The origin of the Sonic 2 Beta ROM

I'm very sceptical of this one, so I will see how it pans out...

 

The facts certainly seem to fit.

I also notice that Mr Naka is as anxious as we are to get hold of betas. Maybe we could work together for the common good.

Don't we have a handful of East Asian members?

 

I notice that this BMF guy never actually tells us WHO the author is. I'm gonna say "hoax" on this one.

 

I'm calling fake unless we get a link to /scan of the source article.

'meant to be kept secret for a while'? Mmm-hmm.

 

btw, soa does have s2 dev carts. so I cant imagine that naka would be to excited.

ps. capitalization iz fer losers.

 

Um, BMF54123 is an extremely reliable and smart guy so I HIGHLY doubt he's making a fake up. That kind of sucks, really.

 

Just because SEGA decided to have a beta bonfire or whatever doesn't mean the various betas sent to magazines are now gone. There is still hope

Interesting article, I wonder if the guy mentioned this place? *waits for naka to register*

EDIT:
Hmm something that bothers me

That sounds like something a fluent english speaker would say, and I didn't think Naka knew English at all, nevermind that kind of phrasing.

 

That tipped me off too. Plus, the fact that he's using emoticons, even though they seem to be conversing in real life. And no magazine would actually publish ":o" anyway.

 

Hmm, I was under the impression that BMF54123 was actually the article maker, rather than just a poster. Well, now I take it with a grain of salt.

 

I don't know... I'm not buying it at the moment. FYI, the famous Genocide City hoax that had many people fooled was made by BMF54123 (who is also a brilliant hacker, I must add).

Even if it's true that a Sonic 2 Beta cart was stolen at a toy show, that might not have been the origin of our ROM. One only needed to borrow the cart for 5 minutes to get it dumped, so the true origin could've been any S2B cartridge that was ever sent out (or even an inside job).

I'm skeptical, but not calling it a hoax just yet.

 

OK, persons stole a prototype from a Toy Show (and probably know about it weeks before its starting, so they might be from SEGA.) and send it to Hong Kong (why? why are they so dumb? there aren't dumpers in New York? ) to pirates copy it, resale it , distribute...

OMG! A CONSPIRATION AGAINST SEGA!!

another thing that don't fit, is why they would stole a prototype. In that time wasn't obvious there would be canned/redraw levels. Since the prototype is a very early version, and nobody would know there were missing prototype levels. So to a person at 1992 when the "prototype was stolen", it (the prototype) would be simple a pirate version of the final version.

<fakye>
I have also read in some magazines that the pirates were from Nintendo, so they stole the prototype to delay SEGA's evil plans of game market domination, and had the little fun of send it to the whole world. But Nintendo didn't knew there were others betas, and also was pretty pissed off because it discovered that assholes dumped the beta and send it to the Net. So the thiefs had their ballz cutten, but Nintendo couldn't find the site maintainer, so the site was up until 1998, when the webmaster got bored of hold the beta and closed the site.
</fakye>

this should be a poll, I vote hoax.

 

Nope, just opportunists. You know how crackers think: "I released the pirate copy of this program a day before you so obviously my testicles are larger."

Your sentence formation is awful.

In any case, remember this is early 1992. Most people don't have dumpers - those that do are mostly in the pirating industry centred in where? Yep, Hong Kong! It makes sense it would make its way there if it ends up on the Super Magic Drive (which it did).

The correct word is "conspiracy", you only need one exclamation mark and this is entirely stupid.

As I said, it was just opportunists looking for a release of the game on the pirate market before Sega released it officially. They didn't know it was a prototype.

I vote actually-think-before-opening-your-fat-gob. Thank you.

 

I'm gonna need more solid proof than just a quote, anyone could write up something like that if they had enough time on their hands and had no life :P

 

Actually, I think it was dumped with a different dumper, due to the filename given (MD8123). The SMD has no restrictions on name as far as I know, but in my readings, I came across one other dumper which did require files to be named with that standard, and it's the Multi Game Doctor 2 (and possibly the original MGD). From a doc for an Amiga ROM conversion tool:

So in other words, I believe that the first dumped filename for our proto is "MD8123.008'. Not that it really matters, but I don't think it was dumped by a SMD.

 

Fine, I can't see sonic-cult message board, then I don't know if the fact that is a hoax was alredy proved or not.

Then, Quick Man, Could you (or anybody else, I just want answers.) explain:

Why they would steal the cart? To get money , like the common pirates does?
If they want get money, why they would send it to the Internet? In the Internet, everyone could get it free.

If they didn't want get money, why they copied and resold the prototypes in Asia and South America? If its the unique beta we'll ever get, then there's no way other beta was sold here and in Asia.

Did I proved this is a hoax, or somebody else have a good explanation for this?

 

In 1992, very few people had even heard of the Internet. It would not have been a very good distribution channel to use.

 

I already answered this one. The way crackers think is "I released it before you, so my testicles are obviously larger." It's done because they think they'll get more kudos from other crackers for it.

They probably never played it or even looked at it - it was a game to be released before Sega released it to them. They didn't know it was a prototype.

 

yea, right. But they made that mistake, and now they no longer will get cash over it, because the Net is filled with places where you can download it free.

 

It wouldn't have been put onto the Web until '96 or '97 at the earliest, when the Web took off. Before that it was an academic curiosity only, limited to a few servers in universities. It was found by Simon in '98.

That's enough time for a lot of prototype sales (including at least one to Andre Dirk) and a lot of revenue.