I posted about these magazine issues in my thread about a pre-1207 Chaotix build. I had seen the fanart of "Nat", based on the screenshot, but I don't think I ever talked about it specifically. I can't remember if it even came up in the thread, but I was aware of it. Now, Chaotix wasn't the only game to have very early builds end up in the hands of the TodoSega/SuperJuegos teams or the Spanish arm. For example, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers game from 1994 went through such heavy revisions that the TodoSega (or was it SuperJuegos? I'm blanking) article about the game was out of date by the next issue or two, and that the next time it was mentioned in the magazine it had been specifically mentioned that the game overwent a drastic retool. I won't get onto that side-tangent, because you'll never shut me up. I still have to write TCRF articles for my findings. However, my point is that it seems to have been kinda common for the Spanish arm to get builds/footage of games before others in that '94-'95 period. The Spanish "Welcome to the Next Level" promo video "Bienvenido Al Proximo Nivel" contains brief video footage of the prototype MMPR game that appeared in the magazine. So, given that this is the case, could it be that Spanish territories were used as a sort of "testing ground", kind of like how they'd do location tests for arcade cabinets? That is, get feedback from passionate game magazine staff, see how they react, prior to a larger proper release in English speaking territories? After all, it's not like the majority of people in the rest of the world would see any test previews, unless they happened to speak Spanish AND subscribe to Spanish SEGA mags.
Spain seems to have reported on Chaotix first, but our early shots of Sonic Triple Trouble come from German mags, and the early Sonic 3 stuff from British mags. I don't think Spain's getting special treatment, it's just the luck of the draw. My mistake was assuming the Spanish mags were regurgitating content from elsewhere (like these), but that's clearly not the case by 1994/1995. (p.s. support the home team)
Did it just boil down to poor communication and random happenstance on a case by case basis, then? I do wonder which positions in the company would have been the liaison between SEGA itself and the publications. I would love to know how that whole side of the business functioned back then. And yeah, I guess I should probably jam that research into Sega Retro.
There's a small section (really two small bits) of Skyscraper Scamper day that I accidentally discovered a while ago Long story short is that somehow I screwed up the game's autorunning rail during the bridge chase section, which allowed me to miss the spring that is supposed to send you off the bridge to the next building. Here's me behind that spring: There's a small section of highway behind this spring that, for whatever reason, has proper collision, which allowed me to walk around the area up until an invisible barrier blocked me: For whatever reason, it was even possible to jump onto the other road: Since coming back here screws the game's previously mentioned autorunning rail system (I have no idea what to call it), I was able to run on the bridge area regularly. I was able to go all the way to the beginning section: Interestingly, this area too has a small section of highway, albeit with no invisible barrier, which means straying too far results in death: Even here you can jump onto the other road: I have no idea why these sections exist, players aren't supposed to be here normally. One possible explanation is that these are remnants from an earlier version of the level in which after the bridge chase, Sonic would continue on the highway instead of being launched to a building. Another theory I have is that these were alternate paths Sonic could've taken alongside the normal level path, but were scrapped. Either way, it's strange that these insignificant areas of the level are even accessible. BONUS: Since you're free to walk around, you can even jump on the bridge's supports: (Before you try this, know that you cannot enter the blocked off section of the bridge with this tactic, at least from what I've tried) I'm not the first one to have discovered this, this video from 12 years ago shows the player running around in this area: Even then, I hardly see people talk about this, and the video itself is very obscure. There's a lot of glitches in Skyscraper Scamper, but I think this is the most interesting, since it really makes you think if there was something planned there at one point.
Here's an oddball question. Regarding the whole "Sonic X-treme using the NiGHTS engine at one point" thing. I've heard a mountain of credible sources on this, and I have no doubt to question it. However... somewhere in the back of my memory, I vaguely recall reading a thread here where someone brought that claim into question, and with the evidence to support it. Ever since then, every time I read about X-treme x NiGHTS, I can't help but think about this weird memory. Looking back, I think enough people have gone on the record to not doubt it, but it's been years and I can't stop thinking about it. So my question is: did/does the Sonic community have any reason to doubt Sonic X-treme once used the NiGHTS engine? If only to verify that I indeed misremembered :x thanks!
Isn't there a leaked demo of the engine with Sonic and a small portion of the level? I remember emulating something like this around 2008.
I think the argument was "it just looks very similar to the NiGHTS engine, and over the years people just assumed it was."
Yuji Naka has again denied he refused to let STI use the Nights tools for X-treme, and this time has outright called Chris Senn a liar. He claims that it's impossible for X-treme to have used Nights since X-treme was coded in C, while Nights was coded in assembly.
Actually he called "people who tell these stories" liars. It wasn't Chris Senn that said it. In that linked tweet with the Senn quote, Senn says that the thing was just a rumor to him, and in fact defends Naka.
And the follow-up: https://twitter.com/nakayuji/status/1545086182207266817 That settles that I guess (and yes, clearly he did know X-treme existed). As I said in the other topic, Bernie Stolar was involved in relaying this information, and it went through a few people before it got to the Sonic X-treme developers, so it was never a water-tight argument. I can absolutely believe that the engine running NiGHTS was tailor-made for that specific game. ... in fact come to think of it, ports aside, I can't think of any case where Sega shared code between different teams and departments (other than low level libraries). Or hell, the industry at large - you had developers reusing code, but in 1996/1997 it was probably only id Software farming off the Quake engine, exclusively in the PC space. I don't know enough about this period - when Heretic was being made, did id Software ship the "DOOM ENGINE" in a box to Raven Software alongside a hoard of documentation, or were they hands on, mentoring the project? Dunno - can't imagine there'd be Japanese game code traveling across the Pacific though.
That thread also has further confirmation about Sonic Jam being the Saturn version of Sonic Adventure.
Is this just happening now? Crazy, what timing. Thank you for linking this and for the additional perspective, this is exactly what I was looking for
I've noticed something peculiar while digging through old Sonic Unleashed development videos. In this video of Rooftop Run, at the 1:08 mark, Sonic gets to the section where he's launched up to a rail before getting to the rooftops. The peculiar part is that when Sonic hits the rail and touches the dashpad(dash-rail?), the camera slightly shakes. In the final version of Rooftop Run, this shake is either removed, patched, or very hard to see. (1:50) I'm quite saddened by this change, the camera shaking to me gives the vibe of 'going so fast the camera shakes.' Also, if the shake is due to the dashpad, it makes the dashpad feel that much more powerful.
https://twitter.com/nakayuji/with_replies Yuji Naka using Twitter is fascinating - the suggestion seems to be that programmers wrote things in the expectation that the code would only be used in one game, and thus very little effort was put into documentation. NiGHTS was so poorly documented that Naka advised Makoto Uchida not to make the PS2 version (I'm guessing on difficulty grounds, rather than "this is a bad idea"). I've not worked in games - I'm guessing Sega did not force its programmers to make easily maintainable code if doing so would extend development. You probably couldn't get away with this today. Though I guess to be fair you'd probably be using C++, which is inherently more readible than Sega Saturn assembly language.
I don't know how many of the original Sega of America Sonic statues existed, but a friend spotted this one in San Jose: Original seen here in this official tweet:
While it's probably not as bad as it used to be given the use of things like frameworks and libraries that give rise to more standard practice, game code tends to not be reusable. The goal is to be shippable, to work, and to be maintainable in that order, so most game code meets no more than the first two priorities.
