Still, we don't know much about the contracts themselves, so we don't know what wacky garbage they agreed to. And in regards to Buxer it's possible that he implemented Hard Times for ICZ thinking that the song would never be technically released, but that he screwed up in that his label might have still held the rights to that. When you're playing a game of musical telephone between East/West and some pretty major record labels it's entirely possible that a lot of these issues simply stemmed from miscommunication and everyone sort of just had to go with it, with the proviso that future fuckery is out of the question lest lawyers get involved and money has to be paid. Cirocco DID say that SEGA owed a lot of money to a lot of people, and they could just be hanging in there on the aforementioned proviso and good faith agreement. You know, given the history between Sony (who owned MJ's catalogue) and Paramount Pictures... ..and the upcoming Sonic movie with Paramount, with my very limited knowledge of business deals and the shady characters who run said businesses, is it possible that they could have resolved certain rights issues by a simple transactional deal between SEGA and Paramount? I mean, I doubt this last part because it doesn't make much sense, but with the ever-changing hands of business, who knows what contracts, handshakes and agreements are still valid these days?
Well we already know that IceCap was from somewhere else, Carnival Night’s music is basically Jam, and the end credits ended up being Stranger in Moscow. The digitised voices in Launch Base and the miniboss theme (go, woo, c’mon) are soundfonts available elsewhere, so whilst they’re not built from scratch, perhaps MJ / his team hold the rights to the compositions? It’s all very odd. The miniboss theme situation is definitely weird - it didn’t even survive the move to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, let alone PC collection.
I haven't been this excited since the Nick Arcade prototype was dumped! ^^ Sonic's new (or old) swinging animation looks slightly strange but I find it rather charming honestly. The look on his face kinda says "Not too sure if this was a good idea" which injects some personality into him. Contrast with the final animation where he's staring ahead with those dead eyes while slightly moving his feet like a mannequin. Then again I was never a fan of his Sonic 3 model... When my folks snagged me the PC collection of Sonic and Knuckles back in 98 (My genesis recently went kaput), I would have never thunk those "crappy midis that replaced the old awesome music" were in fact, the originally intended scores! Hell, the genesis compositions have a certain oomph the midi's lacked. I especially dig Launch Base 2, which is a much better tune compared to the first act. On the other hand...Proto knuckles theme sounds like a rejected Team Rocket tune and I simply can't accept anything but Hard Times in my Icecap... The background for Hydrocity Act 1 is quite interesting, though in definite need of polish. What would it have looked like if they finished all the graphics I wonder? Looks like they went with the complete opposite approach with bosses compared to 2. Flying Battery is an utter mess but them bosses? Operating as intended! Not mention the Sandopolis Golem... All in all, a groundbreaking find! Well done, drx!
That could just be because the dev team wanted to justify Sonic and Knuckles by putting new (technically old but you get the point) music in or just preferred the older miniboss theme when putting SAK out. Doesn't necessarily have anything to do with copyright when releasing SAK. The S3 invincibility theme was also changed in SAK, and we know that had nothing to do with copyright because they would use it in Sonic Drift 2 a year later. It also sounds nothing like the MJ team music.
I wonder if the Sonic Mania team were told in advance about the drop dash (probably by Iizuka), or if they came up with a similar ability by sheer coincidence. I mean, it does seem weird that they never talked about it being a scrapped Sonic 3 move during any prerelease interview. That's the kind of shit that would've amazed Sonic nerds like us.
I dunno if this has been mentioned yet, but the pushable rock in AIZ final is just a breakable rock in this build. Does the pushable rock at least exist in the code? On that note, FBZ obviously doesn't have the pushable spike set in a level (because there isn't really a level yet) but at least in this build the FBZ spikes aren't animated, nor do they give you damage. Hardly surprising. FBZ is almost nonexistent.
Who knew the key to making the Sonic & Knuckles Collection tracks sound their best was making them sound like Ristar music. I can't stress enough how much of a bombshell this Sonic 3 prototype was. It's not a Sonic 1 prototype, but honestly I'm just as much happy with this. Thanks to everyone who was involved.
Sonic 3 Proto: Sonic 3 Final (Alone / &K): Just a weird comparation but - why in the Hell they added spikes in a place were you can't even acess? It's in Carnival Night Act 2, by the way.
In all honesty it’s actually probably not far off that - I imagine the spike placement could be to ensure the player dies if they accidentally get warped through the wall, which does sometimes happen in certain places. There’s a couple of points on carnival night where you get crushed rather than stuck and I have the feeling that they might have edited the level in some places to do that specifically. I can’t remember the locations tbh, it’s been years since I got stuck and deviated from the paths I know well.
One thing which really throws a spanner into the development timeline is the Knuckles' theme. So in the early prototypes, Knuckles has a unique theme (and it sounds pretty great) and then the MJ team replace it with a new theme. Okay, fair enough. Then when they make SAK, they end up replacing the MJ Team's Knuckles theme with a new one rather than using the original prototype theme, which is different to what they did with the miniboss theme in SAK. Strange decision, but okay; maybe they just didn't like the prototype Knuckles' theme. But then when porting the game to PC, they use the prototype Knuckles' theme and when porting to Saturn (Sonic Jam released only a few months later) they use the MJ Team's Knuckles theme and the new SAK Knuckles theme. What is even going on? I really think this supports my theory that something wrong happened with the PC port of SAK Collection. Either they got wrong information or were sent an incomplete build of the game that used the prototype music. As far as I know, Knuckles' theme in SAK would be no harder to make as a MIDI than the other tracks because it uses no voice samples.
