Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: n00neimp0rtant - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

EDIT: I found a much cheaper (and smaller) one than the original one that I posted: http://cgi.ebay.com/...em=251165409775



For those of you who don't know, HDCP is a kind of DRM used with HDMI to encrypt the signal so only HDCP-licensed devices can decrypt it. It's the reason you can't connect a PS3 to a capture box, or a Motorola STB to a Slingbox. The protocol was cracked a while back, and Intel, the company in charge of licensing it, threatened to sue any devices that remove HDCP and reproduce an unprotected signal. It makes circumvention tools like this pretty illegal. Wikipedia has a really good article on it.

Basically, it works like this. Company A (e.g. Sony) wants to make an HDTV. They want their customers to be able to watch whatever HD content they want, so they call up Intel and ask to be granted HDCP licensing. Intel does two things: starts charging Company A an annual fee, and forces them to promise to not copy, reproduce, retransmit, etc. the video/audio signals. This means "you can show it, but you can't record it, transcode it, or anything else. Just show it." Company A agrees, and Intel gives them access to make HDCP keys.

Company B (e.g. Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox) wants to make a Slingbox. They call up Intel and ask to be granted HDCP licensing. They tell Intel that the Slingbox, by definition, both transcodes and retransmits video signal, so Intel tells them to piss off. Even though the HDCP protocol has been cracked, and any yahoo can generate valid HDCP credentials, Sling Media is a corporation that could get in big trouble for doing something like that.

Company C (e.g. wholesale counterfeit/illegitimate Chinese electronics manufacturers) doesn't give a shit what Intel does because the Chinese manufacturers seem to be able to get away with most forms of copyright infringement. They make counterfeit (albeit functioning) HDCP pseudo-compliant devices and sell them on eBay for cheap. At least I hope. I'll let you know when mine comes in the mail.

I imagine by now most of you have read 1 or 2 or 5 articles similar to this one basically detailing how Sega's finances are looking pretty dismal. While this itself might be disheartening for fans like us, it's nothing compared to the sheer embarrassment and disgust I have towards how they are beefing up those ledgers again. Sega's always been pretty shameless about reselling old titles on new platforms, but it has really started to get out of hand—this year especially.

Sonic Adventure 2: Literally a renderer upscale and a texture remaster. They even went through the trouble of ripping content out of SA2B just so they could sell it back to us at a spiked DLC price. No online play, no "tiny chao garden for your PS Vita," no bonus content.

NiGHTS: Pretty much the same deal as SA2. Straight port with some graphics enhancements. I can't hate on this one as much though, solely because of how few people nowadays even remember the Sega Saturn let alone still have one.

Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, etc etc: same fucking thing. Ported as swiftly and inexpensively as possible to as many possible systems as they can cover. "Sega Heritage Collection." "Sega Vintage Collection." "Anniversary Edition." No matter how many names they give it it's still just an old dog doing old tricks. And apparently Sega is so cheap, they didn't even renew the licensing deals to have real-world companies and logos in Crazy Taxi, so they just genericized them all.

Soundtracks on iTunes: I thought it was cool when they started doing this with Sonic Colors, but then they just dumped them all onto iTunes. Sonic Adventure 1/2, Secret Rings, Black Knight, all the Riders games, both Sonic 4 episodes, both Rushes, Jet Set Radio.......all of these have popped right up on iTunes since April 2012. Some of them are even missing songs; Sonic Adventure OST is completely missing most of the area 2 and 3 songs for the action stages. And they don't even have to pay to have the discs printed.

Digital trading carNo are uyou fucking kidding me???? Like trading cards, except not real?? This is really pathetic and sad and shameful and I am really embarrassed that they allowed this to happen.

Sonic Jump: No one knows exactly what it's going to be, or cares, because it will probably have had no more than 60 total manhours put into development time but still have a price tag of like $6.


Keep in mind: these aforementioned cash-ins are ALL since April 2012. It's really painful for me to watch. Most of my life I have just played Sonic, with a few other platformers here and there. But recently I have been playing new games. Games that were a labor of love to make, whose developers actually gave a shit about putting effort into absolutely anything they planned on making money from. LittleBigPlanet is one of these games; Skyrim as well. But then I see this shameless "buy this game AGAIN on NEW SYSTEM" from Sega. It's upsetting in two different ways: realizing that Sega's financial outlook is THIS bad, and seeing the lengths to which they are going to attempt to fix it. The secret to making a lot of money in the video game world is simple: make fresh new games that people will want to buy. There are only so many platforms available onto which they can rehash their IP, and once they run out, they had better have a few diamond-grade titles ready for release, or they will inevitably crash and burn.

