The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

These are so gorgeous, and it makes me ache for a Saturn Sonic Adventure that never was. It feels very much like a game extrapolated from what we saw in Sonic Jam's Sonic World. Perhaps the Saturn build of SA made it further than originally assumed? Although it's almost completely obscured, the second row down (directly behind Iizuka) has grass and dirt textures very reminiscent of Sonic World. Have these photos been archived?

 

We appear to be on a Sonic Adventure buzz.

Sonic in Sand Hill: Episode 2:



EGM #114 (January 1999)


Still talking about 60FPS, which either suggests that the framerate drop was a last minute thing, or that EGM are assuming things (spoilers: it could easily be the latter).

 

Those two Sand Hill screenshots, and a couple more, were also in the same magazine you posted the last couple from on the very next page :v:
http://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File:SSM_JP_19981030_1998-31.pdf&page=127

Though I still think those screenshots could have just been taken in Trial mode, since in every version of the released game you can do Sand Hill as Sonic via the Sub-Games menu.

 

Exactly - which suggests they likely came from official Sega channels rather than a prototype distributed to magazines.


Sand Hill's probably the weirdest thing in the final game (that you can access through normal play) - like it was given to Tails at the very last minute to justify the character being playable, but they forgot to turn it off in trial mode.

 

Does anyone know if ANYONE, I mean ANYONE who did or does work for any department of SEGA has ever said anything about the possibly of official sonic modding tools being released for PC titles?

After seeing what Valve does, and the extremely impressive sonic modding community, I feel like there might be a good chance that something of the sort would come into existence at some point or another.

 

Sonic twitter just posted this image.

Is it known art, or new art? I don't think I've ever seen this before.

https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/719193165069037568?s=09

 

I'm sure I saw them before.

 

The Sonic art was on a 25th Anniversary poster and people thought it was new. But turns out that is actually a rarely seen piece of art from the Japanese S2 manual.

 

A few months ago at the SSMB I started accumulating the sales of Sonic games (main series console, main series handheld, Sonic spinoffs, and Sega crossover spinoffs) recorded on Sega-Sammy's IR reports, available on the official website (mostly based on total sales of fiscal year reports, though annual reports have also been reviewed). I did this namely done in reaction towards common assertions about Sonic games; specifically that Sonic games historically sell better on Nintendo platforms compared to Sony/MS platforms. Spurred by my quick glance at Mario & Sonic sales findings at Sega's IR reports for the Mario and Sonic Rio 2016 thread, I decided to bring over here the information I've gathered.

Some things to note beforehand:
- Game sales from 2005 to 2009 FY reports are sourced from Full Year results. Game sales from 2010 FY and onward are sourced from appendix of consolidated financial statements. (The 2009 FY has a link to the appendix of consolidated financial statements, but it is actually the Full Year results. This was either an incorrect link, or there may actually be no 2009 appendix of consolidated and one was added to the IR report list by mistake.)
- Alongside the games and their sales listed, I also made my own observations following the listed games--total amount of Sonic(-related) games sold in a year, the total recorded amount of games sold by certain Sonic games that appeared more than once in FY reports, some personal commentary about how games performed, how certain claims made about the sales stated for certain games measure up to the results. This information those you can take or leave them as you will.
- In most cases, the games do not factor in the sales based on regions or the sales based on platforms.
- I also intend to make a followup post that details any recorded sales of Sonic games during the quarterly results. These will include games that didn't make it to the FY (for example, Rush Adventure appeared a couple of quarters, but not in the FY in proper), as well as observations of Sonic games that didn't appear on any of their reports.

