Adventures with Chaotix

I agree it's more likely it's a magazine edit given what we know. For all we know, it might still say "Sonic Crackers" there! I would find it odd to not at least attempt some game title on the screen, but maybe the name had just changed and they didn't have time to throw something on there? I don't know.

 

I'm curious though -- which game uses the mixed resolution? And where? I'd like to check out those results, it sounds interesting.

 

NFL Quarterback Club uses it for menus.

By coincidence, I have actually very recently been in touch with the authors of Jgenesis, PicoDrive, and Ares to try and make this more accurate since the two frames are not actually lined up properly on real hardware (the 32X frame is about 4-ish pixels to the right of the Genesis frame). Jgenesis and Ares just corrected this behavior within the past two weeks, with PicoDrive to come at some point. I also got Ares to fix a bug where transparent pixels were bleeding through the frame, which is also a bug in Kega. And Gens flat out doesn't support H32 in 32X games.

The next release of SRB32X will also use this mode.

 

It's not entirely out of the question that the assets were drawn for different resolutions. Sonic CD's title screen also switched from H40 to H32 mode during development:

Perhaps Knuckles and the ring were drawn for separate builds in which they changed the resolution in between for VRAM optimizations.
Ultimately, I'm also a believer that it was just a graphic made for the magazine, but I just wanted to toss my hat into the ring of possible explanations were it to be in game.

 

Yeah, but this is demonstrating what I'm talking about. Both the ring and Sonic are squished, not only one element. The entire art asset was squished.

 

The one mystery I don't know if it'll ever get answered is why Electoria got butchered so hard for the final release. And people can't tell me it's because they needed to remove the Newtrogic High leitmotif since other songs still use it anyway. Crackers Electoria is unironically one of the most banging non-vocal themes from all of Sonic imo and has inspired so many of my creative works, and I will never stop being sad the final game shipped with a demonstrably less complex and harmonic version of the song.

 

Speaking of that title screen, I'm surprised no one pointed out that specifically β− is overlaid on top, it's not just β. Which is a very very weird deliberate choice, and actually refers to Beta decay, a type of radioactive decay. Not software development related as far as I know.

From Wikipedia:

Before you think this is just a quirk of the magazine or Chaotix in general. Not true! The developers of Sonic CD labeled builds with alpha and beta as well, and even used the minus there too.

 

just a few weeks ago:


edit: misread lol

 

The Sega Saturn Cross products manuals suggest either an SGI O2 or Mac running OS9 (EDIT: Actually, it might recommend OS7, I can't remember off the top of my head) for their tools, and ships a suite for each. The version I have from around late 96 still has japanese language (untranslated) Mac image editing software in the English-speaking set. That was 1996, so by 2-3 years later, they were definitely using Macs in japan at Sega.

 

That pin looks like they interpreted it as a piece of jewellery.

 

It is a necklace in StC, though I can't remember if that was true from his first appearance or not. He was noticeably pink when he first showed up in that comic, though.

 

He was also a bit pink in Sonic 3’s cutscenes due to using Sonic’s palette, wasn’t he?

 

Not due to using Sonic's palette - he had his own cutscene-specific palette which replaced the green of his socks with yellow (so the HUD could still display correctly) and, for some reason, used apparently intentionally pinker tones for his fur.

It's been a while since I had time to play it, but am I right in thinking the prototype we have access to uses the same palette as the final playable Knuckles (green socks and redder fur) in cutscenes?

 

Page 77 of Sonic Jam Official Guide has a piece of Knuckles art with a tan chest mark. Page 80 of the PDF on the wiki: https://retrocdn.net/images/5/57/SonicJamOfficialGuide_Book_JP.pdf

The sculpture made for reference at the time had a white chest mark: https://web.archive.org/web/2022081...l.com/NaotoOhshima/status/1560202378615214080

You can see that the 3D sculpture was likely referenced for some of Knuckles' early Japanese model sheets.

The belt straps on the gloves only appear in American and European artwork, and the Happy Meal toy. They're following this (likely American) model sheet: https://info.sonicretro.org/File:SonicOrigins_museum_pic_l_art_138.png

It specifies the correct colors for Knuckles' shoes, and indeed that Knuckles himself is red. It also specifies that the straps on the gloves are red, as seen on the Sega Visions cover and the Happy Meal toy. The chest mark is missing from the side view. Presumably there was a front view at some point?

Regardless, it appears that the European Sonic 3 Knuckles art was based on a version of this reference without the color guide, thus the angular mouth shape, the long eyes, the glove straps, the lack of a chest mark.

 

In the prototype, 2P mode and most cutscenes use the pinker palette with green socks except for the initial cutscene with early Knuckles, which uses the final player palette.

In the final game, the pinker palette and green socks combo can be seen in Competition Mode, the "try again" screen in Sonic 3 (and the equivalent screen in Sonic & Knuckles, apparently), and the darkest step of Super/Hyper Knuckles's palette. The Data Select screen, on the other hand, merges Knuckles's redder colors into Sonic's palette.

 

I'm not sure if this helpful, but for whatever reason there was a time where some western stock art was used in Japanese merch during the mid-90s.

That Sonic pointing at the viewer was a favorite one along with another Greg Martin artwork that was used in the January 1993 issue of i-D magazine.

So at least we know someone over there had access to the artwork.