The attract mode replay will sometimes desync slightly so Sonic survives the badnick and goes further. First I thought it was just an emulation problem but I got it to happen on real hardware too. Probably useless info but still
We are not worthy! This release is amazing and I never, ever imagined that the PC music was the original nor that Sonic 3 had a form of the Drop Dash. To think we only need a Sonic CD prototype with R2 and Sonic 1 prototype for all the Holy Grails of Sonic development to be dump.
Is it possible that R2 never left the drawing board, only remaining in the code as a placeholder until they made the final decision?
Super jarring, but going back to Sonic 3 Complete's approximations makes me realize how close we were on some of these. Valleybell's LBZ Act 1 is almost right on the money for instrumentation, but there's no way any of us could have imagined CNZ... The final midi we got in S&KPC just doesn't do this prototype's rendition any justice. What a god damn find guys. Wow.
A man can dream, who would have imagined we would have a Sonic 3 prototype before the Split with Sonic 3 & K PC Collection music? Indeed, but I gotta give it to Valleybell's better instrumentation. The Prototype instruments are certainly a bit rough around the edges.
Interesting, I just checked the SAK PC collection, and it uses the Sonic 3 prototype Knuckles' theme in the Sonic 3 levels and the SAK' theme in the SAK levels. Strange it didn't use the S3 Knuckles theme like Jam did.
Fun fact, the code for handling the frame reloading for the title screen is in the prototype. Code (Text): ROM:000035EA ROM:000035EA ; =============== S U B R O U T I N E ======================================= ROM:000035EA ROM:000035EA ROM:000035EA Iterate_TitleSonicFrame: ; CODE XREF: ROM:000033AEp ROM:000035EA cmpi.b #1,($FFFFBD).w ROM:000035F0 bne.s locret_3606 ROM:000035F2 move.w ($FFFFBE).w,d0 ROM:000035F6 move.b SonicFrameIndex(pc,d0.w),d0 ROM:000035FA ext.w d0 ROM:000035FC bmi.s loc_3608 ROM:000035FE bsr.w TitleSonic_LoadFrame ROM:00003602 addq.w #1,($FFFFBE).w ROM:00003606 ROM:00003606 locret_3606: ; CODE XREF: Iterate_TitleSonicFrame+6j ROM:00003606 rts ROM:00003608 ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROM:00003608 ROM:00003608 loc_3608: ; CODE XREF: Iterate_TitleSonicFrame+12j ROM:00003608 move.b #2,($FFFFBD).w ROM:0000360E bra.w loc_3644 ROM:0000360E ; --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ROM:00003612 SonicFrameIndex: ROM:00003612 dc.b $2A, $FF, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ROM:00003612 dc.b $A, $B, $C, $D, $E, $F, $10, $11, $12, $13, $14, $15 ROM:00003612 dc.b $16, $17, $18, $19, $1A, $1B, $1C, $1D, $1E, $1F ROM:00003612 dc.b $20, $21, $22, $23, $24, $25, $26, $27, $28, $29 ROM:00003612 dc.b $2A, $FF Compare that SonicFrameIndex to the final: Code (Text): SonicFrameIndex: dc.b 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, $A, $B, $FF However, this is what the frame data index looks like: Code (Text): ROM:0000376A TitleSonic_Frames:dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ; DATA XREF: TitleSonic_LoadFrame+Ao ROM:0000376E dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003772 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003776 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000377A dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000377E dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003782 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003786 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000378A dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000378E dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003792 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003796 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000379A dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000379E dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037A2 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037A6 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037AA dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037AE dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037B2 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037B6 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037BA dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037BE dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037C2 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037C6 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037CA dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037CE dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037D2 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037D6 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037DA dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037DE dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037E2 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037E6 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037EA dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037EE dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037F2 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037F6 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037FA dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000037FE dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003802 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003806 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000380A dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000380E dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003812 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003816 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000381A dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000381E dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003822 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003826 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000382A dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000382E dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003832 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003836 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000383A dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000383E dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003842 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003846 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000384A dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000384E dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003852 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003856 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000385A dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000385E dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003862 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003866 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000386A dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000386E dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003872 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003876 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000387A dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000387E dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003882 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003886 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000388A dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000388E dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003892 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003896 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000389A dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000389E dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038A2 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038A6 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038AA dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038AE dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038B2 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038B6 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038BA dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038BE dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038C2 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038C6 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038CA dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038CE dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038D2 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038D6 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038DA dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038DE dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038E2 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038E6 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038EA dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038EE dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038F2 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038F6 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038FA dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:000038FE dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003902 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003906 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000390A dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000390E dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003912 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003916 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000391A dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000391E dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003922 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003926 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000392A dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000392E dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003932 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003936 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000393A dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000393E dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003942 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003946 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000394A dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000394E dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003952 dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003956 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000395A dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000395E dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003962 dc.l ArtKos_TitleSonic0 ROM:00003966 dc.l Pal_TitleSonic0 ROM:0000396A dc.l MapEni_TitleSonic0 The data for the others frames do not seem to exist.
