fully built while the other is being constructed. Perhaps the long road extending out in front of Neutrogic High Zone is the road we see at the beginning of the game before the title screen.

There is one more depiction of the island in the game, but it's hard to make out. The Speed Slider boss launches into the air, and the pre-boss cutscene shows it taking off and the island shrinking behind it. But the island doesn't seem to match up with these other images:



The Japanese manual has a drawing of the neutrogic high zone that also matches the render:



In this one, you can see the big curved robotnik entrance thing that is in the cgi render, which indicates that they are indeed supposed to be the same basic area with the same landmarks.

I'm also not sure what that round thing with the psychedelic colors is supposed to be, or the weird geometric objects behind it near the top of the CGI render. I'm not able to place Amazing Arena (it would be something that would look like a movie house, no?) or Isolated Island on the map.

So all that said... where is the final boss fight? Nothing on this map looks like any place that the boss fight would occur at. Presumably the boss fight is up in the air, because of the clouds, but there's no place like that on the map.

 

That pic almost makes Newtrogic High look like it's located in mainland rather than an island, with a jungle or forest around it, and distant mountains in the back. Which doesn't match the render, but matches World Entrance, which appears to have trees and mountains in the background.

 

I thought about making this point too, CRT black level should make them look darker. Still, I almost exclusively play KC on a CRT, and I'd noticed this for a long while, so while it might be darker, it's still noticeable.

Yeah, there's almost no real vegetation on the island render where it's everywhere in the game. Also, both the manual drawing and the title screen seems to show quite a few skyscrapers which just don't exist.

You actually can see some distant mountains before the marina madness boss fight. It shows the that polygon... thing... flying out of the ocean, and in the distance you can see the tops of mountains on presumably the shore line. However, those are presented as being incredibly far away, not at all like the title screen.

I gotta think that big robotnik entrance looking thing is the world entrance you go into after each level, but it looks absolutely nothing like it does in-game. What's so weird is it prominently features that big robotnik head, it's shown in every depiction of that thing on the island, even the title screen. But for such prominently featured landmark, it's nowhere in the game. The closest you can maybe get is the clock in front of the world attraction area?

I really wish we could one day get a directors cut of this game or something. There's so much weird stuff. It's not just that it's obviously incomplete, it's how it feels like it's bursting with ideas or concepts that never got past the first stage. It feels like they wanted to convey so much, but since it was never completed, we have no idea what.

Another odd thing about the depictions of neutrogic high zone - the CGI render shows Techno Tower under construction. but the title screen doesn't, the tower is complete on the title screen. The most noticeable thing is the big glowing pink dome at top. We see in the game this dome put on techno tower in the pre-boss cutscene. Such a weird thing.

Whoa, what on earth is going on in the ending there? It's all screwed up.

 

Judging by the pre-fight cutscene, the location of the final boss arena seems to be underground, under the Entrance, as they fall when the ground collapses. Newtrogic High seems was maybe intended to be mainland, since Isolated Island gets named specifically for being an Island and is specifically shown to be nearby but separate, but it's easy to just assume it's a big island too- it's not like we don't see background mountains etc in levels in Sonic 1 and 2 and 3. I am going to assume that the way the cutscene plays with the giant Metal Sonic coming from above rather than the right is just some awkward storyboarding

 

I always figure that sequence would have made more sense if Eggman chuckled at you while the chaos rings you failed to get were destroyed. If you don't get any chaos rings you don't see that sequence at all. Other weird choice is of course using the same music as you get when the good ending occurs -- you actually hear more of it if you only collected 5 rings rather than all 6 of them.

EDIT: wait, you probably meant the lack of line scrolling on the background. That's weird. That's real hardware capture, apparently...clearly a substantial glitch, and I don't think I've ever encountered it. Now I need to see if the didn't-get-all-chaos-rings screen causes that. Hrm.

