http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HB0iSq_8Z4...tailpage#t=184s Go to 3:03 if YouTube doesn't autoseek. Basically Sonic can stand on top of the explosions from the bombs of the Gigantic Angel 2 boss in SPA. What the-- The fact Eggman lowers once in a while (letting you hit him by jumping from the floor) doesn't help figuring it out either.
I know I figured it out because it behaved a bit similar to Hidrocity's boss, but yeah, it's not too intuitive. Go Dimps.
http://info.sonicretro.org/Ice_Paradise Someone should add this to the zone's article then; I do remember the concept you're talking about, but can't seem to find it.
That ice zone concept art is here: Found it in the Wiki: <a href="http://info.sonicretro.org/Game_Development:Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(16-bit)" target="_blank">http://info.sonicretro.org/Game_Developmen...dgehog_(16-bit)</a>
I don't think it's really fair to say Ice Paradise was based on that drawing, simply because of the searchlights. The effect has cropped up in more than one zone over time (Stardust Speedway, Secret Base, Speed Highway) and it isn't hard to imagine it being put into an ice zone with no prior knowledge of that sketch. Didn't Payne just scan that for us, too? Would Dimps have had access to that sort of thing?
Ah, no, I found out where I remembered it from; there was an interview with Roger Hector and other people who worked on Sonic and Knuckles in a 1994 MTV special; there are details and screenshots here: http://community.livejournal.com/sonicstuff/405178.html Take a look at this image in particular...showing concept art... Ok, not exactly Ice Paradise. But look at what else we have here....doesn't one of the bottom images look near-identical to what became Sky Canyon in SAdv2?? And the one directly to the right of the ice level concept looks very much like the version of Angel Island seen in SAdv1!
All those concept drawings are of a level in S3K. Ice = Icecap Zone Ruins = Marble Garden Zone Sky = Sky Sanctuary Zone Yellow bricks = Launch Base Zone
I should have explained myself better, it's more of "they appear to be" than they are. I think the first one is Icecap Zone because the tree resembles the tree seen when you first snowboard into the level, it also has a frozen lake in the background, like ICZ. The skycanyon drawing, I'm guessing is Sky Santuary because it's ruins in the clouds with floating platforms. Ruins with pillars could be either MGZ or ARZ, it justs seems weird that they would bring out S2 concept art to promote S&K. Infact looking again, it does seem that Sonic is jumping into water. Yellow brick picture is probably Launch Base Zone, you can even see the pulley in the top left.
Weeheehee. Guess what I found? <a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20010505154903/http://www.botan.sakura.ne.jp/~milpo/mmr/booth.html" target="_blank">http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200105051.../mmr/booth.html</a> Guess what's listed? ????????? MEGA-DRIVE????????????????(SEGA) Yep. At one point in time, Milpo had the MIDI for the Sonic 3 special stage up on his site. So now with LOst's little email from 2001 and this webpage, it's now 110% confirmed that Milpo composed and arranged the Special Stage music for Sonic 3! Also I got into contact with Milpo (his new email). But I don't speak Japanese so I'm afraid to ping him just yet. Someone get me a Japanese guy.
I noticed something while playing Sonic 4 on my iPod today. Take a look at this shortcut in Casino Street Act 3: <!--id1--><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-mtwfCyedeQ#t=64s&"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-mtwfCyedeQ#t=64s&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><!--id2--> (skip to 1:00) Notice how after you use the cannons, there's a spring that you use to reach the bumpers. In the iOS version, however: There's another cannon! I checked the Wii prototype, and the cannon is also there. It appears this section was overlooked while touching up the level design for the iOS version.
This is kinda odd... So I checked Sonic 1 GBA (*woman shrieks*) with GBA2MID and I noticed some odd things with the music/sfx (if you want them, you can download them here). For one thing, the music and sound appears in the same exact order as it does in the original game. That means Green Hill Zone is first, then Labyrinth Zone, etc. This is the same for the sound effects, which yeah, for some reason they're sequenced in this version. Nearing the end of the list of music in the game, there's actually two different versions of the drowning music. The first one is the original version with the same (or similar) tempo increases, and then there's a second one where the notes are a little higher in the third track and the tempo is fast from the get-go, but keeps increasing the tempo every second like the other one. However, the volume and panning is identical in both versions. And as you might've guessed, there's only one version of the drowning music in the original version's sound test. Does anyone have a theory as to why? I'd like to say one is an earlier version than the other, but I guess that kinda doesn't make sense. Another thing I noticed with the music is that the sequencing is faithful to how the originals were sequenced. For example, I noticed that the Genesis version keeps the DAC samples (the drums) in their own channel and the hi-hats somewhere else where the white noise is produced. In the GBA version, the drums and and the hi-hats are in two different tracks. This is something I noticed that wasn't in the mobile phone ports when I was looking at the MIDIs from those. From playing the GBA version as well as the mobile version, you'd think that they used similar assets since they play so much a like. Now for the sound effects, it's strange. Like I said, the sound effects are sequenced in the GBA version. Upon converting the sequenced data of the sound effects to MIDI and taking a peek, I noticed that a majority don't use more than two or three tracks. Now I don't know how the original developers would go about programming sound effects for the game versus programming the music in the Genesis version, but judging from the sound effects in the GBA version - it's like the sequencing is trying to take advantage of sound hardware with different capabilities. What I'm getting at (tl;dr) is that maybe from judging how this "port" handles the music and sound, maybe they actually had original assets from the Genesis version in some shape or form? I know a lot of people give a lot of crap about this port of the game, and I agree that it deserves it. But I don't think they didn't walk into this without something as a guide from the original title (like building everything from scratch). They probably couldn't find anyone who could convert the 68k code to ARM in the weeks (lol) they had to do this port, or they used the Java code from the mobile phone games. I have no idea. I'd love to find out, but surprisingly they didn't bother to include any credits for the people behind this port specifically. Oh well...I hope this was interesting. EDIT: I actually just compared the drowning music from the mobile phone port with this one and they're exactly the same. Tempo is a little off from each other, but that might be just because of GBA2MID. Actually some of the mobile phone port MIDIs sorta match up with the GBA port, but the mobile phone port seems to have spruced the music a little bit by duplicating channels and adding more drums. Hmm... Also I noticed that when I converted some of the music that some have more notes in the channel with the drums (like the game complete midi in the pack). But it's not like this for every song though... EDIT2: For shits and gigles, I recreated Green Hill Zone and Spring Yard Zone with some of their original MD instruments with VOPM. Actually, Spring Yard Zone uses everything from the original MD version. Green Hill Zone sounds kinda gross, but Spring Yard Zone sounds very very very very close to the original. There's only one or two differences in the tracks as far as I'm aware. Also, the only thing that was changed from the converted MIDIs to make them work was a few octave changes in some of the tracks/channels so that some of the instruments weren't as high pitched sounding when using VOPM. IMO, take a listen to Spring Yard Zone. Green Hill Zone VOPM Spring Yard Zone VOPM
So, something that I saw from quite a few years back popped into my mind, and I was wondering if anybody else remembers this, too. This is some .gif made into Youtube form for a banner ad selling some kind of cellphone. What I want to know is why they used Sonic of all things to advertise this thing, that bothers me more than the giant-ass mismatched Advance sprites.