I want to play some of your hacks on real hardware, but I have no idea where to begin when looking to buy a flash cart. Just like any sensible person, I'm not in the mood to get ripped off or receive a bogus product. Which of you have experience with flash carts? Is there a single reputable place/brand I should look out for? I'm looking for any knowledge at all you might have, tell me what you know.

I've seen a lot of people partially placing some of the blame of the solidarity of the Sonic Cycle on a phenomenon known as the "gimmick." It seems to me that the word "gimmick" is often used to mean "a primary game element that is new and unique a game or subseries," which, while not entirely correct, can understandably be used in this sense. What I've noticed though is that it's not a gimmick itself that lowers the quality of a Sonic game; it's how a gimmick changes an overall game.

Take Kirby, for example. Some of the past few games in the series (Epic Yarn, Mass Attack, Squeak Squad) each had their own unique element(s) to them, each of which might be referred to by some as just gimmicks. What makes most, if not all Kirby games such high quality though is that none of these gimmicks really change the core gameplay of a Kirby game. When we play a Kirby game, we know just about what to expect, with just enough gimmick to keep it fresh. Epic Yarn took a slightly bigger risk by completely removing Kirby's suck/copy abilities, but it was executed very well and still felt very "Kirby."

Sonic Unleashed was a different story. The main gimmick, our good friend Sonic the Werehog, infiltrated the game by not only introducing a completely non-Sonic playing style, but by giving it a 4:1 werehog-to-hedgehog playing time ratio. The werehog stages were drawn out and essentially just make people savor the day stages that much more. But I have a theory: Sonic Unleashed was not necessarily a bad game. It was a bad Sonic game. IMO the combat felt refined, and the platforming in the night stages was well thought-out. But it was DRASTICALLY different than gameplay in any other Sonic game, so fans (like me) were disappointed to find that the entirety of the speedy Sonic-style platforming accounted for about 30 minutes of gameplay in the entire game.

Sonic Colors is a perfect example of a well-executed gimmick. By adding a new, vibrant feature to an already proven platforming style, the game felt right at home while staying fresh at the same time. It's for this reason that I feel like had Sonic 06 been given the development time it deserved and gotten proper Adventure-style physics implemented (as opposed to the entirely auto-scripted antiphysics featured in the final product), it could have been a great game. Silver's psychokinesis and Shadow's vehicle abilities would have been just enough to keep each episode fresh to play while maintaining the core gameplay.

I feel like if Sonic Team stuck to the Colors formula for main console games, only fine-tuning the basic platforming while adding/changing specific gameplay gimmicks rather than changing gameplay as a whole, there would be little chance for another "failed" Sonic game. We don't need revolutionary ideas; just ideas to keep the kinds of Sonic games we already love entertaining.

After scouring the wiki, Google, illicit ISO-hosting websites and the like, I figure I just have to ask the forum for more info on this. I have 3 copies of Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast. One of them doesn't work because I played it too much, so we won't worry about that one. The other two I have look identical to each other when you're just looking at the discs; no "Not For Resale" or "Limited Edition" or anything. But they have one difference between them that I can't understand: the title screen. On the older copy, it is just a static Sonic Adventure logo and the "Press Start Button" text. On the newer copy, the title screen has the logo and the background has an animated "ripple" effect. Beyond this, I can't find a single difference in the gameplay. No apparent bug fixes, differences in object placement...nothing. Even my save files are compatible with both versions. (These are both legitimate, retail, not-burned copies.)

The only info that I have found that might relate to this comes from some cheat websites. If you Google "Sonic Adventure 1.1," you'll find that there are separate GameShark codes available for 1.0 and 1.1 versions of the game. I was pretty surprised to find that these revisions aren't documented on the Sonic Adventure page in the wiki. I have no idea if my copies of the game are the 1.0 and 1.1 referred to by these sites (lost my DC GameShark a long time ago, so can't test the codes). Do any of you have any info on why I have two different title screens, or what sets 1.0 apart from 1.1?