Adventures with Chaotix

Couple of things I forgot to mention.

So Knuckles Chaotix is one of the few games in the series that had a unique build for PAL/Europe regions, meaning that it was recompiled for the region rather than detect the system the game is running on. This means that there are some tiny changes between the two that have never been documented before. I was able to find two.

The PAL version takes advantage of the extra lines that the resolution provides in places. So things like the title screen are actually a little different between the two versions:



2.) It was mentioned before that the demo Techno Tower doesn't seem right in the US version, and that it seems to play properly depending on when the game is reset (?). But in the PAL version, I think despite it using the same inputs as the US version, actually plays properly. Either the demo was recorded with PAL timings or maybe the game needs to account for some slowdown that used to exist in earlier builds.

Unrelated, but I found the earliest mention of a Sonic Chaotix in general in the 33rd issue Hobby Consolas from...June of 1994 (published in July I think). Not Sonic Chaotic, but actually with the specific Chaotix title. This is almost from around the time of SCES 1994 but I think this must've been before it. It looks like someone played favorites or someone apparently from Sega of Japan spilled the beans before the official unveiling. But more importantly, this is significant because it means that not only was the name "Sonic Chaotix" already chosen and pretty much stayed until shortly before our prototype builds, but the decision to put the game on the 32X instead was already decided around the time of the trade show.

https://imgur.com/JISQMJ9

It makes me wonder if Japan still wanted to go with Sonic Crackers as the domestic title in Japan, and Sonic Chaotix for the international/US release. Once Sonic was out of the picture by the fall of 1994, I guess there was some fumbling about whether or not to keep Chaotix and the idea of having specific titles for certain territories in general. And so that's what birthed that brief period of having a million titles for this game in such a short amount time near the end of development. Until it was eventually decided very late to just use (Knuckles) Chaotix for all regions anyway.

Also is it me or does the title screen always looked like it was aesthetically half missing with only the word Chaotix on the title screen. lol

 

That raises questions on the alleged Saturn build that Thomas Kalinske mentioned (and drx corroborated). The latest Genesis Crackers data is in the June 1994 of a Yuu Yuu Hakusho game, and the first 32X build is December 1994. That means that, at most, the Saturn version would've been only a month of work.

It is possible that the Yuu Yuu Hakusho data is dated earlier than June 1994 (late-April/early-May?), but if so, that is only a two month development phase.

 

I love when this thread comes back from the dead, it's my favorite one on this site. Truly feels like there's still so much more to pick at despite having 14 total pages so far.

I don't recall Tom's exact words- was it claimed that Chaotix was going to be a Genesis game, then ONLY a Saturn game, then ONLY a 32X game? Or was a multiplatform kinda deal possible but never directly stated?

drx saying the Saturn proto is true and extant honestly is the craziest part of this. Things Kalinske has said have been questioned or discarded in the past, but drx? That's hard to doubt.

 

To paraphrase/interpret, it was said by someone who was closer to the project by overseeing it at SoA that the game was originally planned on the Mega Drive. Due to performance issues and probably other technicalities and logistics, it was actually SoJ's decision to change the target to the Sega Saturn as a launch title. However, when SoA decided that they wanted to release the 32x addon, there wasn't enough time to have decent titles at launch. So a joint decision between SoA and SoJ was made to bring it to the 32x instead. At some point the senior management at SoJ thought the game would be too risky to be released due to the potential possibility of damaging the brand and wanted to either cancel the game outright or just have Sonic and Tails removed from the game (the two characters the West most identified with the brand), despite SoA wanting to keep the game as it was. Since SoJ had no faith in the 32x succeeding, they chose the latter late into the game's production. The person in charge of the project fought to keep some references like Metal Sonic and succeeded, but that was pretty much it.

The name Sonic Crackers was considered to be the release title for the game, as art assets wouldn't have been produced if it was considered a working title. Casablanca was the project's "working" title internally.

Tom might have been mistaken confusing Chaotix with Xtreme, as the latter project did cause quite a lot of problems for SoA/STI which progress would have been inadvertently more likely to be known to him. Chaotix was always a SoJ specific title, and due to well known communication issues between SoA and SoJ at the time, not a lot of people had immediate access to the producers at SoJ for constant progress updates on the project. So Tom's knowledge of Chaotix was very limited anyway. The person who directly oversaw the project from SoA came on board the project when the decision to change the target of Chaotix from Saturn to 32x was already made.

By the way, one thing I want to point out. The "1ST ROM" distinction was a specific SoJ term to denote a certain milestone for projects. They still used the term at least during the days of the Wii (NiGHTs JoD and Shadow the Hedgehog used 1ST ROM during production). The date in the Crackers ROM is hard coded via a tilemap, so it's not something that can be variably changed on compile. As such it's possible that's not the actual build date of the ROM, and that it was actually a target finish date for the "1ST ROM" milestone. I want to say 1ST ROM is a specific distinction for when the game is meant to be internally demonstrated formally to executives and management. In other words, it more or less means "first playable ROM". It doesn't mean it's the actual first ROM ever compiled. It's likely the ROM is actually from a date much earlier than April. That's something to keep in mind.

 

People have probably mentioned this before, but I'm sure the entire Sonic 3 split debacle right around holiday of '93 had some internal swing over getting Crackers greenlit, along with trying to figure out what Sonic 3's upcoming scheduling would be and how another project might slot into that timeframe. If Crackers was planned to release as a Genesis title and started development in January of '94, would a holiday '94 release have been viable? Furthermore, with Sonic 3C and all, I wonder what the '94/'95 release cycle could've looked like in an alternate timeline.

 

Didn't Mazin say that the Crackers build was just the team prototyping the mechanics as they waited for the new 32-bit hardware? This is a genuine question. I don't remember.

 

How many titles has the game gone through anyway?

1. Casablanca (working title)
2. Sonic Stadium/Studium
3. Sonic Crackers
4. Knuckles Ring Star
5. Chaotix (final Japanese title)
   
6. Sonic Chaotix/Chaotic (early localization title?)
7. Knuckles' Chaotix (final localization title)

Did I get the timeline right?

 

The game's working title (I think one other way to interpret it is a "code name"/"project name") was Casablanca, so it was referred to that internally from beginning to end (MD to 32X). Sonic Stadium was what the game was known as outside of Japan, at least to STI who was aware that the game existed by that title as late as May 1994. By June 1994 when the game was presumably decided to be on the 32x, it was given the Sonic Chaotix name presumably internationally and Sonic Crackers (S32X) as a possible final domestic title due to the art existing in the 1207 ROM that late in development. When Sonic and Tails were dropped, Knuckles Ring Star became the international name but I'm not sure if it was also the domestic one right away. I have a feeling it was at some point, but by December of 1994, Chaotix became the final Japanese title as well as the international title indirectly through the title screen and ROM header. I don't think the game ever refers to itself as Knuckles Chaotix, so the Knuckles Chaotix title that was used internationally was only used in marketing and box/manual toward the very tail end of the game's development.

Since most of the team that worked on Chaotix also worked on CD, I want to say that preproduction would've probably began in the Fall of 1993, probably no later than November. January seems like a good date to start programming.

Sonic Crackers, the ROM itself, is not set up to be a once and done 'tech demo'. I think those who disassembled the ROM as well as myself conclude it was definitely laid out to be an actual game. So what you see in Crackers would've shown up one way or another if production had continued on that path I think.

 

My thought is that its a play on the word Chaotics to play on the 32X name. Replace the 'cs' with 'x' so while it sounds the same it looks cooler.

Chaotic does fit the theme of the game, it's a bit of a chaotic mess after all. lol

The proposed titles definitely had a play on words thing going, with Crackers/Clackers (phonetic), Ring Star/Star Ring/Starring, Chaotics/Chaotix. Someone was just having fun.

 

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Yep, that's how I always viewed it. Chaotix's gameplay is super chaotic with the ring band mechanic, the whimsical level design and the powerups. They were definitely going for a chaotic play style. Which is probably why they picked a carnival/theme park theme for the whole game.

That's likely the reason I don't mind the ring band mechanic as much as many. When I play Chaotix I don't expect it to play like a traditional Sonic game, I expect it to be chaotic and whimsical in a fun way.

 

With the 30th anniversary coming up, this game should get some extra love and research this year. I'd still love to see a decompilation get finished and hacks become more viable, but I know how incredibly hard that's been to do.

But we just saw the community release a full legit decompilation for Sonic Unleashed, so anything is possible if the right people get together.

Either way, I hope people can keep this thread alive. This is such an odd but fascinating game.

 

You mean you'd like to see a disassembly get finished. This game was not coded in C.

Sonic Unleashed got a static recompilation. That's neither a disassembly nor a decompilation.

 

Regardless, this game would really benefit from a mod-friendly port, given its half-bakedness, myriad of scrapped content and unfulfilled potential.

 

The 1207 build, while having Chaotix on the main screen, does still have Knuckles' Ring Star on the title cards.



Plus the earlier title screen



So Knuckles was at least part of the title in some fashion early on, then dropped on the Japanese side of things.

 

It still feels like it's up in the air if that's really an early title screen, though. Others have made a similar guess in the past I believe, but I think that build there was just a pure black screen with the -SCENARIO GAME 1P- text and nothing more, so the magazine added their own graphics on top to have something more to show readers. I suppose we'll never truly know. I wonder where the Knuckles graphic came from, though...

 

I believe someone found that a similar image had been used on a Cracker Jack prize sticker back in the day. It's not exact, but close enough that I'd venture they're both based on the same original art.

 

I've always doubted that was a real title screen, because if you take the text at the bottom as being indiciative of pixel heights, assuming the lines that make up the letters are single pixels tall, then the glow around the "Knuckles' Ring Star" logo looks to be at a higher resolution or pixel depth than the text. Obviously blurriness of the image makes it impossible to discern actual pixels, but they don't look like they come from the same screen to me.

Regardless, I believe the point was that Knuckles in the title was possessive all the way back before it was called Chaotix, as evident by the name on the title card. One thing to point out however: there's no space between the apostrophe-s and R in "knuckles'ring star."