More Sega Channel prototypes dumped.

Thanks, that was it! The file was getting corrupted on my USB stick whilst transferring out.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/2967081807...kOTY4NzAtNTAxNi00ZmQ5LTg4NDUtYzVjNmM1YTBhYjNk

thought I'd check finished ebay auctions - photographs from one of the Scientific Atlanta manuals, showing something... unusual. It almost looks like a prototype of what was seen in that Epcot video - the menu has slightly different options, and the Test Drives are listed in The Arcade(??). That intro is also completely new.

 

This is probably missing a few demos from 1996, but here's all of the unique content that I'm aware of (excluding regional / build variants);

Code (Text):

1. Month  T-148 Title                                                             Filename            Status
2. 94-12        Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (Limited Edition)    SUPSF2LE
3. 94-12        Earthworm Jim (Demo)                                              EWJPREVW
4. 94-12        Earthworm Jim (Videohints 1 Demo)                                 EWJHINT1            Footage[1]
5. 95-01        Earthworm Jim (Contest Demo)                                      EWJPROMO
6. 95-02        Earthworm Jim (Videohints 2 Demo)                                 EWJHINT2
7. 95-03        X-Men 2: Clone Wars (Demo)                                        HXMEN2 / XMEN2SPC   Footage[2]
8. 95-04        Berenstain Bears' Pico                                            BBEARPCO
9. 95-06        The Adventures of Batman & Robin (Demo)                           ADBATSPC
10. 95-06        Triple Play '96 (Contest)                                         TRIPSPC1
11. 95-06        Comix Zone (Page 1 Demo)                                          COMXSPC2
12. 95-07        Comix Zone (Page 2 Demo)                                          COMIXPG2            ROM(A)
13. 95-08    08  Primal Rage (Contest Demo)                                        PRIMALCN            ROM(B)
14. 95-08    09  Primal Rage (Demo)                                                PRIMALTD            ROM(C)
15. 95-10        Doom Troopers (Demo)                                              MUTCHSP3
16. 95-10        Earthworm Jim 2 (Demo)                                            EWJ2SPEC / EARTHJ2  Footage[3]
17. 95-11        Mortal Kombat 3 (Contest Demo)                                    MK3SPEC
18. 95-12        Mortal Kombat 3 (Demo)                                            MK3_TD
19. 95-12        Mortal Kombat 3 (2 parts)                                         MK3PARTA / MK3PARTB
20. 95-12        College Football's National Championship II (Contest Demo)        COLLGFB2
21. 96-01        The Flintstones                                                   FLINTSTN            Early ROM(D)
22. 96-02        Garfield: The Lost Levels                                         GARF1220            Footage[4]
23. 96-03        Waterworld                                                        WATRWRLD            ROM(E)
24. 96-07*   18  Olympic Summer Games (Demo)                                                           ROM(F)
25. 96-08*   15  The Chessmaster                                                                       ROM(F)
26. 96-09*   N/A World Series Baseball '96 (Limited Edition)                                           ROM(F)
27. 96-09*   16  Klondike                                                                              ROM(F)
28. 96-10*       Iron Hammer                                                                           Footage[5]
29. 96-11*       Sonic 3D Blast (Test Drive)**  
30. 97-02-14*    Virtua Fighter 2 (Test Drive)**  
31. 97-03-28*    Sonic 3D Blast (2 parts)  
32. 97-04-25*    Virtua Fighter 2 (2 parts)  
33. 9x           The Lost World: Jurassic Park (2 parts)  
34. 9x           BreakThru!  

*Earliest month known, may have appeared earlier
** Test Drive may or may not be the same as first part of full game

[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]

(A) https://hiddenpalace.org/Comix_Zone_(Jun_12,_1995_prototype)
(B) https://hiddenpalace.org/Primal_Rage_Showdown
(C) https://hiddenpalace.org/Primal_Rage_(Jul_5,_1995_Test_Drive)
(D) https://hiddenpalace.org/The_Flintstones_(Mega_Drive_Prototype)
(E) https://hiddenpalace.org/Waterworld_(prototype)
(F) https://forums.sonicretro.org/index...-prototypes-dumped.25935/page-20#post-1085082

 

Slightly interesting point - X-Men was available on the Sega Channel. The game that infamously requires you to press the reset button to finish.

How did that work.

 

According to this the reset button merely restarted the downloaded game.

If you wanted to quit the game, you had to press the menu button on the Sega Channel adapter.

 

Garfield: The Lost Levels... when?

 

Patience There are plans

 

I know... and that's what I'm hoping for...

 

Fair point - I feel like I need to see one of these things in action up close. I had a feeling that a soft reset would take you back to the menu, which is why there are multiple intro animations. Had it been a case that you needed to hard reset to see the menu, you'd never see those animations... unless you soft reset while viewing the menu.

But if there's a dedicated button I guess it doesn't matter.

