I'm gonna go make a sandwich. I'll let the people decide which game they want to hear about next.
I say just go with order of release.
My vote goes here.
And I think I know why they can't say some things based on the quasi-legality. Anyway TSR this is interesting as hell, and Blaze, cool stuff as well. I anticpate more of this. I was going to go to bed an hour ago
Yeah, release order sounds best.
Projeck on
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SirUltimosDon't talk, Rusty. Just paint.Registered Userregular
Though I'm not really understanding what policy you'd be breaking with a URL, Oh well.
2 ) Piracy and emulation :
These may still be discussed as news issues, but any passing mention to methods, techniques or resources is strictly not allowed. Any violation of the above rule is grounds for immediate banning. Just don't do it.
That one. Most places that discuss Sonic game secrets/hacking would tend to break this rule pretty badly.
Anyone care to let me write about how you can get ahold of the gun the Scarab uses in the Halo 2 campaign? And the fact that if you play it just right, you can recieve two Scarab Guns and dual wield death and destruction?
DOO EEET
The way Bungie does any sort of projectile in Halo 2 is to fire it from a weapon. Any cutscene you see in the game - from the Covies shooting at the droppods on Delta Halo's opening scene to the Arbiter's backup firing on the big Sentinel, are done by well-hidden weapons floating in midair.
The scarab's shot works in the same way. It's a Plasma Rifle that shoots out it's shots.
The easier (not neccarily easy, though) way to get a Scarab Gun requires a lot of patience and a little bit of luck. on the level Metropolis, Drive over the bridge and wait for Cortana to say "That's one heck of a welcoming party." Keep going into the tunnel so that the wraiths don't spawn, and come back out. What you want to do is lure a enemy Banshee down into the tunnel. DO NOT BOARD THE BANSHEE. Bungie programmed the game so that if you EVER board the banshee inside the tunnel, you will just blow up.
Keep luring the 'shee down further and further into the tunnel. Let it shoot at you. Sometimes it may quickly turn around, but usually it'll spin around and start following you again.
Getting it through the half-open tunnel doors is actually a bit easy - Bungie decided to help you out a bit and the AI will directly fly through the doors for you. Keep luring it back into the access tunnel where you usually go up the pipe and out into the courtyard with the jackal snipers.
Now here's the "luck" part. There's a spot in the tunnel where the game will load the next part of thet level. What you want to do is have the banshee follow you up, then board it -right- as you cross the loading plane. If you do it too early, you'll blow up. If you succeed... awesome! Look for the magic words "Saving checkpoint..." and Save & Quit.
Now load it up and fly out with the banshee. Head for the taaaalll buildings a bit to your left and up. You want to get on the first big "bridge" between the skyscrapers. You'll see a plasma rifle hovering above a pylon - pick up it up, and you have a Scarab Gun. You can shoot it indefinitely. Just don't point it at the ground. Also of note: make sure you turn off your Xbox when you're done playing around with it, or else you may save yourself being trapped on top of the level or something else. I also suggest doing this under a profile called "Scarab Gun" so you can come back to it any time.
To dual wield Scarab guns, you need to get someone on top of the tunnel in the previous level before the hog jumps down into the tunnel and gets scarab'd. For a few seconds a floating plasma rifle will be in the air and grab-able.
Next up, or when I remember to, I'll post about the giant soccer ball on the same level (which is easier to find if you have the banshee from getting the scarab gun process)
Anything is good.
I would post a "glitch" I found in fear, but it turns out I was using the giant nail gun.
What was the 'glitch'?
A guy was stuck in a wall, about a foot off the floor with his arms and legs in the wall. Quite funny...actually, that was my body. Somebody killed me with it...oh well.
Just barely lost that match. One kill, one fucking kill, away from the win.
Though I'm not really understanding what policy you'd be breaking with a URL, Oh well.
2 ) Piracy and emulation :
These may still be discussed as news issues, but any passing mention to methods, techniques or resources is strictly not allowed. Any violation of the above rule is grounds for immediate banning. Just don't do it.
That one. Most places that discuss Sonic game secrets/hacking would tend to break this rule pretty badly.
Ah, wasn't aware of them being emulation based findings.
Though I'm not really understanding what policy you'd be breaking with a URL, Oh well.
A couple.
First and foremost, there's Penny-arcade's "No linking" policy. No doubt a lot of you find this shit pretty interesting, and if I provided some urls, people would flock to those sites. That would be a raid, a no-no.
Second, these communities that I refuse to link to are extremely close. It's the same group of people who've been doing this shit together since, like, 1998. I've been a part of this group as far as I can remember, so has blaze. We'd be violating a lot of trust if we opened it up to people, and members there would get pissed.
Think of it this way - if I told all my fraternity brothers about penny-arcade, and they liked it and wanted to come, how many people would be pissed to have a bunch of frat boys posting on here? Same principal. We're not introverted, we just prefer to keep to ourselves.
