Ah, the Google search result I missed - ty Takashi Iizuka's employment history is getting a bit messy, but at least it's more accurate than it was before. Maybe.
Not to get too off-topic, but @Black Squirrel thank you for the new Employment template, it's very well set-up and I super dig it. Alongside the division field in the CompanyBob and the StaffList template, they're doing a great job cleanly tying things together
I don't know if somebody already knows this but : I was messin with the dev menu of sonic mania, then i found in the videos section an ending titled "True End?" going to it shows a picture of knuckles reading a book to the animals called (Sonic Mania & Knuckles) or something like that because the text is cut out, in a desert while sonic and tails are behind him, a joke? i don't know
The Drum Master series has a new song, "Sonic the Hedgehog Medley": Previously, there was "Sonic 4 Episode 1 Medley":
I know the answer to this question but I'm going to ask anyway: Modern video games have massive lists of credits (and that's just a 2010 example - they've got bigger since!)... which need mirroring on Sega Retro so we can automate the people pages. Typing all of this out by hand is an error-prone slog (I know this from experience), and OCR won't always speed up the process. It really ought to be extracted from the games themselves if possible. is anyone able to do this? There's a lot of mess to clear up. If you're averse to search boxes - we're missing most post-Dreamcast console Sega games, though some Sonic ones have been dealt with (though in many cases an old assumption has been made that multiple platforms share the same credits, which probably isn't going to be true). It's helpful when ranting about things on the internet. Sonic 4 Episode II had both its programming and artwork outsourced, so there's not much "Sega" in there outside of localisation.
Following on from the posts in General Questions and Information about Partnershop Press: Yuji Naka and assorted Sonic-costumed hanger-ons at the launch of Sonic Adventure. Apparently Naka greeted people at numerous video game shops in Tokyo throughout that day.
I think that was covered briefly by the Western press too. These kinds of "technology" product launches generally occured in Akihabara (though you get this strange situation where despite having massive dedicated Sega arcades... they're never in shot because they don't sell video games there). There might be footage somewhere, unless I'm getting mixed up with the Dreamcast launch. Space Channel 5 did something similar. I think they erected a stage for that one.
Yeah this type of launch event with developers and such coming along was very much common for big new releases over there, least of all Sega's. I read similar things about Nights' launch at some point, as well as Hideki Sato allegedly turning up at department stores and selling the SG-1000 to shoppers by saying that it was Sega's own Famicom.
If anyone's interested, one of the Sega of America executive Sonic neckties is up for sale on eBay. It's even in the original bag, which you don't see often.
Never seen this before. It’s cool but a bit too garish to actually wear. Regarding ties, I really want to pick up the Saturn one SoJ released a few years back. The design on this was really great and subtle.
Amazingly, Masato Nishimura still has some of the original animation cels for CD's intro and ending: Nishimura seems to be posting a ton of things that he's dug out of storage right now in general, including old Zillion documents, the 2/3 promotional videos, and X68000 C-Compiler manuals. Who knew he had some of the Archie comics as well?
I liked Nishimura's follow-up tweet describing all of the DMs he's getting in English asking "how much?" It's the guy's personal treasure, people. Leave him alone
Today on questionable life choices: N-Gage emulation. Did you know its version of Super Monkey Ball is unique to the system? We didn't. It's like Super Monkey Ball Jr. on the GBA, but with less stuff and a worse frame rate. I'm not sure why you'd bother. Emulation has been an option for years but I haven't seen anyone on this side of the internet actually bother. There's an obvious reason for that, but also the only emulator in town is EKA2L1, you have to searching for system ROMs, and the online guides refer to older versions with a totally different (and less good) UI. I can't say no a duck/tank hybrid mascot though, so I sought out all the Sega games, including the Sonic game nobody ever talks about, Sonic N: The internet claims this is Sonic Advance running with a portrait aspect ratio... and it's right - that's exactly what this is. I thought there might be a little more to it, especially since none of the other Sega games are straight ports (which is unfortunate for Puyo Pop's case - the N-Gage version is pretty dire), but nope, for all intents and purposes, it's exactly the same. Except the Tiny Chao Garden and GameCube connectivity, and its two-player mode is probably different. Answers to questions nobody asked: Does the vertical screen orientation ruin the game? Not hugely. You lose 64 columns of pixels, but the design of the levels and the pace of play means you're usualy able to cope. There's some quirks - you can barely see Ice Mountain's boss make its initial entrance (and the characters' reaction to Mecha Knuckles comes off as odd, as he's drawn off-screen), while the increased vertical resolution reveals the part where Secret Base's boss spawns in, but you're still getting more pixels than any Game Boy or Game Gear title, so it's mostly fine. You can also switch to a letterboxed mode at any time, but it looks like arse. Is it fast? It runs at 30FPS, so in the context of some of the 3D N-Gage games running at sub-20FPS, it's good, but in the context of Sonic Advance, not so much. Sonic Advance's frame rate seems to be quite variable though - I can't always tell if it's the emulator at fault with GBA games (and I'm not digging out my real copy to verify), but it rarely seems to lock at 60. Sonic N might be more consistent in its frame delivery, and it isn't "unplayable" but it's not ideal. Does it look okay? Yep, and surprisingly so too - you'd think they'd be cutting out parallax backgrounds, but other than maybe fewer particles in boss explosions (which I'd have to do a side-by-side comparison to check... and I'm not going to do that), pretty much everything remains intact. It feels like the N-Gage has slightly fewer tools to work with - the semi-transparent clouds in Angel Island are no longer as such on the N-Gage*, but you'd have to go looking for meaningful differences. The only recurring visual issue I came across is that areas that don't scroll on the Game Boy Advance (some boss battles, the capsule at the end), need to on the N-Gage due to the lack of screen real estate. For the sake of a few pixels, some level layout adjustments would have been nice. Note: In real life, the N-Gage has a backlit screen, while the original GBA (the SP not being available at the time) does not. That would have counted for a lot in the real world. Does it sound okay? EKA2L1 is a very quiet emulator but when you turn up the system's volume to the max... euugh. Much is sampled straight from the GBA, but there's so much compression that what were distinct sound effects on the GBA just sound like white noise on the N-Gage. That being said, there was quite a bit of distortion to begin with - with headphones the GBA is far superior, but through tinny speakers the difference might be negligible. Another problem are the sounds which (I assume) the N-Gage is generating natively - it could be emulation issues, but some of them seem slightly broken or off-key. tl;dr - no Can you beat the Special Stages? Yes if you're a masochist. I'd say the time is better spent getting a part-time job to fund the purchase of a GBA. a.k.a. I lost before I worked out what the inputs were. But I never liked the Special Stages in this game anyway. Should I buy and/or play this game? Yes for the wiki, no for anything else. It's an intersting side note, but it adds nothing to the GBA Sonic Advance experience - it just takes away. Unless being able to see up and down in the original version was a huge issue for you, which it shouldn't be. But if you're in a life-threatening situation where you need to play a decent N-Gage game for some reason, this is an option. *assuming this is also not an emulation issue - I seem to recall early GBA emulators struggling with this effect
I've actually played Sonic N on real hardware before. I only ever got to the Casino Paradise Zone boss (the arena is different due to size) before I put it down. Also remember that we have a Sonic N proto out there.
About the Sonic CD cels: apparently, it seems that some materials are showing their age, as in a reply to a reply to that tweet mentioned above, a/some background(s) were thrown out after deteriorating (going by Android Twitter's Google Translate function).
