The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

When I get around to it.

 

I wonder what the Japanese text says...

 

Someone told me that it basically just meant that he's falling while he's shrugging. I'd like to get that verified, though.

 

Makes me wonder if the UFO concept developed from a concept where Sonic was trying to avoid a UFO catcher, because that's what that sort of pose and falling makes me think of, and of course they were something Sega had been known for manufacturing for nearly a decade, so, like, brand synergy.

If so (obviously this is speculation), scrapped mechanic winds up inspiring the alarm clock in Nights?

 

That's right. Handwritten kanji is a pain to read, but unless I'm mistaken, it's "肩をすくめたポーズのまま落ちて行く" which means just what you said.

 

This actually makes too much sense.
Like, why you have to destroy the UFO in special stages? In mania, You are pursuing it, because of Chaos Emerald. It made more sense.

Also the series romance with pinball machines and the existence of Combi Catcher in Chaotix.

 

Awesome work unearthing this stuff! It's always so exciting when these things are found after literal decades of hiding...

 

So I'm certain about 90% of everyone here knows of two unused Sonic 1 sprites. One being a sparkle consisting of two frames, and another is Sonic shrinking or seemingly falling into... something.


I couldn't individually place where they'd belong in the game... until I randomly thought of Team Rocket blasting off again!




The whole "flying-up-the-air-and-disappearing-in-a-sparkle" is (still?) a common comedy trope in shonen anime, isn't it? Anyhow, with this in mind I took the two sprites and recreated them to see how they'd look.

Voila.


Perhaps these sprites were suppose to be part of some animation depicting Sonic getting ejected/propelled/launched into someplace far in a distance, until he's far enough that he disappears into a sparkle? I'm just speculating here, but I'm almost sold on it myself.

 

The graphics for both things wouldn't be in separate places if they were part of the same animation.

Question now is, are they separate in the ROM?

EDIT: Turns out they're separate and even in different formats, so they're likely completely unrelated.

 

It's also located around where the graphics for the unused goggles and Sonic holding his breath are stored, and those are both compressed in Nemesis as well. Could possibly have been used for a separate object, instead.

 

Here's a question nobody's asking: who was responsible for this?

Well okay the answer is some dolt at Sonic Team, but this is a CG motion captured video, and that means somebody had to physically act out kissing Sonic the Hedgehog. With the power of... spending some time looking, we might be able to work out who:

The credits:

Spoilers: Sega outsourced movie production for Sonic 2006. Five studios are credited:

- AOKIstudio, which does CG animation but also concept art and design. I think it was more concerned with concept art when dealing with Sega - here's some pretty pictures for "Sonic Rider"


- Blur Studio lays claim to at least the introduction movie.

- Shirogumi does "game cinematics", so could be responsible for this scene.

- Foro Grafico also did cinematics, though they're less pretty than the above leading me to think they were brought in for less important stuff.

- Gemba also did Sonic 06 cinematics but we don't know which ones.

(all of them would downplay Sonic 06 involvement in later years)


Sega's internal motion capture team is credited. These are people who worked in Sega AM2's motion capture studio - more likely the engineers than the actors, and probably responsible for cleaning up data and making it "game ready".

Katsugekiza is a Japanese motion capture studio, and while I'm not sure who or what WONDERMAN is, there are six motion capture actors listed. One would assume Princess Elise was played by a lady, and the only feminine name there is "Ami Sakai". According to us, she also had acting roles in Virtua Fighter 5 and Phantasy Star Universe. The only record of her existence is the one we wrote.

Now here's a question - why did I just spend half an hour of my life looking into this.

 

A friend of mine is collecting those bootleg stuff, if it is needed for the wiki I can ask him for some photos and Wiki'ing it

 

Inadvertently managed to find some footage of the other Sonic Hot Air Balloon during a Meridian news report on the Icicle Balloon Meet in January 1993. The wiki seems to say it debuted in Switzerland during early 1993 and first appeared in the UK later on that year, but this and a newer article with a fair bit more detail would disprove that.

 

Just to echo what I posted on the Sega Retro board, because I know some of you are tribal:

Sega Media Portal
https://www.sega-press.com

is Sega's official press site for English speaking regions. Or at least some of them. This and its predecessor Sega PressVault has been a source of all our high quality artwork over the years. You have to register, but access tends to be granted after a day or two.

