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Knuckles' Ringstar (Chaotix) pre-1207 Prototype magazine scans

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Prototype, Aug 25, 2017.

  1. I wonder if "Knuckles' Ringstar" and "Nat the Armadillo" would've been used in Japan too or if they would change with the region of the console. It seems odd to rename Mighty. I wonder if he would've been renamed in SegaSonic too, had the localization had been finished. The western title, "Knuckles' Chaotix" always seemed really odd. Maybe the possessive is a remnant from the old title. Perhaps if the western title is already letting you know Knuckles is in this game, that might be a reason for it to say "Starring Espio the Chameleon" in those regions. Although the title cards do still say Knuckles' Ringstar when set to Japan.

    This build looks close to the 1207 one, which itself is from just a couple of weeks after the 32x came out in North America. I guess this is what the game looked like when the hardware had shipped.


    This poor game had so many names; Sonic Crackers, Sonic Stadium, Project Casablanca, Knuckles' Ringstar, Chaotix: Knuckles' Ringstar, Chaotix, Knuckles' Chaotix ...
     
  2. Ritz

    Ritz

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    Never heard this one, source?
     
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  3. [​IMG]

    "Cassablanca " Projects The jumbled text


    It's in the unfinished credits screen in the 0119 and 0202 prototypes but was removed in 0213. (It's in the stage select as "Not used" Level 0.) It is also mentioned in a string in 1207's sound driver which says, "casablanca version by MILPO".


    Also the screenshots of the intro level has mighty as knuckles' partner instead of Espio. but I think that may just mean they used stage select's defaults.
     
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  4. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Some unused graphics for the credits, I think?
     
  5. evilhamwizard

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    You can add "Sonic Chaotix" to the mix too (as well as just "Chaotix"). :P

    I meant to post this a few months ago, but I found this (Hobby Consolas #33 - June 1994):
    [​IMG]

    This is the earliest mention of Chaotix I could find in my collection. At this time the 32X was still called the Mega Drive 32, but was confirmed to be using the SH2 processors and everything. It's only mentioned very briefly, but it confirms that it was being planned for the 32X even at this point.
     
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  6. Black Squirrel

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    "Mega Drive 32" was a European-only name that I think turned up after it was announced as the Sega Genesis 32X in the US. I don't know exactly when it changed but I think it might have been quite late.

    There'll be clues on Sega Retro but our PDF support is bork, making it unpleasant to sift through right now.
     
  7. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    Yeah, and because of this, if a new magazine is uploaded it doesn't show up in it's catagory, and if it's totally new it doesn't get a category made.
     
  8. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    That's actually a different issue, and it's because I cheat and use FTP to upload things en masse :v:/>

    Fun fact: It was July 2016 when I made a formal request for a more active technical admin to sort out this noise, as neither me nor Hivebrain have the permissions to fix things. I'm still waiting for a response.

    (a.k.a. someone will need to chase Scarred Sun around the internet, and that person isn't me because I do too much... and the courts say I mustn't)
     
  9. Wow, I had no idea the "Chaotix" name is so old that it predates the Sonic removal! Looks like the port to 32x was under way during or not long after late April.


    Some other things I noticed on this page;
    The 32x pictured in the background looks like it has the Megadrive 32 name on the badge.
    Looks like Winter Extreme and Operation Desert Moon never came out
    The ports of Afterburner and Space Harrier are titled "Super"
    Those Doom screenshots are from a prototype way older than the the September builds we have! It's running fullscreen (The pictures don't show the lag) like the later protos, and the HUD looks totally different! Interesting console placement too. whoops
     
  10. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Oh, that one was buried in the topic of other knowledge.
    The text says that those are screens from the PC version.
     
  11. Prototype

    Prototype

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    I've been wondering about Mighty's brief renaming to "Nat" that is shown in these screenshots. Given the naming scheme of the other characters, which are somewhat reflective of their personality type, the naming choice of "Nat" seems odd. At least until I discovered that "Natsu" is Japanese for "Summer" - which is something you could possibly use to describe the peaceful personality ascribed to Mighty in the Chaotix manual.

    Is that too far of a leap to make? If not, could it have something to do with the song title "Door Into Summer"?

    I'd certainly love to see some older builds some day and see a more comprehensive progression from Crackers to Chaotix.
     
  12. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    I think that's a huuuuuuuuuuge stretch but really, who knows.
     
  13. Prototype

    Prototype

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    You're probably right. Could it be then, that when they looked back at old SegaSonic character designs and decided on Mighty to replace Sonic, that the design sheet had a preproduction name on it, and they inadvertantly used that before realising what his actual name was?

    The name Nat just confuses me. It doesn't convey anything about his character. It's a very odd choice.
     
