That's right, tommorow is the second anniversary of drx's February 23rd, 2008 prototype release! I decided to make this thread to discuss any and all prototypes drx released on this day. Yeah, I know what the admins are thinking.....What a messy topic. Well, I kind of think that this was an important day in the history of emulation because at least one of everyone's dreams came true on that day. For me, the Sonic the Hedgehog prototypes and Jurassic Park Rampage Edition prototypes were my favorites of this release. Check out the 0630 JPRE beta: I was very impressed that there was that much difference between this version and the final. Sadly, some of the betas released in this day seem to be corrupted or something. They will not load in any Sega Genesis/Mega Drive emulator even with a a corrected checksum. When the game loads, you are greeted with a black screen and nothing else. None of the sonic betas released on this day have this problem thankfully but there are quite a few others that have this problem. Two such betas: Jurassic Park Rampage Edition 0620 and 0622 betas have this problem. There are more betas for other games with this problem as well. If I knew where to start, I'd fix the problem for all the games myself. However, I don't know where to begin.
This is not meant to be a fun and joy/party thread. Its just meant to celebrate the February 23rd, 2008 release in a very mature manner. I swear, if I didn't know any better I'd say you guys were deliberately trying to get this topic trashed. I hate seeing perfectly good topics with good discussion values get trashed because of the fact nobody knows how to control themselves. Can we please be serious about this topic and discuss the releases? (I'm not back seat modding but people come on, show some maturity for a change.) Now, on topic. Anybody interested in searching HPZ.org and looking for any prototypes not working properly? There are actually quite a few around. I have no doubt about that. drx doesn't have time to fix them and I have no idea what part of the roms seem to be the problem or how I would go about correcting them. If I knew this, I would probably be doing this myself.
I see what you did there. On a more serious note, it's quite surprising that it's been nearly two years since the release of the Prototype. I remember playing Devil May Cry 4 to past the time waiting for the release, to miss the Skype conference entirely because my internet went down for a couple of hours. If it wasn't for the betas we wouldn't know about half of the leftovers in Sonic Adventure, such as the Dragon boss for example. And it was also quite amazing to have proper proof that Sonic Crackers was originally a proof of concept for Knuckles Chaotix, and that Wechidna was literally Tails in early builds.
Yeah, that release was ground breaking. I'll never forget my reaction to it when I first saw it and finally had home internet access. That was and still is one of the most epic prototype releases ever. over 1000 Sega Genesis/Mega Drive betas. While a number of them were big disappointments, many were very, very different from the final versions. Others were betas of censored US versions of games, including one of the US Streets of Rage 3 betas which featured a differently colored title screen and Axel with his iconic SOR colors. There were also a few (very lame.) US Dynamite Headdy betas that were, while censored still in the Japanese region format for some odd reason or another. Let's not forget those Ristar prototypes either. They were pretty much the second biggest hype after all the Sonic betas that were released during this time. I actually was not part of the Sonic Community for this release. However, I'd often look at the prototype research webpages and download rom hacking tools to play with them a bit. Before I had internet, it was very difficult to look at Sonic Retro because for some reason my high school's website blocking filter picked retro up as a "Hacking Security Risk". As a result, I spent most of my time looking at Sonic Cult (yes, at school.) for updates. During this time, Sazpaimon was in control and he did the Sonic 3C 0408 beta page. I (figuratively speaking) ate up as much of that section as I could. Sadly, it was one of the last sections on Sonic Cult to be updated. Kind of sad to see such a wonderful Sonic site die but the good part was that we got a fully dedicated X-Cult out of it. (Yes, I know it was around when Sonic Cult was still being updated. I'm not stupid. I just didn't start going there until I realized no more updates were going to be made to Sonic Cult.) Sorry for the history lesson but pretty much this little release was really big and it probably really compelled me to be a member of the Sonic Community even more. I'm also pretty sure that this release has left its mark on the members of the community in many different ways.
Which means that in 2 days (it was the 24th I started properly posting here), I'll have hit my 2 year anniversary on Retro - this mass dump being focused on this site rather than CulT was what brought me over here full time =P
I remember the time well, fondly even. Sure, I couldn't post (The Pending Approval washover would happen in a few months) but I still happily ate up whatever popped up in the forums I could see. Unless I am disastrously misremembering anyway. Incidentally, I need to recover the date I got out of pending approval.
I remember that day. It was a weekend because I was at work in the afternoon, doing a full shift. I worked 2nd shift at Walmart...my internet had gone down for a week and unfortunately it was THAT week. I sent a text message to my friend Todd and told him to check out drx's prototype releases and tell me how they were. After I finally got internets back, the first thing I did was download the prototypes. My favorite was one nobody cares about: the earliest Bernstein Bears Camping Adventure one. Now I know you probably think that game sucks and stuff, but I had it as a child and it's still one of my favorite games for the Genesis. It was nice to see the early concepts in that game, and from what I remember, I enjoyed playing it for hours. I'd love to hack the ROM to see what other changes went on behind the scenes but unfortunately I can't hack my way out of a paper bag. :P I can't believe it's been two years...jeez. edit: wasn't this place still "Sonic 2 Beta" then? I don't really remember when it became known as Sonic 2 Beta or Sonic Retro....I wasn't very much into the community at that time because I was still a trial member and wouldn't give up my last few posts. :P
Well, today has finally arrived which means that its finally the second anniversary of the release. Amazing how far we've come with research over the past two years hasn't it? These boards really have benefited from it immensely as have many other members of the Sonic Community. This release has even managed to catch the eye of non-Sonic Community members as well. Nobody who is a fan of Sega can ignore this release. If there are any people ignoring it then its pretty obvious how naive they are. I think drx deserves a big thank you for these betas. Maybe we should get him something nice. If you have the cash to do so, please donate as much as you possibly can to him to show or gratitude if you haven't already to keep hidden-palace.org open and to insure that drx is able to provide such quality releases like this one in the future. Special thanks goes to many others in the Sonic Community who took the time to care about this release. If you did something that involved this release give yourself a pat on the back and such. That includes hacking the roms, researching them, releasing them, and just about everything else you could possibly do with them that doesn't involve deleting them from your HD or doing something stupid or inappropriate with them such as trying to sell them on ebay. Nobody wants a rom by itself for money, they want cart with a rom for money. =P
This proto release was the hight of my blogging career. I was a paid blogger for Download Squad.com. My coverage of this release got me on the front page of Digg and the top ten in all categories for that day. It also nearly melted the Retro servers and pissed off drx http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/02/17/mi...-of-sega-proto/
We've got just a few more hours until this day closes. If anyone has any last thoughts, memoirs, or anything else relevant to this topic, then please feel free to post them here.