However, we just uploaded the artwork. All the official screenshots, videos and most of the box art was left behind. It's masses of content - more than I have the time and patience for, but here's a starting point:

Category:Sega Media Portal files

The oldest products on here seem to be from about 2005. There's no immediate risk that the older material will be taken down, but it ought to be mirrored if it hasn't been already.

 

Let's talk about this monitor in Sonic CD. As it is documented, it was a prototype monitor that was ultimately scrapped in the final. In prototype builds, it acted as some sort of invisible shield that can be layered with the regular shield. This is the code that handles Sonic getting hurt in the 712 prototype:

Code (Text):

1.         tst.b   shieldFlag                      ; Does Sonic have a shield?
2.         bne.s   .ClearShield                    ; If so, branch
3.         tst.b   blueRing                        ; Is the blue ring flag set?
4.         bne.s   .ClearShield                    ; If so, branch
5.         tst.w   levelRings                      ; Does Sonic have any rings?
6.         beq.w   .CheckKill                      ; If not, branch
7.      
8.         jsr     FindObjSlot                     ; Spawn ring loss object
9.         bne.s   .ClearShield
10.         move.b  #$11,oID(a1)
11.         move.w  oX(a0),oX(a1)
12.         move.w  oY(a0),oY(a1)
13.  
14. .ClearShield:
15.         bclr    #0,shieldFlag                   ; Clear shield flag
16.         bne.s   .SetHurt                        ; If the shield flag was set beforehand, branch
17.         move.b  #0,blueRing                     ; If not, clear the blue ring flag then
18.  
19. .SetHurt:

Basically, the regular shield still has priority, but if the blue ring flag was set, then it still acts like an additional shield, and it only gets cleared when the regular shield flag is already cleared. In the final, it looks like they made an attempt to remove the feature, but they merely only got rid of the first blue ring flag check.

Recently, I was taking another look at the Gems Collection symbols, and how they look in code, and I noticed that the blue ring flag is called "conbine_flag"... considering that in Chaotix, the Combine Ring powerup is also represented by a blue ring monitor, and that Chaotix was worked on by some of the people who worked on Sonic CD, and also considering the behavior as explained above... perhaps the Combine Ring powerup really was going to be in Sonic CD first, but then scrapped it?

Well, this newly released piece of concept art put in Sonic Origins seems to confirm it even further:

Spoiler

Just some food for thought~

 

Indeed, I've long wondered if the blue ring in CD meant that the Combine Ring was planned for the game, and the shield effect was implemented as a temporary stand-in. Interesting to know that that flag's name supports that as you said.

 

Oh yeah... did I seriously not document this here? If I did and I just suck at searching, feel free to trash this.

So, in prototypes of Sonic CD, and also leftover code from Wacky Workbench's copy of Sonic's code, there actually seems to be some code for what I believe is handling the unused sneeze animation:

Code (Text):

1.     tst.b    sneezeFlag.w            ; Is Sonic sneezing?
2.     beq.s    .NoSneeze               ; If not, branch
3.     cmpi.b   #5,oAnim(a0)            ; Has Sonic stopped sneezing?
4.     bne.s    .End                    ; If not, branch
5.     clr.b    sneezeFlag.w            ; Clear sneeze flag
6.  
7. .NoSneeze:

Found at the top of the ground mode routine for Sonic, it locks Sonic in place until his animation ID is set to 5 (the idle animation).

According to the Gems Collection symbols, the flag is called "kusya_flag". "kusya" looks to be shortened Romaji for the Japanese word for "sneeze". To back this up, the sneezing animation data looks like this:

Code (Text):

1. SonAni_Sneeze:    dc.b    3, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 1, $A, $A, $FD, 5

"$FD" means to go to a different animation. In this case, it's going to animation 5, which is what the code checks for to unlock Sonic's movement. Unfortunately, I have found no other code related to this, so it effectively goes unused.

If the animation and flag were to get set, though, it would have looked like this:


The final game mostly removes the code, except for Wacky Workbench, which again, has its own copy of Sonic's object code, which didn't seem to received a few of the code updates that the main object code got.

 

Is there any merit to the idea that the sparkles that fall from the Pata-Batas were meant to trigger the sneeze animation? It's been speculated for a while but I've never seen anything to corroborate it.

 

There is no code that I have found that supports that. Not even in prototypes. The flag and animation just never get set anywhere.

 

Sonic apparently sneezes when he senses danger, so I'd guess this was to play before a boss.

But it is just a guess.