  14. Plorpus

    Plorpus

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    Short for “natural,” perhaps?
    Oshima might answer on twitter if someone asks him.
     
  15. Prototype

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    I downloaded a Sonic Jam Art Gallery archive, and lo and behold I find this picture. Essentially the same picture as the one on the title screen, though the in-game version seems to be a tad off-model. That's to be expected with a rush-job like this. Everything else seems to line up though.

    [​IMG]
     
  16. Prototype

    Prototype

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    Sorry for necroposting, doubleposting and thread bumping. Kick my ass if need be, mods. But I had just noticed that you had posted in the dedicated thread to the 1207 prototype regarding a weird error you got playing the 1207 prototype on an Everdrive. You had uploaded a screenshot, which is now dead.

    Since the thread is archived, I can't respond to it, or quote it directly. So I'll C+P it within these aesthetically pleasing quote tags.

    Is it possible for you, or another user with the relevant equipment (pretty please, guys) to reproduce this and screenshot it? Because I'm wondering if "NUTS" is related to this thread's proto-screenshots of "NAT THE ARMADILLO".

    Is NAT related to NUTS in the same way that Studium is related to Stadium?

    EDIT: Or is it related to my speculation in an above post about it being related to "Natsu" meaning Summer? Or both? Seems feasible that if they had intended to rename Mighty for whatever reason, they could have cycled through some translations and transiterations. For example.

    Summer>Natsu>Nuts>Nat.

    The only "Summer" connection I can think of though, as stated in a prior post on this page, would be Mighty's apparently peaceful personality mentioned in the instructions, plus the song "Door Into Summer", but overall it seems like a name that would better suit a character like Ray, rather than Mighty.

    Does anyone know where the official track titles for the Chaotix soundtrack came from?

    I'm so curious to see the dead screenshot Kurairyu posted, to see the actual context. Though why there was ever an attempt to change Mighty's name is beyond me. Unless it was just some obscure in-joke that was never meant to make it into the final game.

    I will speculate however, that since "Door Into Summer" is the song that plays after rescuing Espio from a capsule that has a defined door on it in the prototype, perhaps through this convoluted transliteration speculation Mighty was originally the first character you were intended to rescue. It was literally a Door into playing as "Summer".

    When the game was retooled into it's brief "Starring Espio" period, they could have switched the first rescue character to Espio.

    It would make a bit of sense, since I can imagine that if they just had Mighty and Knuckles, people would be like "why aren't I playing as Sonic here?"
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2020
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  17. Prototype

    Prototype

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    So I managed to trigger the alternate Time Attack selection screen entirely by accident in the 1207 prototype in the "Kega Fusion modified for Chaotix" emulator, showing that it wasn't a weird glitch exclusive to running it through an Everdrive. Choosing Time Attack and a character seems to bring this alternate screen up occasionally, though I don't know if it's due to a specific combination of characters being selected, but I guess that's a possibility.

    As you can see, the results screen mentions Vector and "NUTS", which through my convoluted speculation, I think might be Mighty (unless one of the bots was named Nuts at one point).

    nuts.png

    The text string "NUTS" doesn't appear in the ROM when scanned with a Hex Editor, so it's not stored along with the other character names. This may indicate that this is actually just an image mockup being displayed below the stage select. I will note that I did choose Mighty and Knuckles as my characters, so the displayed text isn't dependent on character choices.

    Is there any way I could see the VDP/Graphics data in-emulator? There are emulators which can do that with certain Megadrive games, but I'm not sure if it's possible with this ROM given that it needed a modified version of Kega Fusion to even run.
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2020
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  18. Pengi

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    The Sound Test.

    I suspect it might be the other way around.

    Sonic CD has a mosquito enemy named Mosqui in the Japanese manual. But this same enemy is named Ka Mecha in the Sonic & Tails 2 and Chaotix manuals.

    Why did they decide to change its name? Well, they didn't. Ka Mecha (カメカ) was the provisional name on the enemy's concept art for Sonic CD. In the concept art, all of Sonic CD's enemies were ___ メカ, with the blank being the type of insect and メカ being "Mecha". In this case, カメカ is literally "Mosquito Mecha".

    So whoever put together the Sonic & Tails 2 and Chaotix manuals accidentally used an old name from some concept art, instead of referring to Sonic CD's manual.

    Since Chaotix pulled a bunch of old characters out of the archives, it wouldn't surprise me if a piece of old concept art said "Nat the Armadillo".
     
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  19. Prototype

    Prototype

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    Or indeed, "Nuts"? I still think there's some weird transliteration thing going on though.
     
  20. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    If the text isn't an actual mockup, there might be a way to see which character values it's using for displaying the names "Nuts" and "Vector" (and modify them for more possible surprises).