Third, the sites deal with quazi-legal shit. I can't link to them because of PA rules.
Get the drift?
That said, I've made my decision (hotdogs) and I've figured out how I'll organize my information. I'll start with Sonic Crackers next, because it'll allow me to flow from topic to topic easier.
So let me start typing up some stuff, and yall just hang tight. I really enjoy talking about this shit, and I'm glad others are enjoying what I find so interesting, by the by.
Though I'm not really understanding what policy you'd be breaking with a URL, Oh well.
A couple.
First and foremost, there's Penny-arcade's "No linking" policy. No doubt a lot of you find this shit pretty interesting, and if I provided some urls, people would flock to those sites. That would be a raid, a no-no.
Second, these communities that I refuse to link to are extremely close. It's the same group of people who've been doing this shit together since, like, 1998. I've been a part of this group as far as I can remember, so has blaze. We'd be violating a lot of trust if we opened it up to people, and members there would get pissed.
Think of it this way - if I told all my fraternity brothers about penny-arcade, and they liked it and wanted to come, how many people would be pissed to have a bunch of frat boys posting on here? Same principal. We're not introverted, we just prefer to keep to ourselves.
Third, the sites deal with quazi-legal shit. I can't link to them because of PA rules.
Get the drift?
That said, I've made my decision (hotdogs) and I've figured out how I'll organize my information. I'll start with Sonic Crackers next, because it'll allow me to flow from topic to topic easier.
So let me start typing up some stuff, and yall just hang tight. I really enjoy talking about this shit, and I'm glad others are enjoying what I find so interesting, by the by.
w00tness, I have always been intrigued by Sonic Crackers.
TSR, is there anything interesting to be said about the gamegear and master system sonics?
You and your community should write a book or something. Like everyone has said, this shit is fascinating.
Yeah...Who the fuck would we get to publish it...
I got it. Who was going to publish that O.J. book? GET THEM ON THE PHONE!
I think finding left overs and things that were going to be in a game then cut interesting. I mean developers do that all the time, leaving beta/incomplete stuff in final versions (or even in betas). It gives you some insight into what could have been. I mean hell, during War3 beta someone managed to unlock the freaking map editor and playable burning legion, cool stuff.
Anyone care to let me write about how you can get ahold of the gun the Scarab uses in the Halo 2 campaign? And the fact that if you play it just right, you can recieve two Scarab Guns and dual wield death and destruction?
DOO EEET
The way Bungie does any sort of projectile in Halo 2 is to fire it from a weapon. Any cutscene you see in the game - from the Covies shooting at the droppods on Delta Halo's opening scene to the Arbiter's backup firing on the big Sentinel, are done by well-hidden weapons floating in midair.
The scarab's shot works in the same way. It's a Plasma Rifle that shoots out it's shots.
The easier (not neccarily easy, though) way to get a Scarab Gun requires a lot of patience and a little bit of luck. on the level Metropolis, Drive over the bridge and wait for Cortana to say "That's one heck of a welcoming party." Keep going into the tunnel so that the wraiths don't spawn, and come back out. What you want to do is lure a enemy Banshee down into the tunnel. DO NOT BOARD THE BANSHEE. Bungie programmed the game so that if you EVER board the banshee inside the tunnel, you will just blow up.
Keep luring the 'shee down further and further into the tunnel. Let it shoot at you. Sometimes it may quickly turn around, but usually it'll spin around and start following you again.
Getting it through the half-open tunnel doors is actually a bit easy - Bungie decided to help you out a bit and the AI will directly fly through the doors for you. Keep luring it back into the access tunnel where you usually go up the pipe and out into the courtyard with the jackal snipers.
Now here's the "luck" part. There's a spot in the tunnel where the game will load the next part of thet level. What you want to do is have the banshee follow you up, then board it -right- as you cross the loading plane. If you do it too early, you'll blow up. If you succeed... awesome! Look for the magic words "Saving checkpoint..." and Save & Quit.
Now load it up and fly out with the banshee. Head for the taaaalll buildings a bit to your left and up. You want to get on the first big "bridge" between the skyscrapers. You'll see a plasma rifle hovering above a pylon - pick up it up, and you have a Scarab Gun. You can shoot it indefinitely. Just don't point it at the ground. Also of note: make sure you turn off your Xbox when you're done playing around with it, or else you may save yourself being trapped on top of the level or something else. I also suggest doing this under a profile called "Scarab Gun" so you can come back to it any time.
To dual wield Scarab guns, you need to get someone on top of the tunnel in the previous level before the hog jumps down into the tunnel and gets scarab'd. For a few seconds a floating plasma rifle will be in the air and grab-able.
Next up, or when I remember to, I'll post about the giant soccer ball on the same level (which is easier to find if you have the banshee from getting the scarab gun process)
The gun hovering above it's pylon
Firing it
I'm trying to remember what a scarab gun is... is that the blue orb that gets lobbed from the horizon..