Sega Fiscal Year results:

2004 Sega Corp. Annual Report (described as such, as this report was released prior to the Sega-Sammy merger):

Sonic Heroes (not clarified, but I presume all platforms it was released on at the time-PS2/XB/GC) (US/EU/JP): 1,420,000

2005 FY / 2005 Annual Report:

Sonic Mega Collection Plus (PS2/XB) (US): 2,190,000

This one requires a bit of explanation. The 2005 FY doesn't actually refer to Mega Collection Plus, it only cites a game called "Sonic series" selling 2.19 million units. However, the 2005 Annual Report does cite as such: "In the U.S., Sonic Mega Collection Plus aggregating 13 game software titles from the Sonic series sold more than 2 million copies thanks to heavy demand." So with that in mind, I think the FY is referring to Mega Collection Plus, rather than a collective group of assorted Sonic games (which was my first assumption).

2006 FY / Appendix / Annual Report:

Shadow the Hedgehog (PS2/XB/GC) (US/EU): 1,590,000

Sonic Riders (PS2/XB/GC) (US/EU) (the Full Year Results incorrectly labels it a Nintendo DS game): 930,000

(FY 2005 results added within the FY 2006 results)

Sonic Heroes (PS2/XBOX/GC): 1,290,000 (Apx) / 1,570,000 (AR)

Total: 2,520,000

2007 FY:

Sonic The Hedgehog [2006] (PS3/360) (US/EU): 870,000

Sonic Mega Collection (Plus) (PS2/XB/GC) (US): 570,000

Sonic Riders (PS2/XB/GC/PC) (US): 560,000

Shadow the Hedgehog (PS2/XB/GC) (US): 470,000

Sonic Heroes (PS2/XB/GC) (US): 420,000

Sonic Rush (NDS) (EU): 360,000

Total: 3,250,000

2008 FY:

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [2008] (Wii/DS) (US/EU): 5,558,400

Sega Superstars Tennis (PS3/360/Wii/PS2/PSP/DS/PC) (US): 565,700

Total: 6,124,100

2009 FY:

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [2008] (Wii/DS) (US/EU): 4,210,000

Sonic Unleashed (PS3/360/Wii/PS2) (US/EU/JP): 2,450,000

Total: 6,666,000

2010 FY:

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games [2010] (Wii/DS) (US/EU): 6,530,000

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (PS3/360/Wii/DS) (US/EU): 1,070,000

Total: 7,600,000

2011 FY:

Sonic Colors (Wii/DS) (US/EU/JP): 2,180,000

(Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I (iOS) is listed in the Full Year Results report, but in a "Major Titles/Other Game Content" category for mobile/web browser games. This segment is separate from the "Major Titles/Home Video Game Software" category retail titles are in and lacks sales numbers.)

2012 FY:

Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (Wii/3DS) (US/EU): 3,280,000

Sonic Generations (PS3/360/3DS/PC) (US/EU/JP): 1,850,000

Total: 5,130,000

2013 FY:

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (WiiU/PS3/360/3DS/PSV/PC): 1,360,000

2014 FY:

Sonic Lost World (WiiU/3DS) (US/EU/JP): 710,000

2015 FY:

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (WiiU) + Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal (3DS): (US/EU/JP): 620,000
______________

(Personal) conclusions.

Heroes, with the 2004 and 2006 FY results combined, sold at least 1,840,000 copies on all platforms. I think it's a safe bet to assume it eventually sold over two million copies.

Mega Collection Plus, with the 2005 FY / AR and the 2007 FY results combined, sold at least 2,760,000 million copies on the PS2/XBOX/GC. I think this actually makes the game the best-selling Sonic title since Sonic 2 (with Sonic Adventure for the DC not too far behind at 2.5 million copies) up until the Mario & Sonic series came along. (Worth noting that the original Sonic Mega Collection on the GameCube also has a Player's Choice label, which is given to games that have sold one million units. I can't find information on whether MC on GC sold one million units before Plus was released, but if it was, that would bump up Mega Collection [Plus]'s total sales to at least 3.76 million copies).

Rush, with the 2006 and 2007 FY results combined, sold at least 1,290,000. Rush Adventure must had bombed really badly in comparison for us to get the dumbed-down Dimps cousins of console Sonic Team games we've gotten since then starting with Colors.

