The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

Someone over on r/PSP got their hands of a Pre-Production copy of Sonic Rivals. Says there is nothing different in their brief play session but they plan to dump it soon. Not expecting anything crazy but a cool find nontheless

 

As far as I can tell it's exactly the same as retail.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10FNHbx8FPZTLtsfmTvLGzZYtHr4MuBCu/view?usp=drive_link

I dumped this last week but didn't get around to sharing it.

 

oh after Penders? I would absolutely believe it. They probably thought a niche Archie comic didn't matter until it suddenly did and some dude was trying to claim that all echidnas until the end of time were his.

 

The only game Pontac and Graff wrote after Penders was Forces though.

 

The mandates started before the Penders fiasco. That redrawn panel from the post I linked to is from 2006. Years before Sonic Chronicles was a thing.

Edit: Supposedly the mandates started after Sega saw the cover to issue 155 and went "Dear lord, what are the people at Archie doing? What's this soap opera crap? Maybe we've been giving them too much free reign..." By then it was too late to change the cover or the issue, but they tightened their control over the comic from that point on. Shortly after Penders quit, reportedly because he hated Sega's control.

 

Chris Chan and Ken Penders should meet up and make a comic. Imagine the possibilities.

 

Too bad we won't be able to decipher the text. If this person was so obsessed with Sonic, that he even drew a fan art with that one enemy, maybe he wrote something interesting or useful about the game / demo at that time.

 

The writing got slightly mangled by no filter. Here's the same image with a filter:



If you squint very hard, you can make out a「せぇ～が～」on the bottom column. The first kana seems to be うキャラは.　Anything else I just can't tell with confidence.

Really, we need a super high quality scan to actually say for sure.

 

From what I can see, it looks like drawing Sonic with mohawk-esque quills was an idea that came up twice and independently from each other. Interesting...

 

Wasn't the mohawk a thing, back in the betas?

 

Nah, it was just a common misinterpretation of the concept art. It's not surprising that people from both sides of the hemisphere thought Sonic was supposed to have a mohawk.

What is surprising, however, is that it took SoA so long to wise up. Or not, this is the old SoA we're talking about. Their localizations and manuals were always filled with weird ass changes and misinterpretations of the games.

 

I feel like SoA was both trying to market what they thought was "cool" (mohawks 'n stuff) while also trying to be different/go against SoJ. SoA was really trying to leave their mark on the Sonic series (I guess they kinda did).

Meanwhile Sega Europe kicked Nintendo's ass in Europe twice with the Master System and Mega Drive

 

A funny little commercial break thing for Adventures of Sonic and SATAM when it aired on the Disney channel in Asia.


Badniks may or may not find toasters strangely attractive.

 

Pffft, okay, that's cute.

Here's a fun little gem I just stumbled upon for AOSTH in the US -- it even has voicework from Long John Baldry!

 

In the port of Sonic 1 found in Sonic Jam, the spindash setting also controls whether or not the spike bug is fixed or not.

 

I am so fascinated by this claim i saw on this page of Alaab Alcomputtar that i must share it

i'll try to translate it as best i can:
"the next installments in the Sonic Franchise are gonna be a simultaneous release on the Saturn, Phillips CDI and the Neo Geo CD. A strong release is to be expected, the Saturn release is said to be an RPG with 'successive levels', the Neo Geo CD release is a compilation and remaster of the first three Classic Sonic releases, while the Philips CDI is a hard one, rumours say its a join project between Sega and Philips and it will be a unique release, so dont fret Sonic fans! Your hero is coming back strong on most consoles"

 

When's it dated? because this all sounds... weirdly plausible?
We know Sonic Adventure's development started on the Saturn and that Sonic Team was exploring the concept of an RPG, and Sonic Pocket Adventure DID eventually come out on a Neo Geo console, but is a weird mix of Sonic 1, 2 and 3 concepts that almost seems like it was rebranded at the last minute and originally meant to be called "Sonic Jam"... which was a compilation game that released on the SEGA Saturn and also had a Game.com release that wasn't even a proper collection. The only oddball is a Phillips CDi Sonic game, which sounds like something we would have heard SOMETHING about.

Really interesting find.

 

I'm not sure of the exact release date of this specific issue, the early issues of Alaab Alcomputtar had an annoying habbit of not listing their release date anywhere (the only issue that had a release date listed was the first issue and it was confusingly placed), leaving me do a lot of guesswork and consulting with other people to get an answer. I know that this article is from the third issue and that the second issue released in (from what i know) August of 1995, while the fourth issue was released in (the middle of????) 1996, leaving a possible window of late 1995 and early 1996.

 

I suppose some of what they're saying makes sense -- Sonic RPG for the Saturn at least hold some merit, as noted before.

Sonic for Neo-Geo seems like it might have been correct almost by accident. There's not a lot of information available for the original NGP's development history, at least in English, from what I can tell. Sonic Pocket Adventure was released exclusively for NGP Color, which suggests to me it wasn't designed with the original handheld in mind, and definitely wouldn't make sense to be in development at this point. An arcade port of Sonic games makes some sense, but...given Sega already had an arcade division it's hard for me to believe that putting them on Neo Geo made more sense than developing something in-house, especially since they already had ported Sonic to arcades before with the Mega-Tech and Mega-Play versions of 1 and 2. And if they were doing a home port for CD, targeting the Neo Geo CD over the Saturn makes even less sense. Given Sonic Jam did come out on the Saturn, I'm curious what wires were crossed there to lead them to their conclusion.

Sonic for CDi is an interesting idea, and I could believe that someone came to Sega and said "we would like to license a Sonic game for our system" and Sega said "well, ok, fine" because the CDi was not a meaningful competitor to anything in 1996. Less baffling than Sonic Jam for Game.com, and probably also more comprehensible than Sonic's Schoolhouse.

 

Y'all ever wanted to know why the camera lags behind Sonic, especially in Sonic 2? Turns out, if the camera were to keep up, the stage drawing functions won't be able to keep up, and areas that are meant to be drawn get skipped!