Cancelled SegaSonic game SegaSonic Bros. (1992) found

Sonic's colors also look kinda similar:

 

God soo behind on the developments of this.

So wait, this game is out now? last I heard this game was never going to be released by the owner?

And what's this about Sonic 3 music being in this game that pre-dates it?!

 

And it wasn't. This is not the dump from the original board but rather it was altered so that it would work in a multi-game board, then extracted from there.

There's also some music from other SEGA games and stuff which came afterwards, so it seems like SEGA may have had a vault of pre-made music since at least 1991.

 

For what it's worth, some instruments in Sonic 3's "universal voice bank" are identical to some instruments used in Sonic 1 songs, so there's that, at least.

 

Oh my, things may be starting to come together. Do we know if these also use the universal voice bank?

 

I think this is a very important point we need to keep in mind, from both a research and preservation standpoint. This will get around very quickly as the 'proper' dump when that's not actually the case.

Ice, I saw you mention this earlier. What's your source on that info?

 

What, this game's driver? No. S3K's driver is the only one I know of with a voice bank like that. It might be worth noting, even in S3K, the special stage music doesn't use the UVB.

 

Yeah, I didn't mean this song or these songs specifically. I just meant that some instruments in the UVB are the same as some instruments in some Sonic 1 songs. Possibly Sonic 2, too, but I don't have experience in that field.

 

The MAME team.

They were understandably pissed off at the leak, by the way.

 

Just got back to Japan and the first thing I did when I got home was disassemble SSB, hehe.

Here's a quick MAME cheat to enable the alternate title screen menu that evilhamwizard posted about previously:

Code (Text):

1.  
2.   <cheat desc="Use alternate main menu">
3.     <comment>Unused alternate menu on the title screen; displayed after a coin is inserted; display is somewhat buggy</comment>
4.     <script state="on">
5.       <action>temp0=maincpu.mw@7370</action>
6.       <action>maincpu.mw@7370=4e71</action>
7.     </script>
8.     <script state="off">
9.       <action>maincpu.mw@7370=temp0</action>
10.     </script>
11.   </cheat>
12.  

As evilhamwizard pointed out, there is a check on the player button input for a value that is not normally possible for the hardware, followed by an unconditional branch skipping over the jump to the alternate menu. This cheat just NOPs out the branch so it always goes to the alternate menu regardless.

 

Okay, next question: Why exactly does such an altered version exist? Especially considering most "multigame" boards, like the 60-in-1 or the Pandora's Box, are unlicensed bootleg material?

Was this planned to be an arcade version of the Socks the Cat malarky all over again?

 

I'm guessing it was modified for and dumped from California Arcade Extreme where it was available for play.

http://segabits.com/blog/2018/07/25/rare-segasonic-bros-arcade-prototype-to-be-playable-at-california-extreme-this-weekend/

 

While that is a theoretical possibility it sounds kinda... I dunno, hokey? If they were not gonna have the authentic PCB at that event, why not just a ROM on emulator on PC?

 

I created a text table for the custom encoding used in the game. Looks like there were more entries in that options menu:

Code (Text):

1.  
2. 1P GAME LEVEL
3. 1P EMERALD LEVEL
4. 1P GASS TIME
5. 2P GAME LEVEL
6. 2P EMERALD LEVEL
7. 2P GASS TIME
8. LANGUAGE
9. LEVEL TIME
10. LEVEL B RANKUPTIME
11. LEVEL C RANKUPTIME
12. RANK ATIME
13. RANK BTIME
14. LEVELUP KAKOMI CNT
15. CHIMA RANKUP SPEED
16. LEVEL SPEED
17. HI SCORE
18. KEY TEST
19. MUSIC TEST
20. KOUHO TIME
21. EME LEVEL
22. NEXT BLK WAIT
23. EXIT
24.  

Here's the (somewhat incomplete) text table: https://pastebin.com/g6MAysxc

Also shamelessly plugging my twitter where I post this stuff first: https://twitter.com/suddendesu

EDIT: And at 0x746C we have this: ORIGINAL GAME CONCEPT BY MTJ

I believe that's the first mention of Mitsuji Fukio's name in the game.

 

Neither Shoutime nor California Extreme nor any members of the MAME team are related in any way to this leak.

Also, due to the leak and the attention it got, we'll probably not see other similar games that we may have never even heard about.

 

I didn't think it would be related at all, as the cabinet Shoutime used malfunctioned during the expo, and did not appear to be a multi-game cabinet.

Also, one step forward and a million steps back for the public preservation of these gems...

 

It's not even properly preserved. Not just because some of the ROMs may differ from the original but, as far as I know, the board wasn't even documented and I suspect that certain bugs like the odd credits behavior may be due to that.

EDIT: See below.

 

It was my understanding that it was properly preserved, but the version that was leaked was modified. Is that not the case?

 

Indeed. The original ROM was dumped a long while ago so it's safe.

 

Oh, yeah, the real ones are preserved somewhere else. Forgot about that. =P

But in any case, these are not the properly preserved and documented ROMs.