The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

The Impossible Dingo · Jan 27, 2016

Adamis, if I'm not sorely mistaken that artwork is from the Sonic 1 promotional comic.

Skyler · Jan 28, 2016

I feel like I've seen it before, but I'm not 100% sure.

AnimatedAF · Jan 28, 2016

Hmm, these new Nike shows sure look familiar..

TheKazeblade · Jan 28, 2016

Wow. That definitely looks like a missed/lost licensing opportunity.

Adamis · Jan 28, 2016

The Impossible Dingo said:

Adamis, if I'm not sorely mistaken that artwork is from the Sonic 1 promotional comic.
Click to expand...

Are you sure ? I don't remember it from that comic, but I haven't read it in a while.

Xilla · Jan 29, 2016

I remember seeing that artwork in Sega Power magazine, used for a news article where they mentioned Robotnik was getting his own game.

GerbilSoft · Jan 31, 2016

Back in the late 90's, no one knew how to get Knuckles in Sonic 2 working in emulators. Combining the S&K and S3 ROMs worked for S3&K, but combining S&K and S2 resulted in a black screen. After some hardware hax, an extra 256 KB ROM was discovered on the cartridge. Adding this after the S2 ROM fixed it.

Now, there's two interesting clues to this extra ROM that I don't think many people know about (one of which I found out about today).

1. If you check the ROM header, there's an "RO" entry where there would usually be an "RA" entry for games with SRAM.

Code (Text):

000001e0 52 4f 20 20 30 00 00 33 ff ff 30 00 00 33 ff ff |RO 0..3..0..3..|

This is indicating that there's an extra ROM that gets mapped to $300000 - $33FFFF. That corresponds to the extra 256 KB ROM.

2. Overlord pointed this one out in #retro - if you look at the S&K box (US or EU versions)...

Sonic & Knuckles (US Box) said:

Lock-on with Sonic 3 and transform Floating Island into a huge 34 meg Sonic-epic loaded with new secrets!
Click to expand...

Notice that it says "34 meg". S3&K itself is 32 megabits (4 MB); the extra 2 megabits (256 KB) is the ROM required for Knuckles in Sonic 2. It was in plain sight the whole time.

Overlord · Jan 31, 2016

Yeah, I discovered this and had a "...huh. Novel" moment as soon as I knew S2KUPMEM.BIN was a thing back around the early 2000s, because I specifically remembered the 34Meg numbering from the back of the EU S&K box, what with it being an odd number in terms of game size (you always looked at the MBit size, because more Megs meant a better game, right? =P). No idea how widely or not this particular titbit is known.

Liliam · Jan 31, 2016

Sonic & Knuckles (US Box) also said:

Play as Knuckles and tackle Robotnik and Metal Sonic with bare-fisted attacks
Click to expand...

Yeah, of all things, they got the exact ROM size right...

Josh · Jan 31, 2016

I've known about the extra Sonic 2 ROM for ages. I remember a write-up of it being one of the things that really introduced me to how deep and fun the technical side of the community could be. But I had never once considered the "34 meg" thing. That's really neat, thank you for sharing it!

I love this topic.

Black Squirrel · Jan 31, 2016

Slightly interesting
http://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File%3AVG%26CE_US_51.pdf&page=14
VideoGames & Computer Entertainment noticed Genocide City existed in our Wai build of Sonic 2. That's back in April 1993, meaning it could be the earliest publication to draw attention to it.

baba944 · Jan 31, 2016

Huh, that's really cool. I'm so very fascinated by the scrapped zones of "Sonic The Hedgehog 2". My favorite zone that has little to no information on it, is "Rock Zone". What a very mysterious zone.

big smile · Feb 1, 2016

Hirokazu Yasuhara signed a skate board, using the artwork style from the Japanese Sonic manuals (He posted it on Facebook). A neat little throw back to the past!

MykonosFan · Feb 2, 2016

Debated making this a new topic for visibility, but that might best be saved for when these are posted. Stealing the image from Donnie.

https://xcancel.com/SSF1991/status/694355526050791424

This was posted by the official Sonic YT in Melpronto's stream. This is awesome.

Jen · Feb 2, 2016

Oooh wow, that's really cool! The development of the Sonic Adventure games has always been very interesting to me because of just how much seemed to change before the games released (particularly with SA1).

I'm really looking forward to seeing this :D And yeah, we should make a separate topic for it once the documents start being released, because it's potentially a very big deal!

Black Squirrel · Feb 2, 2016

Have like, eight seconds of sped up Sonic 2 prototype footage. The background bars give it away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPC3Mnk8tog

Completely uninteresting, but it still counts!

LocalH · Feb 3, 2016

Those sprites almost look final. Hard to tell due to lack of quality.

Black Squirrel · Feb 3, 2016

LocalH said:

Those sprites almost look final. Hard to tell due to lack of quality.
Click to expand...

I think it's consistent with Beta 4 - the only possible thing of interest is Tails stuck in his push animation as he's bounced upwards.

But I have a feeling the final will do that sometimes too.

ICEknight · Feb 4, 2016

Black Squirrel said:

LocalH said:

Those sprites almost look final. Hard to tell due to lack of quality.
Click to expand...

I think it's consistent with Beta 4 - the only possible thing of interest is Tails stuck in his push animation as he's bounced upwards.

But I have a feeling the final will do that sometimes too.
Click to expand...

I think I recall that happening in the final...

baba944 · Feb 4, 2016

Yeah, that glitch happened. It happened to me quite a few times.

The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

Useful Searches