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Sega people say Sega things on Twitter

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Ted909, Jul 26, 2022.

  1. Linkabel

    Linkabel

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    If I'm understanding this right apparently the Tornado was going to have a transformation in Sonic after getting shot down?

    Seems like someone asked him if the idea was reused for Sonic Adventure and his response was:

    He later responded to Yasuhara where he mentioned a vague description:

    (Using DeepL for the translations)

    Wild that the idea of transforming the Tornado after getting shot came up twice in the franchise. Though, if it is true that he left a data disk then I don't see why Sonic Team couldn't have acquired it and reused it for Adventure.
     
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  2. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Yes it's from 2020, but nobody added it to the wiki:
    https://twitter.com/VGDensetsu/status/1310503324530114560

    This is Osamu Muto revealing some of the cover art he produced for Sega. These kinds of posts are really important - this is a job rarely credited in games, but you need to let us know they exist!

    [​IMG]

    It's also confirmation that hiding Sonic's head on the cover of Pepenga Pengo was absolutely intentional. I thought this was a fan edit first time I saw it all those years ago.


    p.s. I don't know if Pengo being blue is a result of that other penguin topic I raised the other day, but the original Pengo pre-dates those commercials.
     
  3. Blue Spikeball

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    Fascinating. Guess we can add "transforming Tornado" to the list of Adventure-era shonen elements that were meant to be in the original games.

    Eh. It couldn't have been any more ridiculous than this :V

    Anyone up for drawing a transformed Tornado based on Totoya's description?
     
  4. charcoal

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  5. Zephyr

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    What makes that a "shonen element"?
     
  6. Blue Spikeball

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    Transforming vehicles are a common trend in action/shonen anime and manga, particularly in the mecha genre.
     
  7. Zephyr

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    So it's a "mecha element", then.
     
  8. Blue Spikeball

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    I'm no expert, but I believe mecha is traditionally considered a "shonen" genre.
     
  9. Zephyr

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    While there are plenty of mecha works which are aimed at young boys, I don't think that would make mecha a thing specifically for young boys.

    Regardless, Sonic is an IP that targets young boys. So, it seems pretty unremarkable that it would always have had "shonen elements" ("shonen" being the "young boys" demographic, rather than any sort of genre).
     
  10. charcoal

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    According to Morio Kishimoto, the full potential of the Open Zone (aka Sonic Frontiers' open worlds) is still untapped. I'm curious as to see what he will consider to be the Open Zone at it's fullest potential, because Frontiers already provides a very solid foundation for the series going forward. I can't help but wonder what's next.
    Also, Morio Kishimoto lives with 8 cats! I think it's cute that he loves his cats so much.
     
  11. Ted909

    Ted909

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    Some interesting stuff has been coming out of the shadows since the release of the Michael Jackson thing:
    [​IMG]
    This was all found at a warehouse by Tomokazu Honma (same guy?), who appears to still work under attraction development at CA Sega Joypolis, the amusement operations company that Sega didn't sell all of their shares in this year. He seems to have been last seen adjusting the R360Zs and making these wonderful ride-on Pui Pui Molcars.

    Even what little can be gleaned from the booklet spines here is intriguing. One all but confirms that AS-1s supported the Showscan ride films Space Race and Cosmic Pinball, which I had previously suspected from vague descriptions of later installations (Sega did also have the "Power Imaginator" showing these Showscan films at Osaka ATC Galbo).

    Not so sure what to make of the one that implies CCD Cart used the Model 1, AS-1 the Model 2B CRX, and VR-1 the 2C - my first impression was that they were in development too early to have ever used any of those boards - but I have also read that the last of those did at least use some form of the Model 2 hardware on release in 1994 (likely 2A?).

    And apparently not only Honma remains working for Joypolis to this day:
    which going off Scramble Training's credits could mean any of these people:
    almost none of whom are well documented, and similiar to Honma, there may have even been more than one Nobuyuki Takano judging by how vastly different his other credits listed on Retro are.

    All of this would at least explain why we still get the odd new Joypolis attraction appearing to this day, but I had no idea so many veteran AM5 developers remained at that company. Nor so much of the old documentation - which I'd love to but will probably never see more of in my lifetime. This article on the VR-1 has a fascinating glimpse though.
     
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  12. Black Squirrel

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    I'm vaguely interested to know what the history is with motion simulators like the AS-1.

    [​IMG]

    For example, these aren't uncommon - "portable" simulators built into a trailer, or whatever. And yeah, in 2022, probably not a problem - you could probably hack together a map in Unreal Engine and have camera movements linked to motion sensors, but I remember seeing these in the mid-1990s. If this was cutting-edge technology just a couple of years before... there can't have been too many companies capable of producing footage.

    Is it possible that AS-1 "games" were distributed in this form factor? Minus the physical guns to shoot things. Could the AS-1 run non-Sega software? Were there standards?
     
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  13. biggestsonicfan

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    The Japanese says "BLUEPRINT LIST", and you can't not just drop Model2b-crx blueprints and not have me hyperventilating... I know it's not getting scanned and released or anything, but the fact it exists is HOLY SHIT levels of crazy...
     
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  14. Ted909

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    Kenji Sasaki's been good value on Twitter in the wake of all this again, but now he's only gone and got Shinichi Ogasawara to do a translation of a few tweets he made on Scramble Training's development:
    edit: Sasaki has since added this, which I've done a quick Deepl translation on:
    Fascinating to know that Sasaki and only two others did the main bulk of the graphics before the AM3 subdivision even existed, with them then copied in once Jackson was involved - from the amount of names credited under CG I was initially wondering whether some of them were under his Graphics Technologies independent, and had simply moved to Sega afterward. Shame that the pre-show remains missing though.

