Hey folks, I uploaded this old Japanese Dreamcast promo video from 1998 through my Patreon (which centers around providing better digitized rips of game video media to the net) that looks to have been sent out to consumers prior to the launch of the console there. There's about a minute of Sonic Adventure footage dating just ten days prior to the October 16, 1998 AutoDemo, if the date on the tape means anything. Without overselling or revealing too much of the specifics (since you pros would probably spot things for exact, near-missable details better than I could), the biggest thing I took away from this footage was the fact that SA1 was originally meant to run at 60FPS, a familiar fact to many here, but here we have another source to substantiate with. I really think this game looked better in motion than it did in the final version. It seems the 30FPS cap was implemented in the AD just shortly after this was cassette was produced. I have here a compilation of the pre-AutoDemo footage from the promo in this handy-dandy clip I uploaded, featuring Big's ass as the thumbnail. Some select screens follow: And check out some of these rough draft versions of the wallpapers they made before their final JP counterpoints. They were shown in the internet segment of the promo. Gamma's Dear My Friend note is kinda hostile. There's plenty of prerelease stuff of other games ranging from Blue Stinger to Geist Force, D2, and other games. There's surprisingly nothing on Resident Evil: Code Veronica, despite it being announced just two months prior! Hope this serves of some use here. As I mentioned in my Patreon post, there was actually a GD-ROM variant of this tape but has the obvious low bit-rate holding it back that analog media wouldn't innately have. Happy to supply what I hope is superior to that. =) EDIT: Actually according to Hidden Palace, that Promotion Disk was pressed on Oct. 22, 1998, which would date this VHS footage ahead by 16 days.
Nice, thanks for posting this! I'll never forget the Sonic Adventure reveal, I had a few blurry screens in UK mag EDGE (I think) and I would stare at them endlessly and let my imagination run wild. The hype was real, good memories.
I've seen this footage before - I think it was posted here, albeit in lower quality. There's a handful of video preview things between the game's announcement and launch - things haven't been dated and organised properly (yet).
Sonic Team sure had a thing for Comic Sans back then. Really cool stuff. I wonder if the "Dear My Friend" on Gamma's slide is where the title for Chip's theme song in Unleashed came from.
That Sky Deck framerate is some oof-tier stuff. I guess they decided to move to 30fps since getting that to run at at least 30 was way easier than redesigning the whole stage to run at 60.
Agreed on the Sky Deck framerate, but I think that segment was sped down to make it seem less unstable then it was. Some similar editing was done on the Tokyo unveiling footage. Regardless, it does look like the game’s performance was in much worse shape it ended up being. Almost DX-tier, IMO.
Sped down you say? Much like all we have of Beta Windy Valley being sped-down video footage? That almost seems to give more credence to the theory that old windy valley was cut for performance reasons....
I don't think the footage is being slowed down, I think that's just the game itself struggling because it can't hold 60. Only Sky Deck really seems to actively have some sort of frameskip at play, and even then exhibits additional slowdown even at the lower framerate. The rest of the footage appears to be trying to hit a locked 60 without any frameskip in place, so instead of dropping frames it draws everything and enters slow motion. You can tell it's not something added in post, because it happens right at the start of the clip -- when Sonic first sees the big slope in Speed Highway, the game chugs for just a second before returning to full speed. Judging by how often it happens just in these short clips, the whole game was probably plagued by slowdown, hence the drop to 30 across the board.
Allow me to share an Internet Archive like of the whole footage in full quality sans the extra graphics and overcompression seen on YouTube. Sorry for taking a while. Enjoy. https://archive.org/details/dreamcast-japanese-pre-launch-promo-video-vhs-october-6-1998
I found it pretty solid in framerate, even in an emulator. was pretty surprised when I got to Those Rooms in Final Egg and didn't come across any hitching. this was probably done by some pretty striking pop-in and a low draw distance, which I didn't remember so clearly being in SADX. I can check the footage I've been recording if it's important.
I encounter lag in many places like the Final Egg rooms. This is a modded DC though. (HDMI upscale). I figured that would have no effect though.
Yeah, it absolutely chugs in certain stages. Red Mountain and Final Egg are probably where it's most egregious. Source: I play the game on an unmodded Dreamcast via a Sharp CRT pretty regularly.
Spoiler It's only the best font ever! I'm not even joking, I love Comic Sans. I haven't played much of the original DC version of Sonic Adventure so seeing the slow down is jarring. Still very cool to see this footage!
The slowdown isn’t that bad in the final. This footage is of the game before the framerate was capped to 30fps, isn’t it? By the way, how were they able to solve these issues in SA2? Are the levels that much less complex? How about the lighting and effects? I wonder (sidenote) if a DC mod could ever happen that optimizes the game.