So, sonic is a pretty high-profile character, so most people are quite surprized to find out there is a sonic game they haven't heard about. Even cancelled games, like Sonic Xtreme, were known about.
But, like the Genocide City Zone within Sonic 2, there is a sonic game that was being worked on for the genesis that no one had ever heard of. It wasn't announced, it wasn't shown off, it was just a concept that was developed. With all the shit going around about how Matt supposedly played Halo DS, I figured this would be most interesting and relevant. Sonic's history reveals a lot about how the entire game industry works (i.e. hot coffee vs hidden palace zone) and we should be able to draw parallels to the halo DS thing.
So, let's begin. Sonic Crackers...
So that's the "title screen" to sonic crackers. Note, for the uninformed, ROM in this case actually refers to a real genesis ROM, i.E. a cart. This game is a bit of a mystery, since the date given on the title screen is April Fools. So a lot of people wonder if this is some sort of hoax. The debate goes on, but never the less, the game is still here.
So there it is, a shot of the gameplay. A lot of questions - first up, to be sure, this is for the sega genesis, not 32X. It clearly has some weird link to Knuckles Chaotix, playing very similar. Worth noting is that the game uses modified Sonic 1 sprites. This is worth noting because this game was released AFTER sonic & Knuckles. Every sonic game, except for sonic 1 and CD, used different sprites, even sonic 2. Why they'd return to sonic 1's sprites are unknown, but it's using out of date sprites.
Just like Knuckles Chaotix, you can pick up and carry your partner around. At first glance this appears to be nothing more than an ultra early beta for Knuckles chaotix, and in reallity, it is. But there are still a lot of neat shit buried within it that are worth discussing.
EDIT: I just didnt want an important post like this being BOTTOM'D.
It's the shot fired from big 4-legged walking thing in Halo 2's campaign. You jump onto it and take out the pilots as Chief at the end of the city level.
it's the big thing on the mainpage image of this site:
wonder if crackers was just a proof of concept to test new game mechanics.
reminds me of Prince of Persia:sands of time prebuild made to demonstrate the game to the guys upstairs so they could get funding and go-ahead to start the project.
honestly, and this is to no way make TSR seem wrong or anything, but I really seriously thought that Sonic Crackers was fan made much like the Sonic game for "SNES" was. if you don't know what that is, don't ask. Seriously, I'm only saying this so I can find out from TSR if he knows for sure.
honestly, and this is to no way make TSR seem wrong or anything, but I really seriously thought that Sonic Crackers was fan made much like the Sonic game for "SNES" was. if you don't know what that is, don't ask. Seriously, I'm only saying this so I can find out from TSR if he knows for sure.
what about Somari? That along with Kart Fighter, are probably the best pirate made games ever for the NES.
When you pause Sonic Cracker's, the game goes crazy, and enters debug mode. You can move around the level and see shit. The player's arms stay put.
The engine is really fucking buggy. You can walk up just about any slope. This is signifigant because it tells us that Sonic Crackers MAY be the first sonic game since Sonic 1 to develope it's own engine from scratch. Work is being done to see if this is true, but from the evidence, it seems like it certainly might be it's own unique engine.
The game only has 2 levels, neither of which can be completed, and neither of which have names.
THe 2 levels, like the levels in Knuckles Chaotix, however, have 5 different pallettes. If you haven't played KC, its a bit different from regular sonic games, in that instead of different acts, you have different times of day. You have 5 zones, each with 5 different times of day. As the day goes on, the pallettes change. This shows that the idea was around since the concept.
the levels are as follows:
The construction site.
Note the way the "time of day" changes:
The other level is known as the carnival level:
As you may notice, the game's graphics are a large departure from what Sonic is used to. It's far more abstract. Diving in deeper, we find what may have been either an overworld, or a special stage:
Note that there is absolutely NO collision detection - you are just basically walking over a large animated background. See:
Also note that this game predates Sonic 3D blast (and even it's announcement) by quite a long time. Truely odd.
This game isn't very spectacular, and there isn't much to it, but it leads us to our next topic of conversation: Knuckles Chaotix.
honestly, and this is to no way make TSR seem wrong or anything, but I really seriously thought that Sonic Crackers was fan made much like the Sonic game for "SNES" was. if you don't know what that is, don't ask. Seriously, I'm only saying this so I can find out from TSR if he knows for sure.
I'm getting to that.
Basically, the possibility will always exist, but there is simply too much from knuckles chaotix for anyone to seriously consider it a fan game. the evidence is overwelming that it's a KC beta, especially given that KC was originally announced as "Sonic Stadium" for the sega genesis.
And, there is evidence that the game may be, in fact, called "Sonic Stadium" with "Sonic Crackers" being a non-sense title screen made by whoever burned the eeprom - developers often do this.
