Those demos were made when the service wasn't active yet. Ah right, hadn't noticed that. Also some of the ROMs freeze when selecting that section, oddly.
They couldn't have known the winner of The Great Earthworm Jim Race before it happened.... could they?
I think I've figured out where all these CD's and disks came from... "Foley Hi-Tech" ... you should read this http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:David_R._Foley ... and judging by the contents of the discs...
While I haven't confirmed either way, I would imagine a placeholder would look obvious. What's there seems like legit names and locations at first glance.
Ready for something weird? Yu Yu Hakusho: Makyou Toitsusen (June prototype) It turns out that stray YU_YU.GI file that was compressed was actually a prototype all along. The one and only file besides Kyuukai Douchuuki (maybe) that's actually a prototype. You can download the ROM from HPZ. There's a write up over at TCRF that lists some of the differences so far. One really interesting thing about the game is that it uses "Smooth Criminal" from the Mega Drive version of Moonwalker as a temp track for some of the songs! This is just like that Busytown Pico game prototype from the QA archive. This seems to be a test for the sound driver perhaps? But that's not the weirdest part. This ROM is littered with leftover data from various Mega Drive games. I've encountered matches from Space Harrier II, a prototype of J. League Pro Striker 2, and Streets of Rage 3. However, want to see something really weird? At 0x154BC0 and ending at 0x15FFFF you see this... This was discovered by rabidabid from TCRF. Looks like the spin dash, assign Tails' palatte and get (from divingkataetheweirdo)... Yeah, those are tiles from Sonic Crackers! But not just that, it's from a later build (probably from June perhaps?) because there are some new tiles here that wasn't in the older build. And because this appears halfway through this ROM, it seems that the Sonic Crackers ROM this data was from was 2MBytes, not 1MByte like the one we have. />/> So there might be some more Crackers data sprinkles throughout the ROM.
From later in that topic Pulling, some sort of victory pose, idle animations, that strange wobbly dance move, flying, ducking, spindashing. Guess they had some meaningful plans for the overhead stages!
Time to ask the obvious question: What, exactly, was a prototype of an anime license game doing in a Sega Channel Dev Disc?
Amazing that it seems like fragments from a later build of Crackers are in there - wonder if any other fragments will be found and identified? It's fascinating to see evidence of more development on those mysterious top-down stages, whatever the hell they were intended to be. Has this discovery been added to the Wiki yet?
Oh my god, those Tails sprites look awesome. Amazing find! For the record, the Dynamite Headdy prototype had Moonwalker's "Beat it" in it, so there must have been something going on at Treasure's office: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=16986 Just wondering, how can you find that kind of matches?
May I also ask how it's possible to find these things in an unrelated prototype game? I am aware this has happened before, but exactly how can data from proto game X from company A be found in proto game Z from company B? And in such (relatively speaking) good state? I don't know anything technical about dumping from cartidges, sorry if it's a dumb question. Amazing find, evilhamwizard!
It's not looking like there are any more Crackers leftovers sadly. Everything else that I was able to match belongs to other games. /> I took the final Yu Yu Hakusho ROM and did a hex binary comparison with the prototype to find where bytes were added/removed/changed between the two versions and discovered that all of the leftover data in the prototype is located where null padding data is supposed to go in the final. Using that as a guide for finding where the leftover data is located, I used a binary grep on an uncompressed ROM set folder with about 8-16 bytes from the suspected areas. In a few seconds I get a list of the ROMs that match the data, and I view the region in the resulting ROM(s) to double check. Every result matches the equivalent region in the Yu Yu Hakusho ROM (save for J. League and the later Crackers build). Various reasons. What's most likely in this case is that the individual responsible for either compiling the ROM or interweaving the EPROM binaries together to create a single ROM used a program that didn't release memory properly. So data from a previous ROM is kept in memory and inadvertently filled the regions of the Yu Yu Hakusho ROM that were meant to be padded with null bytes. This was most likely caused by someone who was responsible for managing the ROMs for Sega Channel and not the developer of Yu Yu Hakusho (Treasure). Another thing I forgot to mention. As I said before the ROM often pads itself with a prototype of J. League Pro Striker 2. However, the J. League Pro Striker 2 prototype leftovers are actually padded with Streets of Rage 3 (final) data in regions where padding for J.League is supposed to go. So it's kinda a leftover Inception. Here's what I got so far:
If that's the case, does that mean that whoever managed the ROMs for Sega Channel had access to the Sonic Crackers build? I'm amazed at the fact we found this, but also kind of disappointed that we may never find the full build.
BTW, the information from this latest leak is helpful for identifying things from prior leaks as well. For example, the June 12th 1995 "Sega Channel" Comix Zone Prototype? Take a look how it plays. This looks like it matches up VERY WELL with the "Comix Zone Page 2" Test Drive entry for July 1995. Are there any others I should look out for? EDIT: This is probably not confirmable in any solid manner, but my suspicion is that the Japanese ROMs in this set were all intended for Japanese Sega Channel. When you compare what the ROMs are to what the confirmed Japanese Sega Channel game listing has, it looks like a solid chunk of them have already been listed elsewhere as being in Japanese Sega Channel at one point before. As far as I can tell, here's what is in the folder that is NOT listed (excluding the obvious Sega Channel-intended ones, gcan_sp, nyushi and planet) : 1) Puzzle & Action - Ichidanto-R (Danto) 2) Power Instinct (Gouketu) 3) Janou Touryuumon (Jannou) 4) Langrisser II (Lang2) 5) Assault Suits Laynos (Laynos) 6) Puzzle & Action - Tanto-R (Tanto) 7) YuYu Hakusho Prototype (Yuyu) It's probably gonna be difficult to either confirm or refute this, but I would imagine if there's any evidence trail possible to pick up regarding this, it'd be in the Kyuukai ROM, since that is a game that was listed as being on Japanese Sega Channel before this was found, but has a different ROM than what the retail game has. It might be worth noting that Danto and Tanto are first-party Sega, and Langrisser 1 being confirmed on Japanese Sega Channel makes 2 very plausible anyway.
Awesome stuff! Product codes; Nyuushi Chokuzen Check Nanmon Kimon Kiki Kaikai: T-19401 Planet Message Quiz: T-19402 T-194 was the code for We Net (?????), who's name can be seen on those title screens. The only title that they were previously documented for was "Cubic Gallery" (1996-05-17) on the Saturn. It looks like Edutainment titles were their thing. FEBSAMPL.BIN is January 1995, but it has the background for February 1995. The original background looked like this (New Years celebrations); No ROM for February 1996, but 02MTCK96.RTF and GUID0296.RTF contain the contents for that month, it's possible that the graphics are included in other files, so it might still be possible to compile that month. I've updated the US schedule with the missing months from December 1994 - February 1996. It's interesting to see that the guide seems to have been a separate rom loaded in the same way as a game, thus requiring resetting the adapter to return to the main rom. It should be pretty simple to emulate loading the guide and games when those are selected. There was a Mega Drive demo of the Pico title "The Berenstain Bears' A School Day", I don't think that was documented before. Garfield: The Lost Levels; The Flintstones;
All of that Garfield text is on the CD? Did it come from any of those GARF files? I wish there was a remote possibility the ROM is hidden in there somewhere.
They're just text from the sega channel files, game roms were loaded separately. The Lost Levels first appeared in February 1996, there isn't a rom for that month, and that's the last month there are any files for unfortunately.