 

With the same caveats, here's the menus from the CANADA and MISCMENU folders along with A and B versions for 95-11. The difference with the A and B versions of 95-11 seems to be that some of the Express Games only appeared part way through the month.

Edit: Changed link to versions with fixed audio, see a few posts below.

 

Source: Daily News (Kingsport, TN), Wednesday January 21 1998 - Schooldaze Page 8

Lists something called Rollercoaster Ride plus a list of menu categories.
Those categories do line up with the undated Ocean menu from the BillyTime/GhostCorps videos, but that could just as easily be a coincidence.

 

Nice find. Those categories were pretty common, so as you say it may well be a coincidence. Maybe "Rollercoaster Ride" was just the theme for that period? I've noticed that those local cable ads where they would insert their own selection of games from the schedule seem to stop updating with games from 1998. Sega Channel announced they were closing down in November 1997, with their headquarters to close by year end, but with content continuing until June 30, 1998. So I wonder if they just put out a final disc with 6 months worth of content and no longer sent out any schedules to the cable operators in 1998. The cable operator could've just looked themselves to see what was on there, but how many would bother with that? Just speculation on my part though.

I missed two menus in my previous post, GICOMP1 and GICOMP2.

Edit: Changed link to fixed roms

 

Hello! Just came to say that all of this is amazing. I'd never thought stuff like Chessmaster or Klondike would never be found and are lost to the sands of time, but here we are. And with Garfield: The Lost Levels being found too, I'm hopeful that more Sega Channel stuff will be found in the future.

Ya'll are doing an excellent job!

 

the sega channel itself had a menu button, otherwise the entire genesis worked like normal. The reset button is just an extra button as far as the genesis itself goes, it's like the start button on the controller. It doesn't hard reset the console, it's a software button where the game tells it what to do. That's why resetting stuff in like Sonic 2 doesn't reset the emerald count, they forgot to include that in the reset button routine. Games themselves had no idea they were running on essentially a flash cart, so they had no reason to change the way the reset button worked.

EDIT: To clarify, the "menu" button on the Sega Channel reset the entire system. It would reset the game, the genesis. It was like turning the system on and off, when you'd press it, it was like you first turned the Sega Channel on. You'd get the opening Sonic animation where he'd flip the switch, and have to wait a sec at the sega channel logo while the broadcast feed would loop around so it could grab the menu. In fact, every time you turned on sega channel you had to wait for the menu. If you had a dirty cable signal, which was common, you could get stuck at that screen forever. I would routinely have to have TCI come out and clean my signal so I could progress past that screen.

EDIT: As for multiple intros: they were random every time you'd turn on the Sega Channel.

 

I fixed the audio for these, the fixed roms are here. I'll replace the link in the original post.

There are 5 sound modules which songs are selected from. Modules 1-4 and Bios. I think only the GI format uses the Bios module. I guess as they launched later they could offload some bandwidth onto the bios by having some songs there, where as SA had to maintain compatibility with first generation adapters and bioses.

Only module 1 seems to have been updated for the February 1996 menu. The older module 1 files are located in P_/MUSIC/HOWARD. Just replace the newer versions in C:\OUT with those (might want to back up the newer ones)

Where SA and GI versions were available I compiled the SA versions as they don't use the Bios module. GIPAL4.MNU and GITEMPLT.MNU only had the GI version, so I manually changed Bios Module; Song 1 to Sound Module 2; Song 1 in Menumaker as that seems to be the equivalent song in the SA version.

 

Source: The Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY), Thursday, June 20 1996 - Page D1
One game confirmed for the June 1996 lineup: Pirates! Gold

 

Dug some more into that Tennessee newspaper I found a lineup ad in and found a couple more with some new info.
These ads only seem to have appeared in the Schooldaze Edition, a section of this particular paper aimed at young kids only published once a month (excluding June to September).

Source: Daily News (Kingsport, TN) Wed. Nov 19, 1997 - Schooldaze Page 6

Source: Daily News (Kingsport, TN) Wed. Dec 10, 1997 - Schooldaze Page 6

Main event here is some concrete schedule dates!
- December 5th - 18th, 1997
- December 19th, 1997 - January 1st, 1998
(The December edition has the same mysterious "Rollercoaster Ride" & categories as the ad from January '98. So was the lineup a repeat or was the ad?)

 

Over 70 games a month, with the games changing every 2 weeks. Does that mean players still had access to ~50 games at a time, but they changed ~20-25 games mid-month?

What's with all the trollfaces...

 

I put my Sega Channel tools on Github: https://github.com/nfroggy/sctools/
I also did a write-up on how I reverse engineered the image file if anyone's interested: https://www.infochunk.com/schannel

 

Thanks for writing it up, hopefully someone can add Sega Channel .IMG support to an emulator.

I think this might be for error correction purposes as looking at the documents there is encryption added before broadcast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_correction_code#Interleaving