Years and years ago, I copy-pasted the Sonic Retro page on Blast Prototype 611, and now I am trying to figure out if anything else is in the build. However, while experimenting around with RAM values in the final, I came across the value that handles what song to play when starting a level, $D13E. Using this, I was able to document all of the music IDs, with valid entries up to $98. Notably, Green Hill Zone is the first song internally, followed by most of the generic themes and then the rest of the stages, which makes sense since Blast 611 just boots you into GHZ without any title screen. But what really got my attention were IDs $92 and $97, both of which are short themes that would seem fitting for speed shoes and invincibility respectively. Now, I don't play Blast personally (not that I know anyone who would willingly), however I don't remember either of those things being here in this game, and YouTube uploads of the entire soundtrack completely lacks these. $98 is also taken up by a sped-up title theme, which I also don't remember getting used. To anyone with more experience with Blast, try correcting me if I am wrong and these are used. Here's the full list of songs in order: 81 - Green Hill Zone 82 - Character Select 83 - Boss Theme 84 - Title Screen 85 - Level Complete 86 - Title Card 87 - Yellow Desert 88 - Red Volcano 89 - Blue Marine 8A - Extra Life 8B - Silver Castle 8C - Opening Theme (VERY cut-off in-game, follows the structure of Triple Trouble's) 8D - Continue? 8E - Game Over 8F - Dead 90 - Final Boss 91 - Special Stage 92 - Unused A 93 - Credits 94 - Ending 95 - Boss Defeated 96 - BLANK 97 - Unused B 98 - Unused C Ironically, this DOESN'T work in the prototype, however the value that handles which character you play as ($D133) does; forcing it to 1 (Knuckles) just crashes the game, however, which makes sense as you can't even play as him and he likely wasn't implemented yet.
There are no unused themes. Check the Sonic Blast OST in SMSPower for details. One is the continue jingle and the other one is the "Hurry Up!" theme, it starts playing after 8 minutes. The sped-up title screen is the invincibility theme, which is a very rare monitor to find in the game (AFAIK just available at random in ? monitors), but it's there.
I'd definitely suggest posting audio links so we can hear for ourselves! Always neat to see more hidden content get unearthed in these old prototypes.
I already did. All songs variation ever found in Sonic Blast (including prototypes) are tagged and included in that YT video upload.
Huh, interesting; I do forget that Blast DOES have time limit for stages (except they don't show you your time, thanks game), but the fact I've never seen ANY invincibility monitor is a testimate to how insanely rare they are. I actually did find the value for stage IDs in 611, however anything other than GHZ crashes the game, putting to rest the TCRF asking if other stages are in the ROM (they aren't).
There's a single sneakers in the top left of yellow desert for some reason, but no invincibility anywhere as far as I know. Everything else is 10 rings/shield/1up/checkpoint or question mark.
Since the game uses an SMPS sound driver, playing certain songs is very easy. You don't need to figure out where stage-specific songs are. Instead you can just write the song ID to $DE03 to play it instantly and anywhere. There is a list of music memory hacks on SMSPower (https://www.smspower.org/Development/MemoryHacks) that has such offsets for many Master System/Game Gear games. Sonic Blast is listed there as well, along with a song list. The list doesn't seem to have all songs identified though.
A while back I had trimmed and looped the unused tracks for that and labyrinth; I think the only one I was not able to identify was the 'speed up' music in Blast. Since Blast has been updated with a complete music rip most of the (limited) effort I spent on that in the first place is not terribly relevant any more, but I don't think they ever did the same for labyrinth.
