I've been replaying Sonic Pocket Adventures lately, and I noticed today that the title screen says Copyright Sega 1992, 1999. Why does it say 1992 specifically? Shouldn't it say 1991? Does it have something to do with the corkscrews? Also, a few interesting bits I noticed: Rolling doesn't speed you up in this game. It doesn't slow you down, either, but you don't accelerate when rolling. Essentially, the speed you were going when you began to roll is the speed you stick at. You can go much faster by continuing to run. And there are a bunch of slopes which you cannot roll on unless you enter them rolling. Namely any curved surface. Just thought I'd like to share.
Probably because near enough everything in the game is a rip of Sonic 2 content, but with altered layouts and S3K music.
Doesn't it pretty much share Sonic 2's level tropes, among other elements? That may be why it's got the 1992 copyright. EDIT: NINJA SWARM
Yeah, I was gonna it being a mostly rip-off from Sonic 2, until I remembered it still has unique level layouts and such which automatically makes the Sonic 2 copyright moot... What if it was originally going to be a "straight" port of Sonic 2?
There's really no reason why it should say 1991 or 1992, unless the copyright for the game was filed back in 1992 and went into effect in 1999 or something along those lines That is to say of course that the entire product is covered by the 1999 copyright despite reusing materials from older games, and the characters are obviously trademarked. 1992 seems like a pretty arbitrary mark no matter how you look at it
If it had Sonic 2 music in it I could understand, if only because I think Nakamura still had rights to Sonic 2. I half wonder if they meant to have the appropriate Sonic 2 music playing in the game but dropped in a vaguely similar manner to Spinball.
It's esentially a Sonic 2 remake with some elements from other Sonics thrown in... I don't see why it's odd to see the 1992 copyright, same as you usually see the original year in other enhanced remakes of other games. No, that's bullshit.
Howard Drossin mentioned once that the Japanese were really weird with crediting and they would credit people for the smallest things they were involved in, seeing as a lot of Pocket Adventure was taken from Sonic 2 maybe if you look at the credits it might make the 1992 copyright logical.
Technically nothing from Sonic 1 was used in Sonic Pocket Adventure. The tiles are similar, but were clearly re-drawn. I don't think there's any Sonic 1 music in there either. But the engine might derive from Sonic 2. I've heard this was the case with Sonic Advance, and the two were supposedly made by Dimps. The Neo Geo Pocket Color is a 16-bit console after all so it might have been possible to port big sections of it.
Wait, no, I just tried this, and rolling works as it should. I rolled downhill and Sonic gained speed. The physics are actually quite correct in SPA, much more than in the most recent games. The main differences I found is that you can change direction if you jump while you were rolling (which is actually a good thing) and that the rebound after you destroy a badnik seems off.
The SPA engine definitely isn't the same though. The slopes are always in steps of 1/16th of a circle. Looks like the game can't handle more than 16 different angles for Sonic's physics.
Sonic Advance 1 and SPA have some of the best gameplay DIMPS ever offered. The SPA stages were a lot like Sonic 2 levels, but if you study their level maps a bit, you'd realize how different they are from the original levels. I've always been fond of the SPA engine, and would rather emulate it in a fan game than say a typical Genesis fan game engine. edit: hit reply too early lol
