The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

https://yt3.ggpht.com/YhwW7MR0kuZ0z...JaeP-deJUqBX4ObD6MVD84z_9rGHNKpt-0Alu3o4YBSOk

From the archives: as part of a SEGA Corporate presentation in 1992, a look at the hardware they would use to make graphics on the SEGA Mega Drive! ️

https://xcancel.com/SEGAForever/status/1687134228780040192

 

Who's the douga artist digitizing Sonic's sprites?

 

From the archives: Screenshots of Sonic X-treme, prior to being cancelled for the SEGA Saturn.

These are the original, actual screenshots used for promotion and magazine articles! No scans!

https://xcancel.com/SEGAForever/status/1687496616696262656

(You're welcome :P)

FYI, the posts I post here use Youtube Community versions of the screenshots, which are lossless I believe.

 

Sega Forever is going to put Retro out of business at the rate they keep releasing these long lost screenshots and artwork. Really cool to see these in full quality even though it makes it even more painfully obvious how unfinished the game was

Edit: Just for clarification I'm being tongue-in-cheek. It's awesome that Sega themselves are also giving us these long lost pieces of Sega content.

 

Retro will live on, but someone will have to sort it all out, contextualize, and review everything.

 

I'll always appreciate clear screenshots that show X-Treme at its best, and therefore proving just how unbelievably bad it looked. I was about to liken it to a Doom mod rather than its 1996 contemporaries such as Mario 64, NiGHTS and Tomb Raider, but SRB2 is literally exactly that and it's always looked a million times better than X-Treme ever did.

I know that X-Treme went through several different versions, but bloody hell just what were they going for with that particular engine? Pre-rendered sprites in a grid-based 3D world with a fixed camera and not even the loosest resemblance to the 2D games before? It was destined for failure.

 

Even if Sonic X-treme was decent by early 3D platformer standards, I really have a hard time imagining a scenario in which it wouldn't look vastly inferior to Super Mario 64, and even Crash Bandicoot. I tried out a Jade Gully port in Sonic Robo Blast 2 last night and I can say with confidence that I don't think the level design was very good, like at all. It was blocky and had little flow or speed.

The only scenario I see X-treme being even remotely competitive with Mario 64 in would be if it was developed by AM2 or Sonic Team.

 

Sonic Spinball was meant to have a PC port in 1995.

 

If anyone wants to go on an adventure:


https://archive.org/details/americancorporat0000unse_k3c4/page/243/mode/1up?q="sega+of+america"

I only had a very brief look since I was on a quest for something else, but lots of interesting, well-known things were made both by this firm and designer.

 

That S&K logo might be one of my favorite designs of all time. If I were to ever get a tattoo, it’d be that.

 

The actual illustration is credited to Tom Nikosey on Garrett Burke's site.

https://www.garrettburke.com/branding
http://www.tomnikosey.com/index.php

I always had a strong feeling that logo was designed in the West since it has that "look" to it. It's so cool to finally know who created it. What's interesting is how it was used unaltered in all regions of the game's release, which was unique considering how the games' package designs were usually changed.

 

It def has a western vibe to it with the shading but it looks slick, even to this day. It’s a very 90s style design, but I’d have to imagine if they did something like this now it’d be similar just it’d use flat colors.

But it’s a good design they were wise to use it in all regions (about that time they were retiring Mohawk Sonic too so it made a little more sense having a unified global design)

Speaking of which sonic design they used for this I’m willing to guess this was the base:

Knuckles they prob drew themselves

 

I'm not sure if this has ever been mentioned online, but here's a strange observation I made. In the Japanese commerical for Sonic 2 around this point, the emblem around Sonic and Tails looks different, yet familiar.

This makes me wonder how late these assets were used.

 

This originated as just a small reply to a friend on Discord who mentioned "Ice Cap" Zone, but I ended up branching out a bit from that and doing a more substantial tweet thread about related matters too; I figured it'd be worth sharing in here:

Sonic fun fact details which are quite often missed.

 

I'll paste the text here so it's easier to read. For one thing, you need to have an account to see the full thread:

 

I'd guess the Doomsday thing was just a goof on SoA's part. In the April '94 prototype, the zone has the same name as in final.

 

If anyone wants to go on an another adventure:

Sega says the New UFO Catcher launched in December 1991:
https://www.sega.jp/history/arcade/product/7631/

https://archive.org/details/game-machine-magazine-19910615p/page/n1/mode/1up
Well here it is being advertised in June. And our flyer is dated May. Would you plug an arcade game six months before launch? Trends suggest maybe not, unless it was delayed for some reason.

If they've got the date wrong, technically this means it's a game featuring Sonic the Hedgehog before the release of Sonic the Hedgehog. It doesn't beat out Rad Mobile as "the first game to feature Sonic" but it might be the first to feature Dr. Eggman and the animal buddies. And an opportunity to physically get your hands on Sonic.

 

https://xcancel.com/SEGAForever/status/1689670943885471744

 

Just picked up a copy of Sonic World Adventure on PS3. It’s not supposed to have a manual right? When I noticed I checked the wiki and saw we had no scans but I wanted to double check.

Seems odd since the JP 360 copy does have a manual.