(Discovery) Unused Sonic 1 Credits BGM Bar

I don't see the notes in the PSG2 channel in the video, which is confusing me, to be honest...

EDIT: Now I see: it's a bit of a wait until after the song. Maybe I should have sat through the whole video...

 

...You are absolutely right. Removing the last three 'nRst's before the busted volume command causes it to synchronise perfectly:



Perhaps its timing is a leftover from before the end of the song was shortened?

 

I wonder if the incorrect command was actually done on purpose to quickly remove it? That, or they accidentally broke it during development and forgot to fix it in the final (which, to be fair, it is only a few small notes; heck, without context, it DOES sound like a bug).

 

I'm not technically proficient enough to look into this myself (otherwise I would), but this is absolutely something worth investigating.

I suspect it was originally intended for the ending. If you remove (or shorten) the duration where the birds are following the Tornado plane while nothing else is happening, the demo syncs up pretty much perfectly with the final ending sequence. But that's just speculation.

 

Eh. I honestly feel there is little reason to assume it was intended for anything other than Hidden Palace. As pointed out in the Sonic 2 music analysis thread, HPZ was originally going to be a cutscene-only area, which goes with the fact the demo track had an ending yet the actual implemented song looped. Nothing else in the game went cutscene area -> actual level as far as we know.

 

Like I said, just speculation. Consider this, however: the ending theme based on Sweet Sweet Sweet was requested very late into development. And without that, you don't have an ending theme, but what you are left with is an unused track with unknown purpose. I'm not assuming anything (I can't, after all), but I think it's a strong possibility that it was made for the end sequence. It's not worth dismissing the possibility out of hand. Sure, it could've been intended for a Super Sonic transformation cutscene too, but who knows? I don't, you don't, nobody in the fandom does. The only people that would actually know are the higher ups in S2's dev team, and they might not remember by now.

Regardless of whatever that track's original purpose was, I'm just curious if any of the original demo arrangement of that tune is leftover in the SMPS version.

 

Simon Wai proto already features Sweet Sweet Sweet's melody in the level select menu and we have the demo tapes of the entire Sonic 2 soundtrack. While we can say the ending theme was programmed later than level songs, there's no reason to believe the ending theme wasn't in the batch.

Also, Sweet Sweet Sweet wasn't out at the time Sonic 2 released. So technically the version in Sonic 2 is the first version of the song to be out in the wild, just like Green Hills in S2 8 Bit vs You Can do Anything in Sonic CD.

 

Yes, but the fully fleshed out ending theme is not present, only the menu loop.

 

wiki'd on the other tech wiki

 

so is there still a problem with the volume command that has to be fixed after removing the rests, or are you just calling it what it was presumed to be before this?

 

Both the volume command and the 'nRst's have to be removed to get the result heard in the video.

 

only the ‘smpsAlterVol $0C’ command right?

 

Correct.

Given that the attenuation/volume for that channel just before the broken command is 3, and 3+$C = $F, which equates to silence, I think this might just be correct.

 

Thanks! I’m trying to do a bug-fixed version of the game using the S1 GitHub Disassembly, all I have left is to figure out how to install MegaPCM on it since I want to use the higher quality drum samples of the prototype (unless just replacing the dpcm samples is all I need to do without touching anything else in the sound folder? I’m new to this stuff so I have no clue if that’ll break something, I’m looking to put this into use on real hardware eventually)

 

For restoring the drum samples' original pitches, you just need to edit a few numbers; this thread tells you which ones.

Spoiler: In case that link goes down but this post remains...

In the Z80 driver, sample $81 (the kick) should be $17+2, sample $82 (the snare) should be 1+5, and sample $83 (the timpani)... in theory, should be $1B+5, but will be overridden with the 68K driver's set of pitches. These should all have 5 added to them as well (except for the ones that are $FF, of course).

 

Thank you! Those settings were all I needed to craft what I consider the perfect version of Sonic 1 on the Genesis. 539KB and it runs well in Kega Fusion, I wonder if I could get a reproduction cartridge made of this.