Cancelled SegaSonic game SegaSonic Bros. (1992) found

So obviously the Sonic band colours are inconsistent between the game and concept art, but I gotta say that I just love the "White with Red Crest" colouring for Sharps. Makes him look like this little stout angry chicken man, which appeals to me more than a parakeet.

I suppose if he were a rooster, Sonic's band would be taking the phrase "rock out with your cock out" to the literal extreme.

 

We could suggest to Taxman/Christian Whitehead to insert Mach the Rabbit, Max the Monkey and Sharps the Parakeet in a future sequel to Sonic Mania. :D
It would only have to define the shoes and the size of the characters/sprites, because we already know their official colors.

Here is my suggestion...

Mach the Rabbit (white/albino): Same size as Sonic, red eyes/nose;

Max the Monkey: Same color and size as Knuckles;

Sharps the Parakeet (blue - same color as Sonic): Same size as Tails, yellow crest/neb/legs, and gloves on their wings.


The shoes of each of them did not think of anything original...

 

We also know the sizes though, if anything their sizes are the most reliable thing, much more than their colours- we just have to look at the various artwork done at the time of them. Basically it's "they're all taller than Sonic except maybe Sharps, but they're not as tall as Vector".

 

Personally, I think that removing the band before going ahead with the Sonic series was a good choice. It allowed Sonic 1 to rightfully focus on Sonic, whereas I think things would get a little confusing if there was all this focus on the band in multimedia while still trying to promote Sonic as the lead. Of course, once the series was established, the time was right for multiple new characters to be introduced, and we all know about the ensemble cast of SatAM.

It's interesting how each adaption of Sonic handled ensemble casts in their own way, and how each market promoted Sonic differently.

Now, what I'm wondering is, due to the various localization attempts and series bibles and concept art, is there a direct line from "Sonic Band" through "Sonic has siblings" resulting in Sonic Underground? What I mean to say is, did DiC arrive at the Sibling Band concept entirely on their own, or were they reworking older concepts and localization pitches when it came time to crank out a new cartoon?

 

GerbilSoft built a version of MAME that will play this, but the link I'm finding points to a corrupt file. I'd figured full fat MAME would have incorporated the game by now but it seems to be a week or two away (and I really don't want to build a copy for myself).

Can you help a certain wiki editor who might actually do something useful with this release? :v:

 

I don't think MAME will include this for a long time, if ever. Support was added for it once before it was leaked but the commit was purged from history. That was probably the catalyst for leaking it in the first place. The MAME devs aren't really happy this got out.

 

Are you trying to download it from here? I'm pretty sure that's where I got it from.

 

I am indeed, and neither WinRAR nor 7zip seem to like it.

 

It downloaded and extracted just fine for me, and I was able to run the game with it. Try downloading it again, perhaps with a different browser. If still no dice, I'll upload a mirror as soon as I can.

Edit: Ok, here's the mirror:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/r1szi31ta847cqb/mame64_0204+segac2.rar/file

 

Yours is being reported as corrupt or damaged too - I've tried through three different browsers and even sought help from the internet wayback machine on the off-chance something had screwed up the file since it was first uploaded. Even the online extractors won't take it.

 

Probably because it's a RAR5 archive, not a regular RAR. Update 7zip or WinRAR to the latest.

 

That would be it - ta.

 

To put this into context - I was going to write a more detailed "how to play" section on the wiki, similar to what I did with Puyo Puyo (spoilers: I didn't understand the scoring system there either), but I'd only played with the Mega Drive conversion.


Having played a lot of puzzle games of this type, particularly from this era, I can see why this one failed its location test - it's far too difficult to understand. Yes there's a tutorial, yes you can work it out over time, but in an arcade environment, gameplay needs to be immediately obvious - you can't assume people will return to the machine multiple times, but that's what SegaSonic Bros. seems to do.

It doesn't help that it also both looks and sounds sub-standard. You can get away with it for popcorn machines and rides for toddlers, but compared to some of the heavy hitters at the time on the System 32 and Model 1 boards, it looks outdated, and there's maybe only two good tunes in the game (one being the Sonic 3 special stage theme, which you don't even get to hear until level 40). When you own your own arcades in Japan like Sega do, it's less of a concern, but you'd struggle to excite people overseas (outside of the "Sonic" brand).