 

alright so this brought up shit i buried EONS ago
so in whoisthisgit's video on chaotix, once he beats the red metal sonic the music's suspiciously a lot faster
for years i wondered if this was an emulation bug but now i'm wondering if chaotix is that broken that it assumed there were speed shoes (i don't *think* Git was crazy enough to use the PAL ROM or switch regions mid-game as you could on Kega Fusion)

 

Thinking a little further, I believe the sphere-shaped thing with the psychedelic colors in the CGI render might be amazing arena. The reason I say this is because you see a tube coming out of it at an angle, and Amazing Arena is the only place that has tubes:



We see horizontal tubes in-game, and there exists art for vertical tubes as well, so both directions shown in the CGI are present. Amazing Arena is a movie house, so it being entirely enclosed would make sense.

EDIT: Actually, looking again, I think that might actually be the tower you fight the final boss in after all. If you look at the image of Neutrogic high zone on the title screen, the tower actually has a right angle "tube" going into it. I guess perhaps that dome behind it with the weird spiral coming out is amazing arena?

Perhaps the columns behind that which are made of stacks of flat discs are like some sort of electric transformer or something, and that's what is happening when you press the button in AA, it turns the power back on.





Has anyone ever tried asking Mazin online about some of this stuff? Like what the clock in Amazing Arena is, and why the level is dark?

EDIT: I just realized there is yet another depiction of Neutrogic High Zone in the game, in the background of Isolated Island:



This would imply, confusingly, that Isolated Island is a different island from Neutropic High Zone. You can see a few landmarks, namely the roller coaster from speed slider, techno tower under construction,and if you look real closely, you can see the entrance ring with Robotnik's head in the middle. They made damn sure to have that head every time they showed the island despite it not being actually visible upclose in any part of the game.

EDIT: I found a pic of the title screen graphic with as much of the background removed as possible to make the image more readable:



I had been operating under the assumption that the long tower in the middle with the pink dome was one half of techno tower, but I actually don't think that now. Combined with the theory that you fall down into the arena, I now think that long tower is the world attraction area where the final boss fight occurs. The reason why? There appears to be a long runway leading out of the tower to nothing. In knuckles chaotix, when you enter a zone, you are put on this machine that launches you forward off a ramp into the sky, which is why you fall down into the stage during each stage's title card. All this makes a lot more sense if that's the same area. That dome at the top of the metal sonic fight that is looking into the stars, I guess that's the pink dome atop the tower. In fact, I'm pretty sure of it now, look at the background to that area:



I had always noticed the background was made of what looks like ring-shaped floors with spires going up. If you look at the tower in the title screen, you can see the tower has the same shape on the exterior, between the windows.

EDIT: I'm reading the actual jpn manual for Knuckles Chaotix for the first time and there's some odd stuff in there. Did people know that it explicitly states there are multiple metal sonics? It says Metal Sonic Kai is a second, spare Metal Sonic that Eggman had. He recovered the main CPU and sub-CPU from the old, destroyed Metal Sonic and put them into this new robot. I'm not sure if this is referring to the ending, and Metal Sonic Kai is supposed to be the red Sonic, or if this is referring to Sonic CD, and Metal Sonic Kai is the name of the blue metal sonic, and the red metal sonic is a transformation. The reason I'm confused is the manual talks and names a character specifically Metal Sonic Kai, but it shows an image of the blue metal sonic we all know and love.

Also, the rings Robotnik and the enemies use are called "Dark rings." In that light, the name "Holy ring" to be the counter makes a little engrish sense, because "Holy light" is a thing in multiple religions. A light to counter the dark, I guess.

 

I don't think it's that confusing. Isolated Island is the first level in the game, and Newtrogic High Zone is clearly visible in the background from the very beginning. I don't know why one would assume that Isolated Island was part of Newtrogic High, unless they've never played the game.

The Japanese manual refers to the blue Metal Sonic as "Metal Sonic Kai" and doesn't give a name to the big red Metal Sonic. The name "Metal Sonic Kai" was later retconned to refer specifically to the big red Metal Sonic.