The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

Testing a thing, came across another undocumented "Sonic" game:


https://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File:GameMachine_JP_454.pdf&page=16

"VS Championship Basketball", circa 1993

I didn't say it was exciting. And life hasn't changed much.

 

That thing gets re-released more than Sonic 1.

 

Recent events have pushed this forward. Kinda.

Category:Technical information

I can't be expected to keep on top of everything in the world of Sonic and Sega, so the cleanup job (aka rewrite bad bits, wikify, make sure it's consistent with other pages etc.) will be up to someone else. But if any of this is garbage, do flag it up so we can do something about it.

 

This is a pretty neat look at what happened with the stages in the Wii version Sonic Colors. People may have noticed or guessed some of this already, but it's very cool to have a comprehensive video about it that also looks at the data in the game. The most interesting takeaway for me was the info about the Game Land stages, which I think a lot of people knew (as is mentioned in the video) have stages that are adapted from Sonic 1, but apparently all of them are remixes of other stages! Mostly from Sonic 1 and Sonic Colors itself, but there's also a few from Sonic 2 (both adapted from Sky Chase Zone) and Sonic Unleashed.

 

TMS just uploaded a video with exclusive Sonic X production sketches:

 

The way they suddenly care about Sonic X this year with re-runs etc. , almost make me think they are going to make a new sonic anime soon as well, Japan love to re-run old anime before announcing a new season for them, happened with cardcaptor sakura and many more

 

Remember kids, always use your eyes:

https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:CVG_UK_126.pdf&page=9

Official Sega advertising means you can pick out the official Sega screenshots.







These are not from prototype builds given to magazines, these are promotional screenshots distributed by Sega. So they're meant to look pretty.

 

It should really get its own topic, but I don't have the patience to dig up 6 months worth of gaming magazines to verify the whole story:

One of our Sonic 2 prototypes was supposedly leaked onto an online bulletin board by a UK gaming magazine. This really upset Sega of Japan, which forced Sega Europe to adopt a new reviewing policy in early 1993. Rather than distribute unfinished software, the press had to go to Sega's head offices in London and play games under supervision. No prototypes were allowed to leave the building, and it's all because of Sonic 2:

https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:MeanMachinesSega05UK.pdf&page=6

There was a lot of backlash, and the policy was reversed within a couple of months. Here's UK magazine Mega celebrating:

https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:Mega_UK_07.pdf&page=5

So annoyed with this policy were Mega that they (and maybe other Future Publishing magazines?) decided to avoid covering Sega's first-party games altogether for that brief period.


So this is a confirmed case of a Sonic 2 prototype stopping a Sega magazine covering games by Sega. Hmm.

 

Huh. I'm guessing it was either the CENSOR prototype (which we know for a fact was leaked before the game came out) or Simon Wai (which drx said on Hidden Palace more likely was leaked from a magazine rather than stolen from a toy show).

 

Given that was found on a BBS, that would be my guess too, but it's hard to know - we didn't know about the CENSOR build until decades later, so it clearly wasn't distributed enough to make much of an impact (unlike the Wai build... though how much of that can be traced to 1992?).

It would need a small army of researchers to confirm things either way. If we could pinpoint exactly which magazine made the blunder, we could compare their Sonic 2 coverage.

 

I was listening to Sonic 3D Flickies Island's soundtrack until something starting ringing in my ear. Volcano Valley Act 2's music has this orchestra hit that I recognized... and I'm concluding Remix Factory either sampled it or used the same orchestral library in their DAW, although I'm leaning towards the former as it's the same chord with a high pass filter.

Here's a clip of what I'm talking about. Hear it?
https://clyp.it/bmwbjjac?token=a378a7c60e474ddcdafc92a67843810d

 

If you want to get to the bottom of this, I would recommend joining this discord server: https://discord.gg/UkguJXe

It's a community of people dedicated to identifying VSTs and samples used in videogame music.

 

Hey guys, I just wanted to ask: does anyone know of any unused content in Sonic 4: Episode I off the top of their head? I'm asking because I started a Sonic 4: Episode I article at TCRF and want to flesh it out; it's got some stuff but it's still sort of barebones, and I don't have the game so I can't crack it open.

 

I'd hope we wouldn't have to rely on heads - that we're all supporting the Sonic Retro wiki because we're cool and handsome.

 

Anybody else reminded of Team Sonic Racing or am I hearing things?

 

A pair of Sample Sonic Shoes from 1991 has been posted...

Which appear to have Sonic 1 Beta Screenshots on them!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_Cl6YiHgeN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Ok so a few more details.

Tony Takoushi used to work for Sega back in the day and has tons of prototype and early concept stuff (mostly merchandise) which didn't get into production.

He's been posting it regularly for a few years now, so this appears to be an early concept for a pair of shoes, and oddly, they have Sonic 1 screenshots on them.

 

At this point we're gonna get everything Sonic 1 beta related except the actual beta.

 

He's posted pics of VHS tapes he put together for internal use featuring proto footage from various games. We'll probably never see any of it though.

 

I think that it has quite a similar flair, especially during the guitar section starting around the 0:14 mark.

 

I would honestly chalk that up to the scene caring ultimately more about finals than prototypes. Yea, "betas" as they usually called them were welcomed if that's all that was available, but final versions were quite preferred. They would even sometimes offer patches to convert "betas" into finals to save on bandwidth (remember, these were BBSes, meaning they were actually being dialed up via phone lines, which could sometimes be expensive so anything to get you the end result faster was welcomed). So many people would patch their "beta" ROMs to final as the ROMs would be released.

I still wonder if the original scene release for the Spinball beta is still floating around out there somewhere. I'd also like to know the true source of the final Spinball with the Nakamura soundtrack. Has anyone ever actually found it on a cartridge? I've noticed the serial number of the Nakamura soundtrack ROM is slightly corrupted compared to the original soundtrack, almost in a "piraty" way. Maybe that was honestly a scene release too? Not all scene releases had intros from what I see in the small collection I have.