If possible, it would be nice if someone could isolate the narration from the video, I notice that some tracks sound different than they do in the final game. For example, the invincibility theme at 2:24 of the 60 FPS version of the prototype footage. I don't know if it's just me, but it sounded slightly different. If the narration could be isolated entirely from the video, then it would be somewhat easier to recreate the tracks as they are heard in the footage.
I don't think that's possible. AFAIK, in order to extract one track that has been mixed with another you need a clean copy of that other track.
Another thing I question is, why hasn't SEGA released any prototypes of their early Sonic games? They don't seem to have anything against people who do upload roms of them. (Thankfully!) But I haven't really seen any examples showing that they have.
Probably because they keep losing them, getting them stolen, or just plain don't back-up the source code before building on top of it for the next game... iirc, they wanted to release a beta of Sonic 1 for Sonic Mega Collection but had lost the ROM.
Not just any beta, Naka wanted to release the early toy show demo but couldn't find it. Though I do think it's likely Sega has some kind of source code or something from when they released S1 for mobile phones (2005) there were UFO blocks in Marble Zone. Plus it was an actual port instead of emulation.
Chunk $10 Don't recognize it yet? How about this? It's just chunck $10 wrapped around I don't know if this was known before but I didn't know this fact at all.
Dang, great find my dude! I also like the track you posted. Curious to see who touched up that title screen sprite for the thumbnail, though! (Looks snazzy.) Also, I'm not quite sure what the difference is between the remastered version and the original, can you please provide some context? o_o
I was curious to know how many of those chunks were still in the final ROM - I guess that answers part of that question Hey you know what Sonic Retro needs? Big fat PNGs with every level chunk for each zone. And one for 16x16 tiles. And maybe the 8x8 ones too. And maps. Because then we can highlight exactly which graphics are unused (like TCRF does, but better - we can use the wiki to crop things). There was some progress but my calls for Mega Drive games (+ prototypes) have never been answered.
Sega released a statement maybe 7-8 years ago that flat out said. “We won’t release any prototype roms”. It was kinda disappointing.
That's not the only solution in this day and age. I tried to isolate the narration, but due to YouTube's compression and a quite lossy VHS audio conversion, the music ends up being quite unhearable. Here's a snippet. https://voca.ro/2xpNv0bs3DH The music is virtually identical to the final counterparts, just with some different DAC samples as the sound driver wasn't altered to fit in the SEGA Chant, hence why, for example, the snares sound more punchy and low pitched. I do think it's the same sample as heard here:
It's really interesting to see how the game evolved until it became the one we know ^^ I didn't know there were videos made to show the progress until I came here. (I'm not really involved into Sonic's community usually...) And boy, VHS is such a trip to the past too ^^
You can get closer with spectral editing, though that IS a pain in the ass. Also might give AI-based solutions like PhonicMind a try, though you'd need a little $$ to get a full track done.
iZotope has a software that does the same results as those AI-based solutions, it's called RX. Quite expensive but has tons of more audio engineering tools that are very useful in varied scenarios.
it'd definitely be nice to see how good something like that would look, but for the definitive version of RX 7, paying 1,199 USD just to use it for one thing is a pretty big waste. Anyone who does do this, I have no problem with it as it's their money but it's not a good investment. But hey, if people will buy a 999 USD cheeto shaped like a dick then people will buy anything. So we should keep our hopes around the middle
While this has been speculated for some time, it's finally good to have a confirmation. I was able to pixel-guess the prototype crystals from Lz and they match the final art and they're also similar to the 8-bit version. The end result is basically the original design copied and pasted multiple times with a slight cleanup:
