The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

https://xcancel.com/SEGAForever/status/1672400109030584326

 

Does anyone have the Saturn era magazine ad Sega ran where they promised 3D Sonic coming soon over a render what looked like 3D Blast’s special stage? Not seeing it on the wikis for 3D Blast or X-Treme.
Edit: Found it

 

Gaming Alexandria have finally released 600DPI scans of this copy now, if anyone wants to have a go at translating the Sega chapter for more Sonic 3 knowledge...

 

I had to run an online translator for this (I can put read Katakana but I'm totally useless in kanji) but I found pages 98 - 107 to be the relevant sources about what strongly suggests it to be about Sonic 3.

Now the book (at least, this far in as I can tell) does not actually mention Sonic 3 by name, but if one were quite familiar on the topic they can easily fill in the lines because it reads on similar lines as to how Michael agreed to "compose game music" for Sega at their request and did so at Los Angeles and when it was sent to be digitized in Japan, he heard the results and was not satisfied with the sound quality. He then pressured them to improve it (but as the writer suggests, FWIW, he did so gently cuz he did not want inflict any scolding towards Sega like the scolding he endured in the Jackson 5 days).

Some major Sega people who were involved in the SOJ side of Sonic 3's production, were mentioned by name. These people are Sound Project Coordinator Hisaki Nimiya and Project Manager Hisashi Suzuki.

I know my own readings of this may not be quite useful for people here under Sonic Retro's standards, but I hope the pages I linked here can lead actual translators to translate and give proper Insight onto Michael's involvement.

 

I am already aware of the overall content in there, as I did do a quick and dirty machine translation with the book owner soon after it was first purchased late last year. The likes of Brad Buxer and a lot more appears to be discussed too - it should be blindingly obvious that Sakazaki is talking about Sonic 3 to anyone with at least surface level knowledge of the game's music, even though it's not mentioned by name.

There had been comments about properly translating it on here before, prior to the good scans coming out today, so it's now just up to anyone who said they could - or someone else who feels like doing it. The whole Sega chapter gives relevant context on how his involvement with Sonic 3 came to be, as well as a bunch of fun anecdote claims on other Sega projects, so I would definitely recommend a complete translation if possible

 

I was looking through the Wayback Machine and noticed this thumbnail on a 2012 capture of Marza's website:



This still looks to be from either an alternate or unfinished version of the opening, notice the subdued shine on Super Sonic.

We know that the website contains an alternate version of the opening, but could it be possible that there was another version before the site was updated in 2014?
The file from this capture is named "sonicWorldAd_618.mp4" in contrast to the file that's currently there, "SonicWorldAd.mp4."
There's no archive of this previous file, unfortunately.

I'd like to be able to confirm if both files are the same or not.

 

Just had a read through of this. Can't translate anything now. Machine translation should be fairly accurate - the book is written in a simple, clear style.

Most of the account seems to originate from Nimiya. The author of the book was only present for the final phase. According to Nimiya, Buxer and Michael did reject the music at one point as not being good enough, but they were persuaded to continue with the understanding that it would be the best of what could be achieved on the hardware.

When Michael heard the final tracks for approval, he asked why they didn't sound as good as the music in the previous Sonic games, and he was told they had less ROM space to work with. He pressed them to improve it more by removing a certain track and promised to provide a new track. They agreed and in the end got his approval.

 

Damn. What was the shit track?

 

I can't tell by the wording if the track he replaced was one by Sega or one by his own team. If the former, it's probably one of the proto tracks. But if the latter, then we now have a whole new holy grail to find. lol

 

It's ambiguous, but there are a few reasons why I'd be willing to believe it's one of the proto tracks:

• The way MJ felt the need to act gently towards SEGA, suggesting a whole ass new track instead of, I don't know, telling his team to work on a new version of a track they already had there;
• The way the MJ team tracks work in the game in general, almost as if the team didn't really think about an Act 2 and just let them be sort of butchered for that purpose, so they were no strangers to compromise;
• The way it's really amusing to imagine goddamn Michael Joseph Jackson (born August 29, 1958, Gary, Indiana, U.S.—died June 25, 2009, Los Angeles, California) listening to the proto tracks and being miffed about it enough to say, as gently as he could, "holy shit this sucks ass lol"

 

Speaking as someone who is very familiar with the technical aspect of the original Sonic games' music... no, that's just wrong: Sonic 3 has a larger cartridge (2MiB, Sonic 2 is 1MiB), its average song is larger (16KiB unassembled, Sonic 2's is 11KiB), and there are more Z80 banks to store the music in (3-and-a-bit, Sonic 2 has 1-and-a-bit), so what on earth is this quote talking about?

 

From the looks of it this appears to be a weird missing link between the early intro with the skeleton thats on there and the weird march 2008 leaks (where that hideous ass sonic meme comes from). I tried investigating the latter but 15 year old fragmented hog lore's hard to keep up.
Maybe it's a version without the additional fiery effects?

 

What, you're doubting the technical accuracy of the memoir of Michael Jackson's Japanese coordinator, many years after the fact?

It's always safe to assume the details are wrong in these accounts, especially when they're out of the realm of expertise of the author. Either Nimiya just said that as an excuse, or the author isn't remembering correctly, or there's some detail that's been left out. Good to hear your confirmation, though.

 

Couldn't it be that they had relatively less ROM space than in the previous games? With more graphics and animations, larger level maps and stuff, there might have been proportionally less room for music, specially if you consider that songs also became more complex (e.g. more samples) and that each Zone needed 2 tracks instead of just one.

 

By the way, here's the translation of the part in question:

It is entirely possible Nimiya was just desperate to get the approval and said whatever. Also keep in mind that the author is not at all a game developer, so there might be misunderstandings about what was said.

 

Most likely the latter due to the limited time they had to finish the music before Sonic 3 release.

 

Yeah, after reading this it does sound very likely that it was one of his own songs that was scrapped. And we've never heard of it!

 

Well, I was surfing in the web, and I want to ass you one question:

https://sonic-the-hedgehog-conspiracies.fandom.com/wiki/Rock_Zone

What
The
Hell

I thought I know all stupid legends about classic sonics, but this.. when it appears for the first time? Is it fake? Who is author?
Also, it's funny, that HUD colour actually same with 1103 beta HUD colour

 

Yeah, that snapshot reeks to me of Proto Lava Reef, from Proto Sonic3.
Someone might've thought it was something else scrapped during dev.
Or might want to troll those less in the known with that snapshot ^^"

 

Ok, RDNexus made this hoax
Case is solved :p