Sonic CD's Mysterious Cut R2 Level Discussion - Post Origins Edition

That's what I meant, yeah. I brought it up because I see people consider it R2 when I think it's pretty clearly not, lol.

 

Legit this got me curious on the question here of what's the file size limitation for Sega CD disc.

 

If they're standard CDs, about 650MB.

 

Actually, I believe Sega CD games are limited to 500MB.

 

According to Sega Retro:

• Echo: Tides in Time (EU) on Mega CD has a file size of 668,071,488 bytes (over 668MB 637MB)
• Sonic CD on Mega CD... doesn't have a file size listed for a single release or prototype, neither there, nor here on Sonic Retro

 

Standard CDs are 650MB but we know games usually shipped on cheaper lower density CDs of 500ish MB size. Can we tell what kind of media SCD used?

 

Spoilers: you have to add it


I think Sonic CD is about 500MB - there are a few Mega-CD games which break the 600MB barrier, but I think it's more of a case where you're budgeting for space in advance. We think(?) the music was completed fairly early on in the game' development, so you'd get those numbers quite quickly, but it's difficult to predict how much space art and code will take up before they've been created.

"But the whole of Sonic 1 is 512kB, surely there'd be the space"

Not if they have to store things multiple times on a disc to improve read access times, or had to forego certain compression routines because CDs are slow, or whatever.


From my experience very few disc-based video games (from the 90s at least) actually fill a disc (even those split up over multiple discs). Maybe they're factoring in wonky CD production or Mega-CD lasers, which might make it harder/slower to read and/or write data toward's the disc's outer edge.

Although maybe that's already reflected in the 650MB number, i.e. theoretically a CD can store more, but it's touch and go whether it'll read first time (and thus is rubbish for streaming audio). I'm speculating with limited knowledge here though.

 

I remember reading long ago on a different Sega forums someone claim that they mostly used cheaper and older low density discs in the 500MB to 550MB range with some using larger capacity discs as needed, so assuming they had a low density disc requirement for cost cutting reasons and with FMVs being as large as they were I’d genuinely believe it.

 

Thinking about Dubious Depths reminded me of how every Round name in Sonic CD had a descriptive word except for Tidal Tempest (arguably, see below), Quartz Quadrant and Stardust Speedway. It makes me wonder if Sega meant for every Round to have a similar descriptive theme but couldn't come up with something for every level.

Speaking of Tidal Tempest, the word 'tempest' apparently means a raging storm of sorts, or a violent tumultuous event which... doesn't exactly suit the level itself.

 

I always wondered why they had that volcano in the background of Tidal Tempest and didn't do anything with it in the level. They could've had some Marble Zone-esque segment with lava.

 

Yeah-- as a matter of fact, if Dubious Depths were to follow Sonic CD's general naming pattern, it'd even be named something like DEEP DOUBTS instead, considering how Palmtree PANIC, Collision CHAOS, Tidal TEMPEST and Metallic MADNESS use the no-chill, anxiety-inducing part of the name as a noun.

 

Did they even mean the Panic part in PP in that sense? It doesn't suit the level, and I'm under the impression that it's commonplace for the Japanese to use that word more as meaning "frenetic" or "frenzy", which fits better a Sonic level. See other examples like Doki Doki Panic or Bomberman: Panic Bomber.

 

Just worth pointing out, the act of "barely sticking anything on a disc" persisted until the Dreamcast, and those were shipped on Sega's GD-ROM format. Very few games even come close to 1GB - most could have shipped on a CD-ROM (which is why piracy was viable).

Ikaruga is a whopping 25MB.

 

So given their understandably tenuous grasp of English vocab, I really doubt this was intentional, but the etymology of tempest is it comes from the Latin word tempus, which means time. Just kinda a coincidental bonus, I'd guess.

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-revisiting-sonic-cd-retro
"Sonic CD is a big game in and of itself: Sonic 2 is squeezed in a one megabyte ROM, while Sonic CD's game data weighs in at 21MB"
This quote is taken directly from that article with no alterations. To clarify, this is not including the audio from my understanding. That seems awfully small so maybe they aren't including the FMVs either.
When I jam my disc into PowerISO it says its around 115MB, windows properties states that aswell, but I may be reading that incorrectly.
IMGBurn states that the entire detected volume of data, which I assume includes the music, is ~524MB
This Info below is most likely wrong.
(which would leave 151MB of data available, again assuming that PowerISO gave me a correct estimate of total disc space of 675MB and IMGBurn isn't telling me its 524MB total.)


Also I've already edited this several times to add more info but I will say that this was a US version of SonicCD for the SegaCD, so other regions may be different.

 

Went to check how Sega Retro got it's file size for EccoTIT, and it appears to be just the individual tracks added up. Doing so for all of the track files in MCD Sonic CD (JP), it comes up to 583,529,522 bytes (over 583MB 556MB).

