I'm really appreciate to the input from @MainMemory and @Speeps . Both legends of course! The Amy stuff is really interesting. Do you have any information that's interesting on the other bonus characters? Is Metal Sonic's, Chaos and Tikal's model the sane as the ones from SA1? I guess that could explain why they added them. I always found it weird they put a lot of effort in to make those characters but only a tiny percentage of players would ever see them.
Wait. So there were actually *5* other characters planned besides Sonic, Eggman and Knuckles? If we count Amy, who’s the second scrapped character? Non-tornado Tails?
Maybe Super Sonic? There's occasional strangeness in the series with Super Sonic being referred to as a separate character from Sonic.
the quote in the article is ambiguous and is second hand knowledge. I could see it having been said as "there are 5 other characters" talking about besides sonic, or perhaps they did indeed mean 5 more characters on top of the 3. The first interpretation would exclude Amy, the second might include her plus some other dark equivalent perhaps. A note, I also found a clip last night from coverage of E3 where someone specifically writes that "Tails is going to miss the cut" but they don't elaborate.
First of all, support your home team: Sonic Adventure 2/Development I think I looked into this - I can't remember the precise details but the impression I got is that it took Sega 11 months to talk about Tails. Which is to say, Tails didn't appear in the E3 2000 trailer, and wasn't shown in any material until April 2001. Rouge and "playable" Shadow debuted at the same time, all but confirming that six characters were involved. The speculation came from the fact that at E3 2000, Sonic Team only showed screenshots of Sonic, Knuckles and Eggman (and a tiny bit of Shadow). Also this video: There's a very vague press release (and I'm not sure if this is the full thing - I'd have to go hunting) "the game ONLY contains these characters" is something added by the gaming press. This game spent a lot of time in the oven - what was actually happening behind the scenes is still unknown.
This is a press release. That is different from a press kit. A press release is a blurb meant to be reprinted entirely. The above press release would be a small part of the press kit. We know there was a full press kit, because the images from it have been dumped. A press kit has a bullet point list of features for people to talk about. Multple outlets which talk about only 3 characters being played say they got it from documents, implying the full kit, not just the press release. A press kit would have a document with the bullet points like so as an example: *60 frames per second gameplay *3 playable characters *X number of stages etc. You haven't explained why the same claim appears in both the UK and Japan.
this one I can answer, Chaos is definitely not the same. he's less skinny, and his water blob is not animated to actually have any...waterish...effects at all. He also lacks the translucency he had in SA1 too. it was something that bugged me when I was a kid ehehehe
Where do you think press releases come from I've uploaded a fair number of press kits over the years, so I have a decent handle on what Sega would be giving away at an E3. These "digital" kits mimic their real-world counterparts, in that you typically get a folder full of documents, with slides and photographs making way for BMPs and JPEGs. There aren't any Sega E3 press kits on ebay right now but there is this Nintendo one - the Sega one is similar IIRC, i.e. a folder with bits of paper in it. Sega would have been prioritising games releasing in late 2000 at that E3. I imagine all parties knew SA2 wasn't due until mid-2001, so they didn't put it centre-stage, else its early state might distract from games you could actually buy. But equally Sega of America wanted the public to know that Sonic Adventure 2 existed, so you'd stick with the Dreamcast longer-term, hence the behind closed doors showing to limit reporting. I'd suggest the reason not much is known about the game circa E3 2000 is because not much was shown. That video, the press release, a bunch of screenshots, maybe some vague Q&A - that's probably all you're going to get. However, as the sequel to one of the most important games on the platform, journalists are going to extrapolate and speculate on what they have - there are no screenshots of Tails, so the question is "where's Tails??". SoA probably couldn't answer that question so the (poor) assumption becomes "no Tails". And after 11 months of silence, "oh look, Tails". That is, unless Sega genuinely did deny Tails' existence in the game at one point. I've not seen an official source for that though(?) I'd have to re-check the magazines but as a US-developed game, chances are the Japanese mags where getting their information from English-language magazines or English-language press releases. They could easily be re-printing assumptions, or something was lost in translation, or whatever. We have dates for many things SA2-related - you can probably see if they're regurgitating old news. My own personal guess is that at E3 2000, the scope of the game was still undecided. I think it's on record that SA2 had a smaller budget and time frame - it may not have been so much "there are only three characters" as "there are only three play styles".
