Blaze has such an awesome design. She was really geared up to be a major character between 2005 and 2009, but the 2010s happened and she was swiftly reduced to tertiary. I hope she can get some more time in the spotlight. There's lots of untapped material there. We've barely even seen three of the expressions in this concept art!
She's a perfect character to star in her own spinoff title. Too bad Sega doesn't do character driven spinoffs anymore. Wonder it that ever changes.
Quick one Our early prototypes of Sonic CD have a dedicated Sega logo. The thought was that because the Mega-CD BIOS already has a Sega logo built in, there's no point in this second one. ... and we were right: https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:Sega-CD_Software_Standards.pdf&page=6 Having a Sega logo there is actually a violation of Sega's own software standards! However, according to this document, there should be one shown after the rolling demo. With Sonic CD... there isn't. But then it also doesn't implement the software reset either, and I think it's meant to prompt the user about where to save data before the game begins - I don't think they were enforcing these requirements very well.
To crosspost from Sega board: Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine 98 has adverts for Sonic R in the Tokyo Dome stadium. Tokyo Dome is a real place. I can almost guarantee other Sega-published baseball games have similar adverts, and there are a bunch on Saturn and Dreamcast. Someone might want to check - you may have to learn how to hit home runs in order to pan the camera updward. Looks like we already have one.
I played *THE SHIT* out of World Series Baseball 98, the USA version of Greatest Nine 97, and it has none of those kinds of adverts. Like seriously, me and my brother in law would go through several multiple seasons every couple of days because we played the game absolutely religiously while he was going through training with the Athletic A's. Not true. Sonic Pocket Adventure got very high scores.
SuddenDesu on twitter posted some SEGA Magazine scans who has this proto eggman image. Those smaller eggman were prevously unknown, isnt it? At least, I have never seen them before... His tweet: https://twitter.com/suddendesu/status/1637412798207791108
Have you ever wondered what all the sound test codes on Sonic Spinball 8 bit do? What do you mean no!? I did a bunch of research over on smspower to figure out what all the different codes actually did, and the result is this much needed update of the Sonic Spinball 8 bit hidden content page. I still need to grab screenshots where appropriate and perhaps flesh out the hidden monitor stuff a bit more, but every sound test code now has an entry at least. The research thread is referenced on the hidden content page if anyone is curious. Sonic Spinball (8-bit)/Hidden content - Sonic Retro
Why on earth does Spinball 8-bit of all things have like 25 cheat codes? Wheres my big sprite mode in Sonic 2
I'm guessing it was a rushed development and a lot of this stuff would have been switched off it there was more time. The gravity codes in particular very much come across as a dev tool rather than a bonus for the player. And yes, we should definitely all be calling for a 'Sonic Spinball 8 bit cheat codes' rom hack of every classic Sonic game!
Double-sized Sprite Mode is a feature of the Sega Master System/Game Gear VDP when bits 0 and 1 of control mode register #1 are set. Depending on VDP revision, either all sprites, or just sprites 1-4 are doubled in size from 8x8 to 16x16. The Sega Genesis VDP completely lacks this ability. That Double-sized sprite mode cheat doesn't work if you're using a power base converter and playing the game on a Sega Genesis. Also note, the Double-Sized sprite mode code is broken on SMS port of Sonic Spinball when played on a Model 1 Master System. On a model 1 SMS, only sprites 1-4 are affected by the double-sized sprite mode flag. On a Sega Master System model 2 and Game Gear, this is corrected and all sprites are affected by the flag. So playing the game on a model 1 master system with that code would cause it to act funky.
Re: The Sonic Spinball code page.... still, many years later, I'm not able to log in and edit the wiki pages (i've talked to BS and SS about this several times). Dunno why. But I'd like to add that the monitors that read '見る' means "look" in english.
Thanks @Cooljerk , I want to flesh out the hidden monitor stuff a bit more anyway, so when I get the chance, I'll add that in as well as making a note about the sprite doubling code being hardware dependent. I do have a Megadrive with an Everdrive which supports SMS compatibility mode, so I can observe it not working on the real thing as well
