They likely didn't show her cause they didn't want to reveal her yet. I learned today that the trailer initially debuted in japan before being included on mega collection, so by the time mega collection came out and included art of cream, the trailer was outdated. Besides, if you watch the trailer, her orange slot on the character wheel is there. She was definitely already in the game, but as I said, they probably didn't feel like showcasing her yet for a multitude of reasons. You did remind me that advance 2 did have that music in the trailer... Odd thing is, everyone calls it the "Leaf Forest Beta" music, but do we actually have confirmation that it was meant for leaf forest?
The one game I really want protos for is Sonic Mania, which is the one game I think may never happen. Maybe the official Sonic stream could show assets but it's unlikely.
On the topic of Sonic Mania, i think it'll be interesting to learn what that early Egg Reverie boss fight of Phantom Heavy King turning into the other Phantom HBH was meant to be.
I still wonder what's the matter with keeping dev processes as secret as possible. Are companies afraid of theft of ideas? They still do happen, even if accidentally...
It's not uncommon for devs to reuse scrapped ideas even years later. Like to duck outside of Sonic, IS had ideas for Fire Emblem Fates going back all the way to the Gamecube era (over 10 years earlier).
I kinda knew that as well, but still sucks for a community to be so thirsty for trivia and the like and them simply not wanting to share. In Sonic's case, what would hurt them to share stuff from the Classics to the Adventures? At least that much should be OK by now, no?
Also, I'm not a newbie at all and even I found that information helpful. Not everyone knows every detail about these hunts even if you've been here for years.
There's a sort of recognition of this in the relationship Retro's established with SEGA, even if the latter's too protective of the IP to share material themselves until significantly longer quantities of time has passed or there's a special occasion like the charity livestream or Generations' gallery. I can't find where this is codified on the forums, but I *know* in my lurking days there was some sort of established guideline that they'd intentionally turn a blind eye to proto/hack distribution of Sonic games that were released over seven years ago. Is this still the case? Can someone find the text of the matter?
It's intellectual property owned by Sega. It may have value, it may not, but it's up to the company's higher-ups to decide what should be seen, if indeed there's anything left to see. If it emerged that plans were put in place for "Sonic's baby eating adventure", where you got extra points for consuming Chinese or Korean orphans, that might not go down so well for a Japanese company. Everything needs vetting and approval to be done officially - folks like Craig Stitt are banking on the fact that usually, nobody cares, but it's a legal grey area and not everyone is as confident that it won't affect their current or future employment. Also all of this takes time and money, and as there's no financial incentive to bother, they don't bother. I would make the point again though, that we have a huge amount of prototypes that are still undocumented. So if it's all about spreading knowledge and helping the world, we can all get involved in that right now. Build an environment where people are more happy releasing content in, knowing the internet actually cares, and isn't just going to sit on a pile because lol not Sonic. Imagine if Sonic 1 prototype coverage got trending on Twitter, and Sega noticed and realised they could ride this wave, generate more interest in their products and help drive sales.
By doing what, bundling said prototypes in a special pack or including them as unlockables in a potential new game or so? Still would be better than getting nothing at all or having to scrap through shady places to find/achieve something... ^^" And yes, could also push people not interested in the latest games to get said new one if only to attain said prototypes xD Of course, the same could apply to dev stage stuff. Could see that happen more than them gifting us protos of classics...
Let's not forget though that they actually wanted to include TGS '90 sonic 1 on mega collection, but the build had apparently been lost internally in the company. We can't 100% rely on sega for everything we're looking for- there's a realistic chance some stuff just doesn't exist anymore. A sad truth to be sure, but a truth nonetheless.
I would like to know more about the MIDI files in the Sonic & Knuckles Collection, I mean, it would be interesting to know if they've been composed specifically for the S&KC, or if they predate the SMPS versions, and hence they are the original reference files internally used by Sega like someone speculated. Because, if the latter theory is true, it's possible that internal reference MIDIs for other SMPS songs exist. Sonic 3D had the demo tape unveiled by Jon Burton, but other games might have had different workflows. They didn't have mid2smps but it wouldn't be unreasonable for reference files in a common format to exist.
I just realized that in some blackened recess of my soul, I'm still dying to see how far BioWare got on Sonic Chronicles 2 before it got, y'know, Penderized.
Probably not really something that existed, but I'd like to know if the battle Kukku army in Tails' Adventures had some link to Eggman, either through lore or by some shift in the game's concept through its development. Two stupid but easy reasons to think this: first, some kukkus ride eggmobiles; second, if you're looking for a new enemy and you had an egg(man) before, some birds could be the first idea you'd hatch (yeah, pun intended, fight me. XD).
Just to echo Back Squirrel. We have lots of Sonic protos that still haven't been dug into. There are 4 Gamecube protos that were dumped just in the last two weeks, one with a full debug mode and the thread has only one page of comments. The SADX Proto thread has several hundred.
To follow on JoeBro64's comment, I'm pretty sure that Sonic Chronicles 2 entire script was already complete. I'd have to see if I can find the interview. I think it was the head of development talking about where the story was going to go and they had already finished that part in full since they wrote the entire story outline and broke it apart with writing on the sequel in full starting right when they finished the first, and on Bumbleking if I remember right Ian Flynn had confirmed seeing the script at some point so it seemed complete. It would be a hoot to see that come out as a design document some day. I'm pretty sure a lot of the old dev team chat about old projects on twitter, but a script like that would probably be something they would avoid talking about for all of the known reasons. For other projects, yeah, all of the basics like everyone else is saying. Sonic 1 Tokyo Toy Show. All the old school 2D level layouts drawn out would be perfect after all of this time to really figure out what might be missing. R2 was likely the equivalent of Marble Zone and Madness Mountain. I would love to see more of the Prism/Rainbow effects that were mentioned but it's one of the less likely things I'd expect. After the Sonic 1 beta though, I'm expecting miracles. Some of the Demo games like Sonic DS and the SatAM demo for Genesis would be kinda neat. Also, if the Sega CD ports of the classic games were actually anywhere into development those would be a sight to see as well. What I'd really like to see turn up now would be some of the more modern titles though. It's interesting how much falls through the cracks. A lot of Sonic Boom concept art seems to fall through the cracks, let alone some of the pitches and cancelled games that get mentioned. Sonic Awakening isn't the only phantom game still touted anymore. I'd love to see if any work was actually done on the third Storybook Game. I love Greek Myths, so even if the gameplay style was horrid I'd love to see what progress was made. Also, the list of choices they polled from may have all had pitches attached to them as well. It seems totally crazy that something like that just drops off of the radar. I want to know what kind of Sci-Fi game they would have even attempted to do for such a story. For weird pitches, there are things like Sonic Shadow World, depending on the veracity of them. And there was also a second game Climax Studios supposedly pitched that just never had enough information released about it. I know during the time before Sonic Boom was being released Sonic Synergy as a build is something I'd like to see more of as well before the downgrades. I know their is quite a bit of footage now, but I don't think there was anything playable yet. I also might want to be the only one to want to see Sonic 4 episode 3, just for completions sake. Even as a probable rehash of older levels, it would be interesting to know which ones would go into it. I know at one point I had a list of cancelled projects and I think I'm still missing a couple of I think pitches that would be nice to see fleshed out. It's certainly interesting just how much we've uncovered already, and just how much we have left to go.
