Sonic Adventure 2 Magazine Preview Build

Shade · Jul 24, 2006

Qjimbo had mentioned to me that a certain place had a torrent of something entitled "Sonic Adventure 2 Alpha". Welp, me and Heran decided to give it a whirl. The .nfo describes it was the build sent out to magazines for preview. So, we promptly burned it onto a CD, decked out the CD with fitting graphics:

Put it in my trusty old Dreamcast, and lo and behold:

(heh, it refered to it as a ROM. Silly Sega, ROMs are for cartridges.)

Basically, each character has about one or two levels playable. Sonic has City Escape and Green Forest, Tails has Prison Lane, Shadow has Radical Highway, Rouge has Dry Lagoon, Knuckles has Wild Canyon, and so on. Those were the only people we tried. After completing them, you are taken back to the title screen.

First off, Aesthetical/design differences. Not too many of these so far, though there were a few of note (aside from the different menu styles):

Sonic has handcuffs attatched to his wrist when he escapes from the helicopter:

When jumping off a ramp at the beggining of City Escape at slow speed, Sonic does a backflip instead of a 180:

The yellow aura surrounding Shadow when he jumps seemed different:

Also, when I grabbed the fire ring upgrade in Radical Highway, it didnt lock you into place and describe the item. Play continued as normal, while the text explaining the item displayed on the bottom of the screen.

Shade · Jul 24, 2006

Springs are almost more of a bright pink than a red:

The hint monitors for Rouge and Knuckles are functional, but no text is programmed in at this point:

The jade glass ridge surrounding the butterfly pedastal in the oasis is not present:

Not sure if this was in the final, but there are yellow arrows on the ground pointing you in the right direction during Sonic/Shadow multiplayer:

Now for the most major differences, and plentiful: The differences in sound:

- Voices and music are mishmashed randomly together during cutscenes. Various sounds and voice clips from both English and Japanese tracks would sporadically play in random order, overlapping each other. Sound had not been programmed to go with the cutscenes at this point in time.
- When you get your ranking at the end of a level, it plays the sound from when you get an emblem.
- City Escape has no vocals, and while the general tune remains pretty much the same, many of the notes and riffs are completely different. It is quite different sounding than its final counterpart.
- Speed Up shoes music has some different notes
- Dry Lagoon's music is muted, and there are crickets prominently chirping during play (different sounding and louder than in the final).
- Knuckles and Rouge's climbing noises are very loud and incredibly different.
- The noise of GUN robots activating is different.
- Connecting with a rail sounds different.
- The noise of the metal board sliding down the road in the beggining of City Escape is different.
- When Tails and Eggman aim with their laser lock-on modules, the sound is completely different than that of the final.
- The whistling sound is completely different
- Swinging on a vine in Green Forest is a completely different sound.
- Getting animals makes a different noise than in the final

These are all of the differences I can remember so far. If I have forgotten any, Heran will most likely fill in the gaps. He also told me he'd provide us all with the .nfo .

So yeah. Beta (or should we say "Alpha") mutha fuggas:

LocalH · Jul 24, 2006

You should try turning the lights off and taking screenshots without the flash. If you have something you can put the camera down solid on in front of the TV, do that also.

Shade · Jul 24, 2006

LocalH said:

You should try turning the lights off and taking screenshots without the flash. If you have something you can put the camera down solid on in front of the TV, do that also.
Click to expand...

Yeah, sorry about the crap quality of some of the pics. We actually didnt figure out how to turn off the flash until after the fact :P

Lostgame · Jul 24, 2006

Please, can you upload or link us to this amazing thing?

You could split it and upload to rapidshare, and I could let one person at a time borrow my premium account.

Shade · Jul 24, 2006

lostgame said:

Please, can you upload or link us to this amazing thing?

You could split it and upload to rapidshare, and I could let one person at a time borrow my premium account.
Click to expand...

Right, about that. The torrent is in a torrent community that basically requires an invite to get in. Heran is a member, however I am not. He was at my house for the last 2 days, so that's how this happened. I suggetsed to him we torrent it to the community, but he figured it'd be common knowledge. I thought he was wrong, thus why we made this topic.

I'll let Heran decide on providing a torrent when he replies to this topic after he gets home.

Rika Chou · Jul 24, 2006

Right. I do believe I have seen this before. Actually, I think I still have a copy of the disk from a few years back. It was posted on Cult back when Nemesis was still active, and he found some neat stuff hidden inside.

Edit: Also: http://sost.emulationzone.org/sonic_advent...eview/index.htm

LocalH · Jul 24, 2006

Assuming it's the same version, have fun.