The instinct is to stick blocks of the same colour together - not to think about "loops" as the game demands. The fact pieces come in sets of 4 also makes the game feel a bit more clunky, especially when you're about to lose and can't physically reach areas of the playfield - perhaps having pairs like Puyo Puyo (or maybe sets of 3) would be better (although I suppose then it might just feel like a reskin of that game (which btw looks much better despite running on the same hardware)). When half the playfield is filled, the game becomes a lost cause, particularly later on when you've only a tiny fraction of a second to distinguish between colours.


It's also got a similar issue to the earlier Puyo Puyos, where the game starts being unresponsive when the speed gets too fast. So it becomes less about the "puzzle" aspect, and more about how good the joystick is. As I pointed out above - the game will probably punish you in due course anyway, so it doesn't need to use high speeds to kick people off the machine.



But it's also really close to being a good puzzle game. I find it more entertaining than Columns or Sonic Eraser, but that might be because I can emulate money. On my first go, I didn't know what I was doing - it's only on repeated tries that I've actually started seeing other stages.




I would love to see people experiment with this game - see if they can make it a more pleasant experience all around.

 

I'm curious if the inspiration for the Blue Spheres mini game in Sonic 3 actually came from this game now that I think about it. If you make a loop around a group of Blue Spheres they'll disappear as is the objective of this game, plus the music for the mini game of course came from this game as we now know.

 

I disagree with the bolded parts. My instincts had no trouble adapting the game's rules once I learned them, and if there's a "falling blocks" game designed to allow you to make a come back after half the playfield was filled it's this one. With most games of this kind, you usually can only clear small portions of the screen at once, and after you let most of the area get filled, you feel you're going to have to work extra hard to clean up your mess. Here, you can clear at once areas as big as you want, up to the playfield (in theory). And you don't have to worry too much about the colors of the blocks below the "surface"; you can just form a line (that doesn't even have to be straight) on top of your pile of blocks that goes from one side of the playfield to the other.

I do agree that it goes too fast to let you think and plan your actions at times, though. That's the one thing I would definitely change.

 

So, what are the odds that there may be some other weird SegaSonic branded games stashed away somewhere?

 

Clues for this one were right in front of our face - EGM openly talked about its existence and other magazines dropped hints... but nobody was paying attention. I don't think the value of old gaming magazines is quite as appreciated as it should be.

https://retrocdn.net/Category:Shared_magazine_scans


You are almost certain to find other examples. Maybe not of Sonic arcade games, but definitely unreleased and prototype things that nobody has documented online.

 

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNSjm7HZm-Y[/media]
2:20 to 2:40 is the fastest the game can be cleared. Now for some words.

SegaSonic Bros. just feels really unusual, and it does need some investment from the player to make sense. The tutorial doesn't seem to explain that the game isn't endless and you have the goal of either capping level or score. Getting 10 million points as soon as possible is, then, the most Sonical and "correct" way of playing the game to completion. And to work towards that, we're given a single method: full screen clears, which give a score multiplier that only works for further back-to-back full screen clears. Everything else is a distraction, as clearing anything under the fourth row while leaving leftovers is worth an insignificant amount of points, breaks the multiplier and can make the board uneven and hard to work with until the next Chaos Emerald comes. Traditional chains aren't rewarded at all, either.

I felt torn while resetting over and over until I got that 2:35 time. Would people have cared to get their names on the best times table? It is an ok fun game and looks flashy. It requires skill to arrange the spheres so you don't clear anything before you want to, but also luck because we obviously can't guess at which row a full clear will be available right every time. However, when one figures the game is leaning so much on a single working strategy, some aspects end up ringing hollow. I don't feel like getting to level 99 when even seeing the white Sonics appear make me already feel defeated. Also rather annoying is that just like in Columns we can only spin the blocks in one direction.

But in the end I'm just glad to see the game out there after all.

 

I don't believe the bird was ever meant to be anything other than a parrot; the red-and-white scheme in particular are evocative of salmon-crested cockatoos, as does the blunt beak.

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2448/3971485788_83503a01b2_z.jpg?zz=1

Further, both cockatoos and parakeets are members of the greater parrot family, the psittacines. Naoto Ohshima even tweeted that he was named Max the Parrot, suggesting that he was using the species interchangeably. The implications for the monkey haven't been stated.

https://mobile.xcancel.com/NaotoOhshima/status/975791068586233856