Spoiler: list

"everything else... code/art/videos/past music/sfx" - Track 01- 129,592,848 bytes
"unused time travel music" - Track 02- - 1,093,680 bytes

"PP-P" - Track 03 - 19,077,072 bytes
"PP-G" - Track 04 - 14,321,952 bytes
"PP-B" - Track 05 - 14,827,008 bytes

"CC-P" - Track 06 - 17,567,088 bytes
"CC-G" - Track 07 - 13,980,288 bytes
"CC-B" - Track 08 - 14,342,496 bytes

"TT-P" - Track 09 - 20,278,994 bytes
"TT-G" - Track 10 - 14,041,440 bytes
"TT-B" - Track 11 - 13,653,360 bytes

"QQ-P" - Track 12 - 18,016,320 bytes
"QQ-G" - Track 13 - 13,573,392 bytes
"QQ-B" - Track 14 - 11,411,904 bytes

"WW-P" - Track 15 - 16,231,152 bytes
"WW-G" - Track 16 - 10,932,096 bytes
"WW-B" - Track 17 - 14,048,496 bytes

"SS-P" - Track 18 - 20,137,824 bytes
"SS-G" - Track 19 - 12,881,904 bytes
"SS-B" - Track 20 - 11,783,520 bytes

"MM-P" - Track 21 - 14,942,256 bytes
"MM-G" - Track 22 - 11,607,120 bytes
"MM-B" - Track 23 - 12,816,048 bytes

"Boss" - Track 24 - 14,088,480 bytes
"FF (Final Boss)" - Track 25 - 14,660,016 bytes
"Title Screen" - Track 26- - 5,294,352 bytes
"(a copy of??) Title Screen" - Track 27- - 5,296,704 bytes
"Act Clear" - Track 28- - 1,458,240 bytes
"Hi-Speed" - Track 29- - 3,988,992 bytes
"Invincibility" - Track 30- - 3,869,040 bytes
"Game Over" - Track 31- - 2,008,608 bytes

"Special Stage" - Track 32 - 21,513,744 bytes
"DDp-P (D.A. Garden)" - Track 33 - 21,873,600 bytes

"Opening Music (You Can Do Anything)" - Track 34 - 16,214,688 bytes
"Ending Music (Cosmic Eternity)" - Track 35 - 32,104,800 bytes​

Going of the very unfounded (and likely supremely over-balling) estimate that each one of the seven playable areas takes up 1/8 of Track 1 (so 7/8 for all of the existing areas and their past music, 1/8 as an area for the title screen, pixel art FMVs**, etc.) each individual area is 16,199,106 bytes. The largest stage music in the game is Track 33 "DDp-Present (D.A. Garden)" at 21,873,600 bytes.

Adding a ninth area and having two extra copies of Track 33 to simulate two new beefy compositions for the good+bad future comes out to.... 643,475,828 bytes (over 643MB 613MB). That's less than EccoTIT.

(**I have zero clue how big each component of Track 1 really is. Someone more knowledgeable could probably clear up what the file size cost of everything actually is)

 

That's actually 556.4MB. I wonder if this could still fit in a 550MB disc? https://www.to-convert.com/en/computer/convert-byte-to-mb.php

SEGA CD games usually shipped on 550MB discs like these https://datasure.com/tdk.html While they could have used a 650MB disc, they probably couldn't change the media after it was initially decided due to the budget limit.

If they used a 550MB disc, it would mean they'd have only 26MB to fit R2! A single zone theme in CDDA can range from 10MB (Wack Workbench Good Future) to 19MB (Tidal Tempest Present). They wouldn't have enough space to fit the songs, the art, the extra FMV bit at the end nor the R2 MMDs.[/SPOILER][/QUOTE]

 

This is so cool reading all these new tidbits, nice work guys.

I thought all the R2 talk died ages ago, so nice to see some new info, however small it may be

 

Oh I appear to have used the wrong MB to convert the bytes to, my mistake!

• EccoTIT is 668,071,488 bytes (over 637MB)
• Sonic CD is 583,529,522 bytes (over 556MB)
  • with R2 is 643,475,828 bytes (over 613MB) on my fool's estimate

 

Charcoal confirmed to me over discord that their ISO is also ~556MB which left me puzzled but I stumbled upon this thread on Sega-16
https://www.sega-16.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-13430.html

So it very well is possible that they quite simply did not have enough space for R2.

With all that said this is my personal head-canon of what may have happened.

I believe they thought early on before anyone had really gotten down and dirty code wise that there wouldn't be enough room on the CD. This then led to storage saving measures early into development such as converting the past audio into PCM and removing a stage during concept or very early stage building phase (explaining the sprite art we have) that seemed the least interesting to them/didn't fit Sonic. This then left them with just enough room to cram the game onto a low density disc, and it wasn't until later into development they would have maybe been able to weasel something in there but by that point it was too late to go back to it.
To explain the ending animation I think is pretty simple. They would have had to request the studio to begin work early as animation back then took a long time, and they most likely were only working with the very things we've seen or slightly more.