Sazpaimon · Jul 24, 2006

I believe pach owned the actual physical copy of this once, and uploaded it to s0nicfreak's old BT tracker.

http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.php?cati...ubid=1&artid=12
http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.php?cati...ubid=1&artid=13
http://www.sonic-cult.org/dispart.php?cati...ubid=1&artid=14

Heran Bago · Jul 24, 2006

I do believe it's the same as LocalH linked to. Where I got it from, people were also saying "the voices are different rawrg" which isn't true; the voices are just not correct or in a consistent language.

Things shade forgot (I knew there'd be a couple!):
- No Big the Cat
- No Pipe at the End of City Escape
- When you bungee on that one vine, you hit the balloon no matter what.
- GUN robots make helicoptor noise when deployed
- All in-action voices are english, except Sonic's jumping noise is the loljap one
-characters start game with power-ups (testing purposes, yeah) so knuckles has metal thingymabobs in opening cutscene
- the attacks' names don't show up in vs. mode, you can still use them, but the only way to tell is if your character grunts

I'd just post the torrent file for underground gamer (where I got it) but yeah, you need to be a member to use it, and ever member would get a different ID'd torrent file.
Private trackers are just about needlessly complicated, but it ensures people seed.

edit: This is just about restating, but I have to stress that there is a huge difference between this release and the final; the music. City escape is drastically different. The forest level, eggman's level, and rouge's are quite varied from the finals too. I highly reccomend you pick up the disc image at the link LocalH provided and play this game.
You will need a Sega Dreamcast and a blank 80 minute CD-R. It's worth a try.

edit2: Now I'm confused, LocalH's link shows the Disc of the pre-release, but the menus of the preview. Thanks for the comparitive page Saz.

Sazpaimon · Jul 24, 2006

Heran Bago said:

edit: This is just  about restating, but I have to stress that there is a huge difference between this release and the final; the music. City escape is drastically different. The forest level, eggman's level, and rouge's are quite varied from the finals too. I highly reccomend you pick up the disc image at the link LocalH provided and play this game.
You will need a Sega Dreamcast and a blank 80 minute CD-R. It's worth a try.
Click to expand...

Actually, ALL preview discs of SA2 had the different city escape music, including the trial disc bundled with later copies of SA1/PSO

edit

Heran Bago said:

edit2: Now I'm confused, LocalH's link shows the Disc of the pre-release, but the menus of the preview. Thanks for the comparitive page Saz.
Click to expand...

They don't know any better. The disc is actually magazine preview, not quite an alpha This is closer to an alpha than anything, but it MIGHT be the same disc, just a different title screen *shrug*

Zweih · Jul 24, 2006

Wow, I own a copy of SA2 The Trial. Never noticed Sonic's shoes were his original ones and not the soap ones.

Quickman · Jul 24, 2006

Very awesome, but why did you not write the legend "ASSEMBLERGAMES.COM" on the CD?

hxc · Jul 24, 2006

Whaaat? You didn't know about this? Its old as hell, as in, like 6 or so years old.

Tweaker · Jul 24, 2006

Do you two mind ripping the ADX files off the disk? I'd like to analyze the versions of the songs and make a few comparisons, if you don't mind.

Sonic Heroes did this too, with incomplete/WIP music... Stephen may explain this one better than myself, as he originally pointed it out to me. :P

Qjimbo · Jul 24, 2006

Wow, does look like quite a lot of stuff is different. I'll have to film some footage for those without DCs.

Vangar · Jul 24, 2006

Or you get someone with a capture card to do it... :P

Looky, nice pics of the springs. If anyone else wants something done I'll do it.

Qjimbo · Jul 24, 2006

Vangar said:

Or you get someone with a capture card to do it...  :P
Click to expand...

I have a capture card, and it has a hardware MPEG encoder so no frame drops for me :P (though I get an annoying 1 second lag when recording)

EDIT: Also, I really hope that "flashopedia.net" text was a parody of assembler games and not a genuine site advertisement.

Techokami · Jul 24, 2006

I got an ISO of this from Lightning not that long ago. I just... lack a Dreamcast =/

Lostgame · Jul 24, 2006

Tweaker said:

Do you two mind ripping the ADX files off the disk? I'd like to analyze the versions of the songs and make a few comparisons, if you don't mind.
Click to expand...

Sure, I'll host them. I'm still downloading, but when I'm done, I'll see how long an upload would be.

Edit: Is this the version where the guy says "what the hell?" instead of "what in the world?"

Sonic Adventure 2 Magazine Preview Build

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