Alright, so let's jump forward almost a full year and a half. The next we hear from the sonic World is Knuckles Chaotix. When it surfaced, it had rediculously close gameplay to Sonic Crackers, which, of course, nobody was aware of.
Before we get into what's similar between Crackers and Chaotix, let's examine what changed between the first time it was shown to the public and when it was released.
If any of you have played KC, you'll recognize this as part of the title screen. But something is vastly different - instead of saying "Starring Knuckles the Echidna" it says "Starring Espio the Chameleon"
That's because at one point, KC was simply known as Chaotix, and was actually a game about Espio. There is a lot about KC, and subsequently Crackers, that is unknown, so these all represent tantilizing pieces of a giant mystery.
Here we see again - Espio's name is above Knuckles. And the game's name has changed again: Knuckle's Star Ring. Odd.
Boring as shit picture showing that, at one point, scaling worked wrong. Gay.
Alright, enough of this shit, lets get into how KC and SC are related...
I just read a 75 page history of some Sonic hacking group.
It all ended in tears.
O_O
i read a 30-40 some pages thing about Daikatana on gamespot a year ago, interesting, probably more so than the game itself.
link?
I forgot how I came upon it, but if you dig on the site you can find it. It wasn't a recent article, it was a pretty damn old one but it is still on the site.
First case for Chaotix being based on Crackers... Mighty the Armadillo.
Specifically, mighty is too close to Sonic for comfort. I mean, in every possible way. Let's examine their sprites side by side:
See? For every Sonic sprite, there is a corresponding Mighty sprite, even the ones for Mighty that aren't used. That's pretty fucking weird.
Even weirder is how character selection works. See, in knuckles chaotix, there is a data pointer that selects your character. By changing the character number from 1, to 2, to 3, etc, you can get different characters.
Guess who resides in character spot 0, aka the first character?
That means, at one point, Mighty was the main character. Espio is the 3rd, then Knuckles at 4th, and so forth.
What's weird is this is the same exact system used to choose characters in Sonic Crackers. 0 is sonic.
So, this begs the question... who is character 1 in Knuckles Chaotix?
I give you Tails in Knuckles Chaotix:
By selecting the second character (who is named "***********" in game, fans have called him Wechina), you get presented with this white, weird pallette version of Knuckles.
Was this Tails at one point? Other than speculation, we can't say. But what the fuck, yes, it was tails. Case closed. More pictures:
Another odd fact - when you select Wechina, and press start, you access debug mode... that is identical to the one in Sonic Crackers. You can move around and everything.
But there is one more mystery within Knuckles Chaotix... if you examine the pallette used by characters, you run across an oddly familiar pallette:
There is only one character in all of sonic who uses that pink pallette. Amy is somewhere in Knuckles Chaotix, and it turns out she's hidden in the soundtest mode.
Through some methods, people we able to revive an older form of the sound test, and guess who is down in the right hand corner.
I just read a 75 page history of some Sonic hacking group.
It all ended in tears.
O_O
i read a 30-40 some pages thing about Daikatana on gamespot a year ago, interesting, probably more so than the game itself.
link?
I forgot how I came upon it, but if you dig on the site you can find it. It wasn't a recent article, it was a pretty damn old one but it is still on the site.
I just read a 75 page history of some Sonic hacking group.
It all ended in tears.
O_O
i read a 30-40 some pages thing about Daikatana on gamespot a year ago, interesting, probably more so than the game itself.
link?
I forgot how I came upon it, but if you dig on the site you can find it. It wasn't a recent article, it was a pretty damn old one but it is still on the site.
So, Knuckles Chaotix ends up being a bit of an odd spot in Sonic History. One thing odd about it is how different it's style is from other sonic games. It's timer, for example, is different from most sonic games. It's main boss isn't robotnik, either, it's Metal Sonic. Every level name is an alliteration (Amazing Arena, Techno Tower, etc). And it's music is, unlike other sonic games, based around a central theme song.
This is not unique to Knuckles Chaotix. And it was probably all deliberate. It's all attempting to copy the style of the game which started a trend that not many sonic games copied. Knuckles Chaotix, while very different in gameplay, is very similar in style and presentation to Sonic CD, which is exactly where I'm gonna move us.
So, I've already talked about how Sonic CD was once named Sonic 2 CD. Well, it's name changed during development. not to Sonic CD, mind you - that was much later.
Sonic CD was once named...
CD Sonic is stupid as shit. Good thing they changed it.
There were a lot of pre-production pictures sent out of sonic CD. Let's dive in.
At one point, Level 1's boss was different. I wish theyd have stuck with this boss, because the bumper boss is retarded.