To maybe answer this: If you collect all the emblems in the original Sonic Adventure, you get nothing. Despite sticking the emblem count front and centre of the screen, unless you're a fan of numbers, collecting them is a completely pointless exercise. And it's a weird design choice - they didn't run out of time (remembering the Western ports had the best part of a year to change tack), they just seemingly used emblems to incentivise the player to explore and learn how to play... only give them nothing if you collect them all. The bigger number was enough, apparently, though to be fair, if the player's finished everything, what do you give them? A tool to make what they've just played easier (e.g. Super Sonic?) - it's an odd one. Maybe it's the old-timey arcade mentality that A-ranks were the reward, much like they are in NiGHTS. It's a glorified high score table to impress your friends*. But I remember reading plenty of complaints about it in magazines, so my assumption is that Sega of America, who had to deal with the complaints, mandated that the sequel made more of an effort. All the unlockables in the game are a bit half-hearted - maybe it's a suggestion that Sonic Team weren't big into these things. (ChuChu Rocket's unlockables are a bit demanding too IIRC - it's not just Sonic) *Sega's Dreamcast software guidelines still talk about high score tables as if they're important. I think they were a little slow at adapting to the new reality for home consoles - there's a fair number of annoyingly short arcade conversions (Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead 2) that seem to (at least partially) rely on the player to make their own fun. VMUs with not much storage space, because what could you possibly need to store?!
You've got a point, looks like Sega were trying to recreate some of the appeal of the Genesis as the source for high quality arcade ports.
oh yea, while re-reading the whole blog on differences between SA and SADX, it is claimed that the Metal Sonic model in SADX is re-used from SA2:B, and also is different from the one on display in Eggman's base in SA, which would mean they made a different model for SA2:B, like with Chaos. Maybe I should go look into whether Tikal was reused wholesale... I do remember reading on TCRF that in SA she has barebones actions (walking and jumping), so there's a higher chance they used her from SA.
Not quite, you could "trade" emblems for Chao on the official website's version of the Black Market. But to my knowledge that was the only utilization of the emblems in the original Dreamcast version. Ironically, it reportedly never worked properly and wasn't really officially launched when the site was still around. But it did work on the original Japanese release's version of the site. PkR goes into detail here: https://dcmods.unreliable.network/index.php/2021/06/04/sonic-adventure-black-market-chao/ http://sonic-adventure.com/chao_fun_room.html In regards to Sonic Adventure 2 it just seems that the versus modes were half baked and weren't fully realized due to time constraints, and what you're seeing with the additional characters being weird is what they were able to pull together. It seems that Sonic Adventure 2 in itself has a huge chunk of it's unused content go towards the internet capabilities specifically, with some odd 2P left overs that hinted at different/more things. That would probably be a potential catalyst to later rerelease the game later that same year where there was more emphasis put on the multiplayer aspect of the game, with the additional characters actually fleshed out and more 'finished'. They didn't add Green Hill Zone as an unlockable stage though, that was a missed opportunity since it works just fine.
You know, I've seen this trailer plenty of times before (even if it is a bit before my time, I was like five years old when they dropped it at E3 2000) but it's never occured to me how unintentionally hilarious the cutting back to City Escape is. They cut this thing like "Sonic does a cool trick running from a giant truck! Then Knuckles stands around, and Eggman stands around, and then Sonic runs from a giant truck!! Chaos... Power... Dark... and then Sonic runs from a giant truck!"
