Sonic Month 2019: Sonic Chaos

Can't wait... the anticipation is building!

 

Fingers crossed for Sonic's Schoolhouse or Sonic Labyrinth.

 

I hope we get Sonic 1 protos for SMS and GG, too!

 

It's Sonic Chaos for the Master System by the way.

 

Not familiar with this game enough to spot the differences

 

The music is certainly different with some tracks, that's for sure. Different death music as well.

 

The boss music and Zone clear jingle are the same heard in the Sega Video Magazine preview for the Game Gear version:



Another edition of Sega Video Magazine had the Master System Gigalopolis Zone BGM playing in the Game Gear version.

 

GG Aqua Planet looks wayyy different.

Edit: ALSO new music for Sleeping Egg and Aqua Planet in the earlier SMS version.

 

So new piece of trivia, Sonic Chaos was apparently called Sonic 3 during development.

 

I actually don't think that's new. I don't remember the source but I recall that being mentioned that Sonic Chaos was originally called Sonic 3

 

"ZONE" was funny, twitch chat get spammed everytime

 

I agree, and I was happy to contribute to part of that experience!

Those unused music tracks are all absolute bangers, can't wait for some clean rips of those!

Delighted to hear these different tracks, and so grateful that these pre-release versions were not lost to the sands of time. Great work to all involved!

 

It was called Sonic 3 in a few magazines.

In Japan's "Sega Video News Vol. 2" (is this on Sega Retro?) it's referred to as "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" - but (unless I'm mistaken) in parentheses it says 仮称 "temporary name".

 

Thanks for this information.

Sorry that this isn't directly related to this topic, but I can't resist mentioning how similar part of Sonic Mania's theme is to the jingle at the beginning of that video!

 

The complete lack of sound in the May build seems surprising to me. Does it appear to be intentional, as in there's not even any data for it? I would've expected them to just start with the previous game as a base so at least sound effects would be there.

On the plus side, no sound seems to improve performance?

 

There's no sound in the Sega Video News Vol. 2 clip either.

 

Awesome work as always -- thanks for sharing!

Yes, the sound data was purposely left out. The sound driver and data would normally be in banks 2 and 3 ($8000-$FFFF), but these are filled with FF in the prototype, and the code in the vblank handler that would update the sound each frame is simply not there.

I always love prototypes with music differences like this -- it's fun to hear how the composers struggled over some of these tracks. Getting decent sound out of the Master System is no easy feat!

 

The Sonic sprites look so much better than the final ones used! Btw they're located at the same exact spot as they are in the final revision. (They start at offset $10000) Sonic does use his final pushing sprite, so I assume that they were in the process of changing the sprites during this build. Also fun fact, if you use a cheat code in the final version of the SMS game to access the special stages, the title card loads and it just says "Zone" just like in the June 30th prototype. Edit: Also Aqua Planet's music sounds very familiar to Sky High Zone's music...