Another oddity - At one point, Palmtree Panic's badguys and Collison Chaos' badguys were mixed. Note the enemies in this screen - they belong to palmtree panic. Also, it appears that when you ran at high speeds in Sonic CD, you'd gain some sort of odd barrier. This is similar to what would happen in Sonic Chaos when you'd use the peel out move.
The special stages in sonic CD were originally REALLY fucking cool. Imagine the special stages from sonic 1, on fucking crack. Word is that they'd have been multilayered, so you'd have been rotating around in 4 or 5 special stages at once, and you'd move forward or backwards to and from the screen to get to each layer. I wish these were still in the game.
We got something equally as cool, though - the mode 7 mario-kart-esq special stage. this appears to be an extremely early version.
If we look at the prereleases for sonic CD, we see a lot of interesting stuff that was cut.
At one point, sonic looked a lot more chipper and happy on the end sign posts.
Probably the most mysterious thing about Sonic CD - the 3 odd monitors. The S monitor is a staple of Sonic debug mode - it normally changes you into super sonic. Why it's in sonic CD is a mystery - it does nothing. The 3 monitors are inaccessable in sonic CD unless you place them in debug mode (or oddly enough, the later 2 exist under the boss area in Level 1 that's only reachable through debug mode... why is unknown).
What do they do? Nothing in the final. They're strewn about the prerelease. Even then, the silver ring does nothing. The clock causes all animation to stop - all rings stop spinning, the background stops animating, the enemies stop animating (but keep moving). It's pretty obvious what it would do, but it never works right. Strange.
One thing odd is that, in early versions, the lives counter was offcenter. You can tell a prerelease shot from a final shot because of this.
One really odd difference between early versions of Sonic CD and final versions is that in the final version, every flower looks the same, just different colors. In the early versions, every level's flowers had different sprites. Here they are:
Through some methods, people we able to revive an older form of the sound test, and guess who is down in the right hand corner.
Just more oddness.
Actually, that's not an older form of the soundtest. There's actually a code you punch in: Chaotix has a "color test mode" or something kind of like a sound test mode, but for color palettes - tweak the colors right and various things will happen. First is the level select mode, where you can warp to any level at any time of day with any character; another is enabling Amy Rose to appear in the sound test.
Through some methods, people we able to revive an older form of the sound test, and guess who is down in the right hand corner.
Just more oddness.
Actually, that's not an older form of the soundtest. There's actually a code you punch in: Chaotix has a "color test mode" or something kind of like a sound test mode, but for color palettes - tweak the colors right and various things will happen. First is the level select mode, where you can warp to any level at any time of day with any character; another is enabling Amy Rose to appear in the sound test.
So it's not an "older" version at all.
Details details. Point is, it's the crazy stalker gal.
The mysterious item boxes are about. This is the only zone to have all 3.
This slope isn't in the final, but frankly, I think it should have stayed. That's a pretty cool twist.
The camera will occasionally get stuck in places in this level.
Collision Chaos:
The signs used to actually say things. That says "Aurora" which means "Dawn." In the final version, they're just random squiggles.
In the prerelease, the game would stop during the boss fight, and robotnik would slowly get out. I guess for dramatic effect. Whatever, it was stupid, and removed. good.
Tidal Tempest:
In the prerelease, the foreground rippled too. They should have kept that, it was cool. What's odd about this, though, is that means there is a picture of the beta INSIDE the final version of sonic CD.
Go to the time attack mode, and look at the level icons used for the different zones. Notice the picture of tidal Tempest? It's screenshot has ripple in the foreground, which is abscent in the final version. How odd that they used a prerelease picture in the final version of the game.
The color of the water was far more badass in the prerelease. That water looks awesome.
It caused a lot of pallette issues, though.
...A lot of pallette issues. Jesus, I think the guy who chose the pallette back when they were making this level was stupid or colorblind or both.
wasn't there some Sonic that was supposed to be on Saturn and someone, somewhere has "claimed" to own the working CD?
I started reading wikis, that then linked to Sonic fan sites. The pics of Sonic Xtreme don't look like the one I remember. It was supposed to be the first Saturn or Dreamcast Sonic...and I just remember this horrible fisheye lens effect.
There was a Sonic spaceship game? A police car game of some sort? Sheesh. It's crazy what you can find if you go to the wikis for this stuff and scour the links to the fan sites at the bottom.
Posts
Yeah, release order sounds best.
2 ) Piracy and emulation :
These may still be discussed as news issues, but any passing mention to methods, techniques or resources is strictly not allowed. Any violation of the above rule is grounds for immediate banning. Just don't do it.
That one. Most places that discuss Sonic game secrets/hacking would tend to break this rule pretty badly.
The way Bungie does any sort of projectile in Halo 2 is to fire it from a weapon. Any cutscene you see in the game - from the Covies shooting at the droppods on Delta Halo's opening scene to the Arbiter's backup firing on the big Sentinel, are done by well-hidden weapons floating in midair.
The scarab's shot works in the same way. It's a Plasma Rifle that shoots out it's shots.