Shadow the Hedgehog, with the 2006 and 2007 FY results combined, sold at least 2,060,000(!!!) copies. Granted, I knew it sold one million copies, which isn't too surprising to me. Two million copies though...! />

Sonic 2006 came close to but did not sell over one million copies, at least as of the FY end. I didn't see any later sales for the title in the 2007 FY reports either, so I doubt it actually made it there. I guess the claims that it did sell one million come from the game getting the Platinum Family Hits label for Xbox 360. (From what I've found, Xbox's Platinum Hits is given to games considered by Microsoft to sell a considerable amount of units in the first nine months.)

EDIT: Added updated sales numbers from Feb. 7th discovery post.

 

A few years ago I tweeted at Hideki Naganuma, and asked him if 'Jeh Jeh Rocket' was originally composed for "the space level" hence all the rockets, and he confirmed that's exactly what happened. I can't seem to dig back that far, can anyone help me find that tweet?

 

I've got a bit specific question - would you consider Sonic PC Collection from 2009 (including Sonic Riders, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Mega Collection+) as something rather hard/expensive to obtain? I've managed to obtain brand new one and I was thinking about making some contest for Sonic Retro community with this as reward (contest of course connected with some nice anniversary we have in this year). Of course I'm not asking about particular games in it, but rather about this concrete set/edition. And I'm asking, because:

- I would like to offer some interesting reward
- I wanted to ask someone from different country (well, looking from my perspective it's definitelly something expensive and hard to obtain, especially the new one, but I wanted to hear an opinion someone from UK, Portugal, France, Spain, US etc).

Many thanks for opinions!

 

Do we have these screenshots of Sonic Adventure in that quality ?

Source : https://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status/725091416007950336

I don't remember this one for example



Gallery : https://imgur.com/a/6GYVi

 

No and that's exactly what I was looking for about a month ago - great find!

 

p.s. this lad has press material. If anyone could kindly nudge him towards our wikis so we can have a go at archiving this stuff more intelligently, that would be lovely.

High resolution screenshots and artwork and press releases and whatever are gold - far too important to waste away on Twitter or Tumblr (which will no doubt compress things in horrible ways).

 

That's me, I posted those, do whatever you want with them. Everything will be online and lossless eventually, but I literally have hundreds of other disks (and discs) to rip before I even begin thinking about how the heck to host them all, so I am not taking requests or going back to get the original files until everything's done - if I don't rip everything without interruption, it's never going to be done! Literally doing this 8 hours a day lately!

Actually never mind, I just realized how fast it would be to upload these:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/99ddcj1iz83tw8y/AAApFOxfOGM8ggF2Q3os9DdIa?dl=0

Two ISO rips of Zip disks, labeled appropriately. Screenshots and character art. Enjoy, love u <3

 

So I mentioned in my previous post in this thread which had the sales of Sonic games based on Sega's IR library reports (check the previous page) that I would make a followup post that detailed any recorded sales of Sonic games during the quarterly results. Well I finished my findings (again, these results were first compiled on the SSMB) and I'm bringing them here.

Some things to note beforehand:
- Quarterly game sales from 2005 to 2009 are sourced from Quarterly Results presentations. Quarterly game sales from 2010 and onward are sourced from appendix of consolidated financial statements.
- Game sales from 2005 to 2009 FY reports are sourced from Full Year results. Game sales from 2010 FY and onward are sourced from appendix of consolidated financial statements. (The 2009 FY has a link to the appendix of consolidated financial statements, but it is actually the Full Year results. This was either an incorrect link, or there may actually be no 2009 appendix of consolidated and one was added to the IR report list by mistake.)
- Alongside the games and their sales listed, I also made my own observations following the listed games--adding the quarterly sales results of certain games with their totaled FY results from the previous post (only for games that didn't have their quarterly sales listed in the FY results), a list of Sonic games that didn't appear on any of the IR reports, and some personal commentary about how games performed. This information those you can take or leave them as you will.
- Most games listed do not factor in the sales based on regions or the sales based on platforms.