    I can't speak for Sega's own titles, but this happened to the one originally from Sega World Sydney:
    [​IMG]
    Moved to Luna Park in Melbourne, renamed the "Holodeck", and running whatever this is:

    This apparently lasted a fairly long time there as well. Current thinking suggests it was only removed in 2021ish.

    There is also the case of Muggo!, the film that Sega got Douglas Trumbull and his mates to make before they had Scramble Training or Megalopolis completed. I'm not sure how many 'permanent' AS-1 setups this was installed in, but it was certainly prominent at event appearances in 1992, and seems to have since made it out into other motion simulators (e.g. the Venturer S2 - which is still running at some bowling alleys here).

    I have seen it suggested a few times that the VR-1 went the route of using two Model 2 boards at once per player eye, just so it could generate even more polygons in its virtual software - christ knows how they were able to keep it all synchronised, then working simultaneously between 32 users. Considering the release timeline I'd be very surprised if its games ran on the 2C-CRX or even 2B-CRX, but perhaps there were cancelled plans for an upgrade?
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2022
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  15. charcoal

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  16. biggestsonicfan

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    We do know that Model1 units were used to make up the unreleased SEGA NETMERC for the HMD, but another tweet says AS-1 was B-CRX, VR-1 was C-CRX.

    EDIT: "christ knows how they were able to keep it all synchronised"
    I might have an idea here. The Model2b/2c uses a communication board which interfaces on the I/O board using TOSLINK, with both an input and output. In fact, this is how Daytona USA talks to the many cabinets it can link to!
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2022
  17. Ted909

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    Our current understanding of the release timeframes with most of these does muddy things - VR-1 debuted with Space Mission in July 1994 at Yokohama Joypolis, not long after the first Daytona and Desert Tank machines using the original Model 2 had been released. I wouldn't be surprised if VR-1 used 2A-CRX but who knows.

    The following year, most installations of it in Japan get upgraded to run Planet Adventure in July. But again, with so little documentation it can't be said for sure whether that was upgraded to the 2B-CRX, which started to appear around that time in stuff like Virtua Striker, Rail Chase 2, and Indy 500 before Fighting Vipers came along.

    Then the 2C-CRX comes around the following year, by which time Net Merc has had its near-nonexistent release to only a few locations worldwide and Sega have likely stopped thinking about using the Mega Visor Display much more (Mechatro's old blog on VR-1's development goes over a few issues they had faced with it - user complaints about the weight etc). Nothing I've seen so far has given any indication that VR-1 ever got another experience installed.

    However, we do know that Spielberg wore an MVD on his visit to the R&D headquarters in early 1996, and that the original Yokohama Joypolis installation of VR-1 lasted until its closure at the end of February 2001. I am also aware that the overseas installations at SegaWorld London and Sydney were removed much earlier due to technical issues and a lack of fixes, so perhaps Sega decided to keep it running in Japan out of ease with upgraded parts?

    The only explanation I can think of with the AS-1 is that later, upgraded installations may have used the 2B-CRX for the attendant controls and any imagery whilst the laserdisc ride films weren't running - at the very least we are aware that some of them had the System 32 Multi, thanks to the one AS-1 ROM that has been dumped so far.

    Model 1 underneath CCD Cart is even more confusing though, as 1. the latter only appeared at the end of 1990 and 2. doesn't even seem to have made use of a computer-generated aspect. I'm not even sure if it was still operating anywhere by 1992 and Virtua Racing - even Sega World Shizuoka appears to have swapped it for a Cyber Dome.
     
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  18. Black Squirrel

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    I still haven't spent any time looking at this, but I accidentally found an answer:

    [​IMG]
    https://picclick.co.uk/Super-Rare-Gamesmaster-Live-Event-Guide-304743572606.html

    When Gremlin Graphics went to the 1992 GamesMaster Live! event, they brought this motion simulator along with them. Experience Nigel Mansell's Williams FW14 which... uh... also goes rallying?

    I would be very surprised if this wasn't just real-life footage on a LaserDisc (or whatever), with pre-programmed motion being played along side. And they could have been doing this for years - if I'd spent more than 30 seconds thinking about it, I might have reached that conclusion sooner.

    So yeah, non-interactive live footage gave way to interactive pre-rendered stuff.
     
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  19. RyogaMasaki

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    Just a quick note, "warehouse" usually just means storage, as in a storage closet. I've noticed that a lot of translation tools like to use the word warehouse, which isn't exactly correct in most cases.
     
  20. Ted909

    Ted909

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    I'm not sure how big it is, but Honma has also posted about finding the remains of parts from an ex-Murder Lodge setup in presumably the same storage area - if it's large enough to also store both that and more of the assorted equipment you can see in the surroundings, I can imagine it being more an actual warehouse and less of a closet.

    Should additionally mention that I've seen Honma's posts shared around elsewhere with the suggestion that we should try and get more out of him, but we shouldn't forget that he still works for CA Sega Joypolis. Sasaki has probably only spoken so much about Scramble Training and various other things on Twitter because he left years ago (though has occasionally collaborated with Sega again since).

    Plus at the end of the day most of this stuff is official documentation that we aren't really supposed to see, and he's said as such too.