Do we have the Twitter of someone who would know? I can ask or someone could just post the following and tag the name(s). “「カオてィクス」の「ニュートロジックハイゾーン」は語源を説明いただけませんか？” And anyone who more regularly speaks Japanese and uses Twitter, please let me know if that would be the lamest, text-booky nerd way to ask the question ever lol.
"Neutro" and "logic" sound like the most sensible combo, with it spelled as "New-" because cool factor. My main guess before was that it was 'tropic' with a p changed to a g as if to call similarity to the word "tragic". The "High" part I never understood, but I accept it meaning something uh.. trippy, considering the content within Chaotix itself. haha Regardless, 'Newtrogic High' and 'Chaotix' are both excellent, weird names. Very otherworldly.
Hum... maybe you should look to translations into other languages? in the manuals, or in the origins museum.. Well, for example, as I saw in the reviews on YT, for rus. language- Scrap brain was translated as "Puzzle" (although I think it would be better to translate as "Brainstorming")
High Crackers/Clackers -> -rogic / -logic New Logic High Brain, Logic, "Egghead". It's a "new" place... maybe high is "highway"? There's a road on the title screen. There's a few skyscrapers - "highrise"? It's a stretch to match anything up.
Huh. For 20 years my brain literally misread it as Neutronic High. "Newtrogic" is such a weird nonsenical word that my mind couldn't even accept that name as real. I didn't even notice this when I played the game just last week.
I'd assume Newtrogic High ZONE, so High Zone would be just a higher ground. The real mystery is that "newtrogic" because the closest I could get to something that could be smart wordmixing is too complex to be right or really smart. I'd go with neutral as a base, as that's the place were you're not fighting or having any kind of risk besides the gambling of choosing characters and levels. "Tragic" could work too, as there's a tragedy in having all those characters trapped there, but I wouldn't bet too much on that. Maybe the typo was that vocal and it was meant to be newtragic, but dunno, sounds even worse. I'd need someone who knows (classic?) greek to go further. If I'm right, all the words coming to my mind or making any sense at all are greek. The "-gic" part may have more words that could link to it than I know. It could also depend on how do the japanese refer to the UFO catcher and the level roulette, and how does that translate into english. Of course, after "crackers" and "studium", more typos could be involved. I ran out of ideas, this one's hard to decipher.
Maybe it just sounded cool? Something like… Neutron, Cryogenic; two cool sounding scientific words that convey the feeling of something high tech and out of this world which they smashed together?
Considering there's a few palm trees here and the general "resort" theme of the island, 'New Tropical Logic'? And, 'high' as in it's quite the achievement. Eggman is thoroughly full of himself, after all. Just my idea of it. Theorizing with Chaotix is fun! Edit: Didn't realize Azookara suggested the whole "tropical" thing first until after I'd posted.
This definitely goes down in history with Sonic 2 Final Hidden Palace and Egg Reverie Pinch in Mania. I first listened to Tribute in the sound test, even before beating the game and I was horrified that it was cut short! I actually made an extended version and posted it up on my YouTube channel years ago called “A Tribute to Tribute”
"High," meaning high ground, could be an acropolis. That skyscraper bg sprite kind of reminds me of a modern Athens acropolis or something. EDIT: Or Atlantis? The island was a sunken island home to an ancient civilization, right?
This is super common in Japanese media, but the issue with those made up portmanteau words is that the Japanese Media will almost always explain them at some point and give an in universe reason why the name was used/made. Some in universe technobabble that's convoluted, but still makes the word seem less strange. For example... "New Neutron Logic" = "In the real world neutrons move in patterns which are too complex for science to fully understand, making them a naturally occurring illogical existence. Yet not so on this wacky Island! Here, Dr. Eggman can precisely map the movement of matter down to perfectly tracking NEW patterns of neutron movement itself, allowing him to master Chaos Energy and develop artificial dark Chaos rings which would normally destabilize and disintegrate in any other space, giving his machines immense new dangerous power! This makes the New Neutron Logic of this entire Zone Highly Predictable! A Newtrogic High! If Dr. Eggman perfects this phenomena and powers a fleet with it, he won't even need the Chaos Emeralds to rule the world! Hurry up, Heroes! Defeat Eggman's fiendish Newtrogic High Experiments before it's too late!"
You can thank decades of studying anime, tokusatsu and JRPGs for teaching me the enlightening arts of Psuedo-Science.
Huh... The buildings in this image really remind me of Sonic X Japanese opening. I wonder if there's any connection. Probably not, and my brain is just High on Newtrogic.
The weirdest part of all of this is that to hear the most of the song, collect exactly 5 of the chaos rings. You'll see a weird cutscene similar to the end-of-game emerald juggling where Eggman laughs as the chaos rings you've collected disintegrate (IMO it should have been for the ones you didn't collect but this is me getting into nitpick mode)
Oh, wow; well, doesn't this take me back easily 15-18 years...this really takes me back, guys... Well, back in the day, I got extraordinarily obsessed with the Sonic Crackers prototype for a bit...I was able to create and customize my own levels, to a certain extent - I added a couple *new* levels, and was even able to decompress and add my own art, so I actually was able to create a custom title screen. (I may - may still have a copy of that kicking around somewhere. I'll have to look around. If I find it, I'll obviously post it.) I eventually moved on to trying to crack the Chaotix nut, so to speak, and that led me to connecting with someone who I have no idea is still on this forum, a dude who went by the name of JJFTails, and if anyone would know shit about the interior workings of Chaotix, it would've been / would be him. I saw a couple posts in this thread asking why there hasn't been a 'Sonic in Chaotix' hack. Well - JJFTails actually did create that - and it's still online... I highly recommend you check it out if you haven't seen it. He also released some hacking utilities back in the day, actually I remember we both worked on various Chaotix-related stuff, I was more into figuring out how to customize the levels, etc - he was really into the art side. I don't remember a lot of that stuff from back then - but my post history here should actually have quite a bit of information from around that time. (2004-2006) Really cool to see my what may be my favourite Sonic game getting some attention.
I grabbed the rom for that recently, and found it's possibly the only Chaotix hack on the web at all, which is surprising give just how much this community has done to literally every other Genesis title by now. Not even a simple Chaotix no-combi hack yet, or a working Tails hack. I feel like with the work that's been put into S1-K+CD by this point, at least some sort of new efforts to hack Chaotix need to be revived. Make a new better ending? Super Chaos Ring Forms? (CD Just got Miracle Sonic and it's very cool...) Tweak Stage and Enemy placements? A Non-Randomized Level order hack? I don't expect a fan made retro engine RDSKv5 port as that would be far too complex... But there's gotta be something worth doing.
Here’s the thing - we don’t - AFAIK - even have a proper disassembly for Chaotix; and even the build tool chain for that might be finicky to arrange. These are pipe dreams until somebody does the research. What I can possibly provide is known hex locations of art and level layouts - a disassembly is honestly an effort I’d love to put in that I just don’t have the time for here at 32… There is a port of Sonic 1 to the 32X somewhere, I think drx did it, but I could obviously be wrong. Using whatever compiler / tool chain he used for that would potentially be the first step to at least getting it decompiled and recompiled. Anyone here know much about SH2 assembly? I only know the smallest bit, and again - I don’t have a lot of time these days.