Sega Quarterly Results:

2006 - Q1:

Sonic Heroes: 200,000

Sonic Mega Collection: 190,000

2007 (first time Sonic games were recorded in both quarterly earnings and fiscal earnings in existing IR reports) - Q1 / Q2 / Q3 / FY (aka Q4):

Sonic The Hedgehog [2006]* (PS3/360) (US/EU): 340,000 (NA) + 210,000 (EU) = 550,000 (Q3) > 530,000 (NA) (+190,000 from Q3) + 340,000 (EU) (+130,000 from Q3) = 870,000 (FY; +320,000 from Q3)

*Only the 360 version of the game was out during Q3, the PS3 version came out during Q4

Sonic Riders (PS2/XB/GC) (US or NA): 130,000 (Q1) > 420,000 (Q3; +290,000 from Q1) > 560,000 (FY; +140,000 from Q3)

Sonic Mega Collection [Plus] (PS2/XB/GC) (US): 240,000 (Q2) > 410,000 (Q3; +170,000 from Q2) > 570,000 (FY; +160,000 from Q3)

Shadow the Hedgehog (PS2/XB/GC) (NA): 350,000 (Q3) > 470,000 (FY; +120,000 from Q3)

Sonic Heroes (PS2/XB/GC) (US): 210,000 (Q2) > 420,000 (FY; +210,000 from Q2)

Sonic Rush (DS) (EU): 250,000 (Q3) + 360,000 (FY; +110,000 from Q3)

2008 - Q1 / Q2 / Q3:

Sonic Rush Adventure (NDS): 144,300 (US) + 234,800 (EU) = 378,300 (Q2/Q3)

Sonic Mega Collection [Plus] (PS2/XB/GC) (US): 70,000 (Q1) > 138,300 (Q2/Q3; +68,300 from Q1)

2009 - Q3 / FY:

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [2008] (Wii/DS) (US/EU): 3,169,000 (Q3) > 4,210,000 (FY; +1,041,000 from Q3)

Sonic Unleashed (PS3/360/Wii/PS2) (US/EU/JP): 2,027,000 (Q3) > 2,450,000 (FY; +423,000 from Q3)

2010 - Q3 / FY:

Mario and Sonic at the [Vancouver 2010] Olympic Winter Games (Wii/DS) (US/EU): 5,670,000 (Q3) > 6,530,000 (FY; +860,000 from Q3)

2011 - Q3 / FY:

Sonic Colors (Wii/DS) (US/EU/JP): 1,850,000 (Q3) > 2,180,000 (FY; +330,000 from Q3)

2012 - Q3 / FY:

Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games* (Wii/3DS) (US/EU): 2,390,000 (Q3) > 3,280,000 (FY; +890,000 from Q3)

*Only the console Wii version of the game was released during Q3, the handheld 3DS version was released during Q4

Sonic Generations (PS3/360/3DS/PC) (US/EU/JP): 1,630,000 (Q3) > 1,850,000 (FY; +220,000 from Q3)

2013 - Q3 / FY:

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (WiiU/PS3/360/3DS/PSV/PC) (US/EU): 930,000 (Q3) > 1,360,000 (FY; +430,000 from Q3)

2014 - Q3 / FY:

Sonic Lost World (WiiU/3DS) (US/EU/JP): 640,000 (Q3) > 710,000 (FY; +70,000 from Q3)

2015 - Q3 / FY:

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (WiiU) + Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal (3DS) (US/EU/JP): 490,000 (Q3) > 620,000 (FY; +130,000 from Q3)

______________

Sales updates--the above quarterly sales added to the previously-gathered FY sales for certain Sonic games:

Sonic Heroes: 1,840,000 (2004 and 2007 FY results combined) + 200,000 copies from 2006 Q1 result = at least 2,040,000 copies in total

Sonic Mega Collection (Plus): 2.760,000 (2005 FY / AR results and 2007 FY results combined) + 328,300 (2006 Q1 and 2008 Q2/Q3 results combined) = at least 3,088,300 copies in total. If the original GameCube release of Mega Collection sold one million prior to Mega Collection Plus' release (as the GameCube version was released with a Player's Choice label); then that puts Sonic Mega Collection (Plus)'s total at 4,088,300 copies.

