Yeah, the whole "monetization of fangames" issue suddenly made a comeback when the devs for Sonic Smackdown started begging for donations AGAIN, despite the fact that they've been told time and time that the reason the fangame scene made it this far in the first place is because no one ever tried to make money of what was clearly Sega's IP. Chaos ensued with people defending them and saying donations are a-ok and perfectly legal because you can still get the game for free. And then it devolved into a joke hashtag making fun of Sonic and the fanbase...because Twitter, I guess?
Y'all are sleeping on twitter posts. https://twitter.com/suddendesu/status/1305096889977597952?s=20 https://twitter.com/suddendesu/status/1306573488082186241?s=20 https://twitter.com/suddendesu/status/1306596334355406850?s=20 https://twitter.com/suddendesu/status/1306931849415987205?s=20
So I posted on the Continuity Thread about Mecha Sonic's crystal, hypothesising that it might be a Fake Emerald akin to what Tails makes. So I decided to take a closer look and... Err... Turns out, it's more like an eye core, like what's on the Death Egg with the Red Eye boss, that's actually stored inside his head, not his chest. So Mecha Sonic is lifting his head off in some sort of John Carpenter's The Thing shenanigans, not puffing his chest out after lowering the chest piece like I had thought. You can even see the hinges and the other side of the head, showing that the head is more a mask for the 'Eye Core'. He does still lower the chest piece, but that thing is definitely something that's stored in the head. Kind of makes Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles' Mecha Sonic creepier...
It seems a little inconsistent with the flying version. If you go to 44:57 in this video and use the "," and "." keys to frameskip, his upper arms and shoulders stay in place.
I had a look at the sprite sheets after making sure I got the right ones. It's the same for standing and floating, both raise the shoulder by one pixel. I think they're using the same tiles for the upper body to save space and only changing the bottom tiles that show the legs, that old game chestnut.
10:07 This will have been posted back in the day, but I guess someone was waiting for the magic wiki fairy to keep a record. Anyway hey, it's the Sonic 2 pre-beta, with its basic title cards, slightly different layouts, and lack of PAL optimisations. This is the first episode of series 2 of GamesMaster, which aired on the 1st October 1992. Our pre-beta is dated 14th September. Now I don't know how GamesMaster was recorded - whether it was done every week, or in big blocks (you can see some evolutions as the series progresses so I'm guessing all 26 episodes of that series weren't ready at once), but it might give some clues about the CENSOR prototype, which other than "the end of September", we don't have a date for. Clearly it wasn't ready for whenever this segment was filmed. Or maybe it was and people sucked*. *this could be a possibility. The show usually has a review section but there doesn't seem to have been much of an interest rating first-party stuff from Nintendo and Sega. Instead you get reviews for Fighting Masters, which was nearly a year old at this point and wasn't even made available in the UK. I reckon there's some politics going on.
I mean, we know that CENSOR comes in between 9/14 and Beta 4 (9/18), based on the special stage completion alone. Given the state of the special stage in CENSOR, I’d peg it closer to the 14th than the 18th. Probably the closest estimation we can make for a build that we don’t have a concrete date for.
IIRC Gamesmaster was filmed in two or three recording blocks, with 2 episodes being filmed each day in each. Infamously they lost their original filming location for the final block of Series 3 as the original one had become unavailable. Most of the VT inserts (News, Reviews) were done on a weekly basis though to keep them topical (Dom would always record generic links for those segments) so the footage of the "Gamesmaster Prototype" was probably recorded around the time the ROM is actually dated, given they would have had a bit more time for that episode as it was the first one. The episode from the week after Sonic 2sday had a segment on how quickly viewers were able to finish the game, and I do believe a member of this forum has a story about that...
Not sure how well known this tidbit is, apparently someone on Reddit has already made the connection but I thought it'd be interesting here non-the-less. Sonic the Hedgehog 3's Special Stages reflect the first seven original levels of the game: Spoiler Angel Island Zone Hydrocity Zone Bonus Detail: the green floor might also be reflecting the BETA design, which has more prominent greens: Marble Garden Zone Carnival Night Zone Flying Battery Zone, where it was before the split: Ice Cap Zone Launch Base Zone The theme continues partially into Sonic & Knuckles, with Mushroom Valley and Sandopolis, but it's dropped after that. Spoiler Mushroom Valley Zone Sandopolis Zone The latter two are particularly interesting, since last I recall, they were the last two in Sonic the Hedgehog 3's level select. This is just pure speculation on my part, but could the original intent have been that the Special Stages were to change colour depending on the zone you're in? Like, if you got your first ring in Hydrocity, the first Special Stage would be the green and purple rather than the brown and blue we see in the game? Again, pure speculation on my part, but it would be pretty interesting, considering the only stages that align with the colour scheme are the ones with levels in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and I don't see why they'd match up Mushroom Valley and Sandopolis considering you should have the Chaos Emeralds by Special Stage 7.
Dark Sonic mentioned this back in 2007 (in this very thread interestingly enough). I don't blame you for not knowing or being able to find that information, I didn't either. I just wanted to jump in before someone makes a less than encouraging remark about it to you.
Yeah, there's nearly 500 pages to sift through... Perhaps there should be some sort of archival thread for specific bits of knowledge so we can check that and avoid repeats like ours? Still, it's an interesting subject and I'm genuinely curious if the intention was for the Special Stages to reflect the Zones they're in, rather than one per level.
How did I miss that? I was using the images from there as well... Oh well, perhaps the speculation on the relation to the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Level Select menu will lead to something new.
Was going to say, yes - the "archival thread for specific bits of knowledge so we can check that" is called the Sonic Retro wiki =P
Really? *looks for my observation that the first Special Stage in Sonic the Hedgehog (MD) takes you right to the Emerald if you don't touch the controller in a Trivia section on the Special Stage (Sonic the Hedgehog 16-bit) page that I posted a while back* Huh, guess it wasn't an interesting aspect of the design I'm joking, of course. I just really need to learn to read again, since I missed a full paragraph there.
I've found a video where Mecha Sonic isn't being obscured by the HUD - the shoulder stays in position during the chest plate opening animation (though he is bobbing up and down, so maybe not intentional), and is more or less in the same position in the "floating" frame before. Mecha Sonic's flying/floating sprites have higher shoulders in general, which helps sell the pose, so being able to raise and lower his shoulders is independent from the "transformation". I think the shoulder shift we see here...: ...is basically just a bit of an artistic cheat. Mecha Sonic never goes from his default standing sprite to the chest plate animation. On the Master Emerald the animation is preceded by his crouching sprite and in mid-air it's preceded by his floating sprite. Since we never see the above 3 sprites in that sequence in-game, it never looks jarring or unnatural.
This is ancient knowledge, it works. Don't do anything and you drop right on top of where the emerald is. After that it's up to you to break open the box it's in.
