The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

These two tracks are really similar lol

 

Is the Sky High music edited so that it actually fits?

 

I tried listening to the two tracks separately and couldn't hear it. The overlaid tracks are confusing to listen to.

 

Any better scan of the box featuring the screenshot on the very bottom? Early Gimmick Mountain with... red rocks. Red rings, too.

 

We have one on the wiki.

 

Has anyone else noticed that that Greg Martin 8bit Sonic 2 art has wasp badniks despite none being in that game? Or, what's more, those helmeted birds which don't show up anywhere at all (except maybe Tails Adventures)?

 

https://www.instagram.com/tonytakoushi/

More from Tony Takoushi's Instagram, get them before they're gone.

https://www.instagram.com/p/By2EsB1nL3D/

We've seen this early version of the Sonic/Amy key art before, but he has a good story to go with it.

And more Fang concept art: https://www.instagram.com/p/By5JVySHxzY/

These were in an old issue of Famicom Tsushin (issue number unknown) before the game's release.

 

It's that time again--another historical sales update for Sonic!

Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) has a historical NPD sales archive that dates the Top 10/20 for videogames in general, charting all the way back to July 2005 and last updated as of February 2018 as of this writing. Some of the earlier monthly charts listed here also include specific Top 10s for handheld games and platform-specific games (these end around 2009). (A handful of months are missing however, such as August through October for 2006; and January and February for 2007). Here are the results:

August 2005:
Sonic Gems Collection (#7 on GameCube)

September 2005:
Sonic Gems Collection (#3 on GameCube)

November 2005:
Shadow the Hedgehog (#5 on GameCube)

December 2005:
Shadow the Hedgehog (#3 on GameCube)

January 2006:
Shadow the Hedgehog (#8 on GameCube)

February 2006:
Sonic Riders (#2 on GameCube. Fun fact: #1 this month was Mario Kart: Double Dash!!)
Shadow the Hedgehog (#9 on GameCube)

March 2006:
Sonic Riders (#1 on GameCube)

April 2006:
Sonic Riders (#1 on GameCube)

May 2006:
Sonic Riders (#6 on GameCube)

March 2007:
Sonic and the Secret Rings (#4 on Wii)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (#5 on PS3)

December 2007:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [Wii version] (#10 in Top 10)

January 2008:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [Wii version] (#10 in Top 10)

February 2008:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [NDS version] (#6 in Top 10; #1 on NDS)
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [Wii version] (#15 in Top 20; #4 on Wii)

April 2008:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [NDS version] (#6 on NDS)
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [Wii version] (#7 on Wii)

May 2008:
Sonic the Hedgehog: Genesis (#6 on GBA)
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [NDS version] (#8 on NDS)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (#9 on PS3)

July 2008:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [NDS version] (#15 in Top 20, #3 on NDS)
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [Wii version] (#10 on Wii)

September 2008:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [NDS version] (#8 on NDS)

October 2008:
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (#10 on NDS)

March 2009:
Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (#9 on PS3)
Sonic and the Black Knight (#10 on Wii)

April 2009:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [NDS version] (#12 in Top 20, #4 on NDS)
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [Wii version] (#9 on Wii)

December 2009:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games [Wii version] (#12 in Top 20)

January 2010:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games [NDS version] (#13 in Top 20)
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games [Wii version] (#14 in Top 20)

February 2010:
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games [Wii version] (#17 in Top 20)

---

The NDS version of Mario and Sonic at the Olympics holds the title of the best-performing Sonic game on NPD in regards to chart rankings (#6 in the General Top 10). It is also tied with the Gamecube version of Sonic Riders for the best performing Sonic game on NPD charts for any specific platform (both charted at #1 for their respective platforms). The Wii version of Mario and Sonic at the Olympics meanwhile holds the longest consecutive appearance on the general charts (three months from December 2007 through February 2008).

[12/09/2022]: Updated above "best performing" description; does not include later information of NPD-performing Sonic games.

 

Too bad the Sega forums are gone, there was an extensive NPD topic when I had joined in '05. Of course that got lost somewhere in the shuffle of the forums merging down the line...

 

Here's another thing I've had on my mind for a while, but unlike what I've already shared this one is admittedly tenuous, but it's just reminiscent enough to nag at me into polluting this topic (sorry):

https://ia802806.us.archive.org/9/items/TalesOfMagicVol01/Tales%20of%20Magic%20Vol03.ogv

It's regarding Mukashi Banashi's adaptation of Puss in Boots (it's the first proper segment in the video) which features the titular feline as a blatant blue Felix knockoff wearing red footwear. That only describes Sonic in the broadest abstract terms, true, even when Puss goes proper mono-eyed in a few shots.

While "it's just coincidence" is the most parsimonious take, I think Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi may have been highly influential to Japanese video game developers in general for several years (there's a stronger case to be made for their Robin Hood shaping the first two Legend of Zelda games, perhaps). The anthology began airing in the mid-1970s*, early enough for it to be known to creators of the many enduring IPs of the '80s and '90s; their aims of Western themes and economical keyframe animation would be shared among both.