The easier (not neccarily easy, though) way to get a Scarab Gun requires a lot of patience and a little bit of luck. on the level Metropolis, Drive over the bridge and wait for Cortana to say "That's one heck of a welcoming party." Keep going into the tunnel so that the wraiths don't spawn, and come back out. What you want to do is lure a enemy Banshee down into the tunnel. DO NOT BOARD THE BANSHEE. Bungie programmed the game so that if you EVER board the banshee inside the tunnel, you will just blow up.
Keep luring the 'shee down further and further into the tunnel. Let it shoot at you. Sometimes it may quickly turn around, but usually it'll spin around and start following you again.
Getting it through the half-open tunnel doors is actually a bit easy - Bungie decided to help you out a bit and the AI will directly fly through the doors for you. Keep luring it back into the access tunnel where you usually go up the pipe and out into the courtyard with the jackal snipers.
Now here's the "luck" part. There's a spot in the tunnel where the game will load the next part of thet level. What you want to do is have the banshee follow you up, then board it -right- as you cross the loading plane. If you do it too early, you'll blow up. If you succeed... awesome! Look for the magic words "Saving checkpoint..." and Save & Quit.
Now load it up and fly out with the banshee. Head for the taaaalll buildings a bit to your left and up. You want to get on the first big "bridge" between the skyscrapers. You'll see a plasma rifle hovering above a pylon - pick up it up, and you have a Scarab Gun. You can shoot it indefinitely. Just don't point it at the ground. Also of note: make sure you turn off your Xbox when you're done playing around with it, or else you may save yourself being trapped on top of the level or something else. I also suggest doing this under a profile called "Scarab Gun" so you can come back to it any time.
To dual wield Scarab guns, you need to get someone on top of the tunnel in the previous level before the hog jumps down into the tunnel and gets scarab'd. For a few seconds a floating plasma rifle will be in the air and grab-able.
Next up, or when I remember to, I'll post about the giant soccer ball on the same level (which is easier to find if you have the banshee from getting the scarab gun process)
The gun hovering above it's pylon
Firing it
Just barely lost that match. One kill, one fucking kill, away from the win.
Ah, wasn't aware of them being emulation based findings.
A couple.
First and foremost, there's Penny-arcade's "No linking" policy. No doubt a lot of you find this shit pretty interesting, and if I provided some urls, people would flock to those sites. That would be a raid, a no-no.
Second, these communities that I refuse to link to are extremely close. It's the same group of people who've been doing this shit together since, like, 1998. I've been a part of this group as far as I can remember, so has blaze. We'd be violating a lot of trust if we opened it up to people, and members there would get pissed.
Think of it this way - if I told all my fraternity brothers about penny-arcade, and they liked it and wanted to come, how many people would be pissed to have a bunch of frat boys posting on here? Same principal. We're not introverted, we just prefer to keep to ourselves.
Third, the sites deal with quazi-legal shit. I can't link to them because of PA rules.
Get the drift?
That said, I've made my decision (hotdogs) and I've figured out how I'll organize my information. I'll start with Sonic Crackers next, because it'll allow me to flow from topic to topic easier.
So let me start typing up some stuff, and yall just hang tight. I really enjoy talking about this shit, and I'm glad others are enjoying what I find so interesting, by the by.
w00tness, I have always been intrigued by Sonic Crackers.
You and your community should write a book or something. Like everyone has said, this shit is fascinating.
I got it. Who was going to publish that O.J. book? GET THEM ON THE PHONE!
If I did 1337-h4x
I think finding left overs and things that were going to be in a game then cut interesting. I mean developers do that all the time, leaving beta/incomplete stuff in final versions (or even in betas). It gives you some insight into what could have been. I mean hell, during War3 beta someone managed to unlock the freaking map editor and playable burning legion, cool stuff.
I'm trying to remember what a scarab gun is... is that the blue orb that gets lobbed from the horizon..
PSN: super_emu
Xbox360 Gamertag: Emuchop
But, like the Genocide City Zone within Sonic 2, there is a sonic game that was being worked on for the genesis that no one had ever heard of. It wasn't announced, it wasn't shown off, it was just a concept that was developed. With all the shit going around about how Matt supposedly played Halo DS, I figured this would be most interesting and relevant. Sonic's history reveals a lot about how the entire game industry works (i.e. hot coffee vs hidden palace zone) and we should be able to draw parallels to the halo DS thing.
So, let's begin. Sonic Crackers...
So that's the "title screen" to sonic crackers. Note, for the uninformed, ROM in this case actually refers to a real genesis ROM, i.E. a cart. This game is a bit of a mystery, since the date given on the title screen is April Fools. So a lot of people wonder if this is some sort of hoax. The debate goes on, but never the less, the game is still here.