Sonic games not listed in any of Sega's IR reports:

- The PSP-exclusive Sonic Rivals and Sonic Rivals 2.

- All Sega/Sonic-specific compilations following Sonic Mega Collection--Sonic Gems Collection, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection/Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection, and Sonic Classic Collection.

- Sonic-specific spinoffs following the first Sonic Riders--the Sonic Riders sequels (Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity and Sonic Free Riders) and the Storybook games (Sonic and the Secret Rings, and Sonic and the Black Knight, though the latter got a cursory mention as a pending Q4 major release in the 2009 Q3 report).

(Personal) conclusions.

Sonic games when released seem to make most of their sales in the first quarter. Sales made by games in the follow-up quarters are usually shows a fraction of what was initially made during the first quarter; and sales for the games aren't typically recorded following the third quarter on sale. Heroes and Sonic Mega Collection though do prove to have some substantial legs, still selling tens/hundreds of thousands of copies after their original release.

The typical range for past Sonic games' follow-up quarterly sales in the past are usually somewhere within 100K-400K:

- The Mario and Sonic series (Wii/DS era anyway) usually perform the best in their second quarter compared to Sonic-specific titles, getting usually +800K (with the original M&S making an entire +1M). However, the handheld for London 2012 seems to be nowhere near as popular compared to the console counterpart (whereas the Wii version --released first-- sold over 2M, the debut of the 3DS version combined with additional sales of the Wii version only amounted to 800K). This may had been a factor towards the Sochi 2014 installment being a Wii U exclusive and not having any handheld counterpart. While sales data doesn't exist for how the DS versions of the first two Mario and Sonic titles sold in comparison to the Wii versions, this may indicate that the handheld versions for the M&S games usually doesn't sell as well as the console versions.

- The "main series" Sonic games (Heroes, Sonic 2006, Unleashed, Colors, Generations) usually make at least more than +200K sales in the second quarter. Unleashed in particular made the most sales of the main series games in spite of its polarizing reviews (surpassing +400K); which I think can be attributed to their level of marketing / hype behind them and multiplatform status.

- The handheld, spinoff, and compilation Sonic games (Rush, Shadow the Hedgehog, Mega Collection, Boom spinoffs combined), usually make at least more than +100K.

- Riders in particular is a interesting case. The game sold +300K in its second quarter, more than most Sonic-specific games despite being a spinoff (only Sonic 2006 and Unleashed sold more in its second quarter). Riders also stands as the only Sonic game to appear in three quarterly earnings of a fiscal year.

- The recent slew of Sonic games bound to the Nintendo exclusivity deal (Lost World and to a lesser extent, the Sonic Boom spinoffs) definitely haven't had the same success as the previous entries in quarterly sales, for multiple obvious reasons.

- The sales of Rush and Rush Adventure in Europe indicate that specific series was most popular in Europe compared to the US.

Timmit recommended me SteamSpy for sales of Sonic games on that platform, so I may make a third post based on sales data for that platform. He did alert me on a handful of factors to take into account (Sonic games placed on a high discount, available for bundles, and being made available for free on a weekend), so getting any useful data from it may be a cakewalk.

 

You're a star (though don't forget Sega Retro is after non-Sonic stuff too)

Take them to the wiki(s) - I want to start building up a more intelligent way of keeping track of numbers at some stage.

we're actually mirroring a lot of the official documents so it should make for some easy referencing:
https://segaretro.org/Category:Investor_relations_documents
https://segaretro.org/Annual_reports

I have visions of fancy tables and graphs to demonstrate the successes and failures of Sega projects. Not all the tools are yet available for the really funky stuff but it's definitely worth making a start.

 

Noob question: What should we use to open these Zip Disk files?

 

ISO images of Zip disks? That's a new one for me. Are these basically just raw disk images? Or are they basically rebuilt into ISOs? Wonder if the usage pattern of the actual Zip disks would support finding deleted files and recovering them.