About a decade ago in an effort to protect the integrity of Europe, the German video game ratings board, the USK, decided that their big banners needed to be bigger. WARNING: THIS GAME IS SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES Remember: never assume we have all the scans. (this affects the Wii version as well. And Sonic Unleashed)
So I bought Sonic PC Collection recently, and I had heard that they removed the DRM from each of the games for this release. Sonic Riders, SADX and Sonic Mega Collection Plus all do seem to have had it fully removed (besides a simple disc-check on SADX), but I came across something interesting when checking Sonic Heroes: Yep, it seems that they actually put the cracked version by the scene group "RELOADED" on the disc. Checking the EXE in a hex editor further confirms this, with the string "ReLOADeD" appearing three times.I wonder whether this was because of pure laziness, or whether Sega somehow lost the original unprotected EXE and had to borrow this one.
Oh dear, it seems that SEGA pulled a straight Ubisoft right there with stealing a crack. Heheh, it seems that for once I too learned something new today regarding Heroes - this doesn't happen very often outside of hacking :3 Edit: I wouldn't mind seeing the Heroes & Riders executables myself.
Well, mine is 3cd8ce57f5e1946762e7526a429e572f, so it's not the US release. It's not the common cracked version either. Maybe they rebuilt it from the source code? Although that would beg the question of why they didn't do that with Heroes.
The other day I was musing on Twitter about whether or not we'd ever see the Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg film adaptation of the book Console Wars. I hadn't @'d anyone, but Blake J. Harris the author of the book responded saying good news is coming "soon." http://twitter.com/blakejharrisNYC/status/1004938129483206656 I don't know what everyone's opinions were on the book considering the amount of fictionalization the book employs, but I enjoyed it personally and would really look forward to seeing it as a film, especially if Rogen ended up with a main part.
Not looking forward to it because then we'd have to deal with the misinformation going mainstream, like the US branch claiming they gave Sonic the red shoes when we have scans of old prototype screenshots predating that time period...
Is the misinformation in the book documented anywhere? If it's not, it will keep spreading, regardless of the movie being released or not.
There's a lovely wiki that a I know of that has reliable information! Most video game history books are proven wrong within a few weeks or months. It's why, quite frankly, people shouldn't be writing them. But even if every fact was true, it's a global picture. This US-centric skewed garbage that has plagued Wikipedia and others for years is not a reliable read. Join us, make it better, etc.
Hidden away on the Sega Dreamcast's ‘Generator’ demo disc is a sample video file. Turns out it's the intro to ‘Sonic 3D’ for the Saturn - but running at 30 frames per second instead of the 15fps of the PC and Saturn versions. Neat! http://www.sonicthehedgeblog.com/post/174607707937/hidden-away-on-the-sega-dreamcasts-generator
That's a neat discovery. Makes me wish Sonic Jam's intro could be available in that quality on some demo disc as well. As for me, I decided to finally translate those neat pieces of lore in the two Sonic Adventure guides (Navigation and Perfect) and put them on my Pastebin. There's another page of some lore on the Perfect Guide called "Study on the Chaos Emerald Legend" but upon inspection it's more or less the same information as the Chaos Emerald Legend blurb in the Navigation Guide, only slightly rewritten in places.
Can anyone upload a better scan of SA1's Japanese manual? It has a bunch of early screenshots in it I haven't seen anywhere else. On page 16, the stage select is in a different order (Same order as later versions - the original one goes by stage IDs). You can make out what it says in the real thing (Casinopolis is called Carinopolis) but the current scan is too blurry. It's also got some other menus/HUD stuff (We've already got stuff with weirdly placed timers but this has minigames too) and a few pictures of Hot Shelter. SA International's won't hurt either - it's the same aside from screenshots of the menu featuring the logo (+ Twinkle Circuit) being changed and an added section for Emblem Results.
According to a line in Sonic's profile in that JP Adventure guidebook, Sonic has the ability to temporarily exceed lightspeed; It states the usual; Species, gender, age, height, weight and running speed but the line at the bottom in brackets it states that he can exceed the speed of light. I never knew that before! Also, I noticed an interview in a JP SEGA magazine wherein Naka states that before Sonic Jam, he envisioned "Sonic Ages". Maybe that's what Jam's originally conceieved name was?
Do you know which guide book that is? There were quite a few for Sonic Adventure. Which magazine is the interview from? (I remember that the UK's Computer & Video Games magazine mentioned a rumour about a compilation of Sonic 1-3&K on Saturn, with a name like "Sonic: The Series" or something. This was a few months before Sonic Jam was announced.)
The excerpt was from Sonic's profile page of this particular guide. Interestingly, said page (Page 24 specifically) has a Super Sonic model pose/render I've never seen anywhere else. The Sonic Jam article and interview I took that excerpt from is inside this magazine. The interview starts on page 30.
It doesn't say "exceed" though, just that he can "reach" speed of light momentarily. "Exceed" would be ???.
Related question: what's the Light Speed Dash named in Japanese? It could simply be a slightly oblique reference to that ability, which debuts in Sonic Adventure - it fits the description of "temporarily" as it only happens when travelling along a line of rings, and the English name at least certainly suggests he's supposed to be reaching light speed when using it.