So there it is, a shot of the gameplay. A lot of questions - first up, to be sure, this is for the sega genesis, not 32X. It clearly has some weird link to Knuckles Chaotix, playing very similar. Worth noting is that the game uses modified Sonic 1 sprites. This is worth noting because this game was released AFTER sonic & Knuckles. Every sonic game, except for sonic 1 and CD, used different sprites, even sonic 2. Why they'd return to sonic 1's sprites are unknown, but it's using out of date sprites.
Just like Knuckles Chaotix, you can pick up and carry your partner around. At first glance this appears to be nothing more than an ultra early beta for Knuckles chaotix, and in reallity, it is. But there are still a lot of neat shit buried within it that are worth discussing.
EDIT: I just didnt want an important post like this being BOTTOM'D.
it's the big thing on the mainpage image of this site:
http://www.halowars.com/
reminds me of Prince of Persia:sands of time prebuild made to demonstrate the game to the guys upstairs so they could get funding and go-ahead to start the project.
PSN: super_emu
Xbox360 Gamertag: Emuchop
Also : Mew. Someone explain it to me.
what about Somari? That along with Kart Fighter, are probably the best pirate made games ever for the NES.
When you pause Sonic Cracker's, the game goes crazy, and enters debug mode. You can move around the level and see shit. The player's arms stay put.
The engine is really fucking buggy. You can walk up just about any slope. This is signifigant because it tells us that Sonic Crackers MAY be the first sonic game since Sonic 1 to develope it's own engine from scratch. Work is being done to see if this is true, but from the evidence, it seems like it certainly might be it's own unique engine.
The game only has 2 levels, neither of which can be completed, and neither of which have names.
THe 2 levels, like the levels in Knuckles Chaotix, however, have 5 different pallettes. If you haven't played KC, its a bit different from regular sonic games, in that instead of different acts, you have different times of day. You have 5 zones, each with 5 different times of day. As the day goes on, the pallettes change. This shows that the idea was around since the concept.
the levels are as follows:
The construction site.
Note the way the "time of day" changes:
The other level is known as the carnival level:
As you may notice, the game's graphics are a large departure from what Sonic is used to. It's far more abstract. Diving in deeper, we find what may have been either an overworld, or a special stage:
Note that there is absolutely NO collision detection - you are just basically walking over a large animated background. See:
Also note that this game predates Sonic 3D blast (and even it's announcement) by quite a long time. Truely odd.
This game isn't very spectacular, and there isn't much to it, but it leads us to our next topic of conversation: Knuckles Chaotix.
I'm getting to that.
Basically, the possibility will always exist, but there is simply too much from knuckles chaotix for anyone to seriously consider it a fan game. the evidence is overwelming that it's a KC beta, especially given that KC was originally announced as "Sonic Stadium" for the sega genesis.
And, there is evidence that the game may be, in fact, called "Sonic Stadium" with "Sonic Crackers" being a non-sense title screen made by whoever burned the eeprom - developers often do this.
Before we get into what's similar between Crackers and Chaotix, let's examine what changed between the first time it was shown to the public and when it was released.
If any of you have played KC, you'll recognize this as part of the title screen. But something is vastly different - instead of saying "Starring Knuckles the Echidna" it says "Starring Espio the Chameleon"
That's because at one point, KC was simply known as Chaotix, and was actually a game about Espio. There is a lot about KC, and subsequently Crackers, that is unknown, so these all represent tantilizing pieces of a giant mystery.
Here we see again - Espio's name is above Knuckles. And the game's name has changed again: Knuckle's Star Ring. Odd.
Boring as shit picture showing that, at one point, scaling worked wrong. Gay.
Alright, enough of this shit, lets get into how KC and SC are related...
It all ended in tears.
O_O
[spoiler:feb63acdb7]They have layers[/spoiler:feb63acdb7]
i read a 30-40 some pages thing about Daikatana on gamespot a year ago, interesting, probably more so than the game itself.
I forgot how I came upon it, but if you dig on the site you can find it. It wasn't a recent article, it was a pretty damn old one but it is still on the site.
Specifically, mighty is too close to Sonic for comfort. I mean, in every possible way. Let's examine their sprites side by side:
See? For every Sonic sprite, there is a corresponding Mighty sprite, even the ones for Mighty that aren't used. That's pretty fucking weird.
Even weirder is how character selection works. See, in knuckles chaotix, there is a data pointer that selects your character. By changing the character number from 1, to 2, to 3, etc, you can get different characters.
Guess who resides in character spot 0, aka the first character?
That means, at one point, Mighty was the main character. Espio is the 3rd, then Knuckles at 4th, and so forth.
What's weird is this is the same exact system used to choose characters in Sonic Crackers. 0 is sonic.
So, this begs the question... who is character 1 in Knuckles Chaotix?
I give you Tails in Knuckles Chaotix:
By selecting the second character (who is named "***********" in game, fans have called him Wechina), you get presented with this white, weird pallette version of Knuckles.