Moreover, Naoto Ohshima admitted to designing Blinx after the Toei version of Puss in Boots, so it's possible the Group TAC's version influenced Sonic.

*AniDB says Puss in Boots aired January 6th, 1977

 

The Sonic the Hedgehog Pizza Cutter is now available for sale.

Spoiler

What a timeline we live in

 

I gotta ask. While the SCHG in the wiki covers a lot of areas, including a lot of advanced stuff, why does it seem to have no coverage for a lot of basic stuff like editing the backgrounds' parallax scrolling, changing the water values in the levels, or editing the unused levels in Sonic 2? Unless I missed those.

 

Background scrolling isn't exactly a simple thing, the code involved is often complex and there's no hard rules about how you need to do it, other than that you need to set up the tile reloading and output an HScroll table for the VDP to use.

 

Okay, maybe that's not such a simple edit. But it still seems to be an essential subject that should be explained, since a person who uses custom level art will want to edit the parallax scrolling to match their backgrounds, especially if the original scrolling deforms them.

 

You are welcome to add to the wiki page.

 

I'm not saying we shouldn't have these kinds of things on the wiki, but if you need help now, the SSRG might have what you need.

 

I was taking a look through our magazines featuring Sonic 3 that have been scanned on the wiki, looking through to check if anything has been missed. The first thing that caught my attention was in EGM's May 1993 issue.

In the game gear section, a simple sentence: "Sonic 3 looks cool on Game Gear".

At first the answer seemed obvious, perhaps this was referring to Sonic Triple Trouble, but then I realized the timing was way off- Sonic Triple Trouble was released in November 1994. Maybe, this is instead referring to Sonic Chaos. This would make sense following Sonic 2 8-bit, but Sonic Chaos is hardly an 8-bit version of Sonic 3. Does anyone know whether Sonic Chaos was ever said to be a Game Gear version of Sonic 3?

The next, a more interesting bit comes from a December 1993 issue Mean Machines Sega. Notably this quote:

Okay, so cartridge is only 16 megabits of memory, but with twelve scenery stages? For comparison, S3&K is 34 megabits in size (the extra 2 are thanks to the the Sonic 2 & Knuckles patch chip). Another thing to note here is the inclusion of eight save slots, unlike six in the final version of Sonic 3. There is also a panoramic screenshot of Sonic 3's data select showing eight save files in a another magazine, but I don't remember which one.

Then following this is:

Six different parts, as in 6 levels? So this is what the 12 scenery zones from other quote was referencing. Sonic 3's six 1P zones along with six 2P zones- except we only have five 2P levels in the final! It has to be a mistake right?

It was here the speculation took the best of me.

In Sonic 3, there is a notable gap between Launch Base and the competition stages. The gap is mostly made up of leftover data for the S&K levels. Following this gap are a set of level slots:

• 0C - The Doomsday [?] (incomplete)
• 0D - Unknown
• OE - Azure Lake
• OF - Balloon Park
• 10 - Desert Palace
• 11 - Chrome Gadget
• 12 - Endless Mine
• 13 - Gumball Machine - Bonus Stage
• 14 - Glowing Spheres - Bonus Stage (incomplete)
• 15 - Scrapped Bonus Stage (incomplete)

One thing that is known to some people is that Desert Palace is actually out of order within the internal zone IDs. This was likely changed in the Competition Menu for the ABCDE naming scheme. That leaves the 6th competition level, which could have been $0D, or alternatively it was overwritten by the Gumball Bonus Stage, though the Bonus Stage is featured in this same magazine which casts some doubt on that idea.

Sonic 3's level select features six 2P VS selections, which also has Desert Palace out of place:

Even more odd is the inclusion of the Gumball Bonus stage for the very last 2P VS selection. The two Bonus selections do nothing when selected. At this point I'm not quite sure what to think, and I'm quite curious to know what others think of this.

 

Sega newsletters released on video claimed that Sonic 3 was indeed, a working title for Sonic and Tails; in the West, Sonic Chaos.

 

So here's another frivolous-yet-curious thing:



(relevant, such as it is, part 21:56 in). Note the blue hedgehogs. Not much, but as far as I can tell this predates Sonic. AnimeNewsNetwork says that the original run concluded by 1989. They also say that Funky Fables -- a Samurai Pizza Cat like "gag dub -- was based on two distinct animes, Ponkicki Meisaku World, and Waku Waku Doki Doki Meisaku World; implicitly they're both by Studio Junio.

Funky Fables wasn't the only pre-Sonic work to feature unnaturally blue hedgehogs either, as the TurboGrafx16 game Chew Man Fu featured them as well:



While two occurrences is hardly grounds for sussing out a pattern, I cannot think of any examples of the animal colored in other implausible hues, eg, orange or chateau green.