Was this Tails at one point? Other than speculation, we can't say. But what the fuck, yes, it was tails. Case closed. More pictures:
Another odd fact - when you select Wechina, and press start, you access debug mode... that is identical to the one in Sonic Crackers. You can move around and everything.
But there is one more mystery within Knuckles Chaotix... if you examine the pallette used by characters, you run across an oddly familiar pallette:
There is only one character in all of sonic who uses that pink pallette. Amy is somewhere in Knuckles Chaotix, and it turns out she's hidden in the soundtest mode.
Through some methods, people we able to revive an older form of the sound test, and guess who is down in the right hand corner.
Just more oddness.
here: http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/index.html
This is not unique to Knuckles Chaotix. And it was probably all deliberate. It's all attempting to copy the style of the game which started a trend that not many sonic games copied. Knuckles Chaotix, while very different in gameplay, is very similar in style and presentation to Sonic CD, which is exactly where I'm gonna move us.
So, I've already talked about how Sonic CD was once named Sonic 2 CD. Well, it's name changed during development. not to Sonic CD, mind you - that was much later.
Sonic CD was once named...
CD Sonic is stupid as shit. Good thing they changed it.
There were a lot of pre-production pictures sent out of sonic CD. Let's dive in.
At one point, Level 1's boss was different. I wish theyd have stuck with this boss, because the bumper boss is retarded.
Another oddity - At one point, Palmtree Panic's badguys and Collison Chaos' badguys were mixed. Note the enemies in this screen - they belong to palmtree panic. Also, it appears that when you ran at high speeds in Sonic CD, you'd gain some sort of odd barrier. This is similar to what would happen in Sonic Chaos when you'd use the peel out move.
The special stages in sonic CD were originally REALLY fucking cool. Imagine the special stages from sonic 1, on fucking crack. Word is that they'd have been multilayered, so you'd have been rotating around in 4 or 5 special stages at once, and you'd move forward or backwards to and from the screen to get to each layer. I wish these were still in the game.
We got something equally as cool, though - the mode 7 mario-kart-esq special stage. this appears to be an extremely early version.
At one point, sonic looked a lot more chipper and happy on the end sign posts.
Probably the most mysterious thing about Sonic CD - the 3 odd monitors. The S monitor is a staple of Sonic debug mode - it normally changes you into super sonic. Why it's in sonic CD is a mystery - it does nothing. The 3 monitors are inaccessable in sonic CD unless you place them in debug mode (or oddly enough, the later 2 exist under the boss area in Level 1 that's only reachable through debug mode... why is unknown).
What do they do? Nothing in the final. They're strewn about the prerelease. Even then, the silver ring does nothing. The clock causes all animation to stop - all rings stop spinning, the background stops animating, the enemies stop animating (but keep moving). It's pretty obvious what it would do, but it never works right. Strange.
One thing odd is that, in early versions, the lives counter was offcenter. You can tell a prerelease shot from a final shot because of this.
One really odd difference between early versions of Sonic CD and final versions is that in the final version, every flower looks the same, just different colors. In the early versions, every level's flowers had different sprites. Here they are:
In addition, each level went through some small changes...
Actually, that's not an older form of the soundtest. There's actually a code you punch in: Chaotix has a "color test mode" or something kind of like a sound test mode, but for color palettes - tweak the colors right and various things will happen. First is the level select mode, where you can warp to any level at any time of day with any character; another is enabling Amy Rose to appear in the sound test.
So it's not an "older" version at all.
Hey, watch these videos of mine. DO IT.
Details details. Point is, it's the crazy stalker gal.
The mysterious item boxes are about. This is the only zone to have all 3.
This slope isn't in the final, but frankly, I think it should have stayed. That's a pretty cool twist.
The camera will occasionally get stuck in places in this level.
Collision Chaos:
The signs used to actually say things. That says "Aurora" which means "Dawn." In the final version, they're just random squiggles.
In the prerelease, the game would stop during the boss fight, and robotnik would slowly get out. I guess for dramatic effect. Whatever, it was stupid, and removed. good.
Tidal Tempest:
In the prerelease, the foreground rippled too. They should have kept that, it was cool. What's odd about this, though, is that means there is a picture of the beta INSIDE the final version of sonic CD.
Go to the time attack mode, and look at the level icons used for the different zones. Notice the picture of tidal Tempest? It's screenshot has ripple in the foreground, which is abscent in the final version. How odd that they used a prerelease picture in the final version of the game.
The color of the water was far more badass in the prerelease. That water looks awesome.
It caused a lot of pallette issues, though.
...A lot of pallette issues. Jesus, I think the guy who chose the pallette back when they were making this level was stupid or colorblind or both.
I started reading wikis, that then linked to Sonic fan sites. The pics of Sonic Xtreme don't look like the one I remember. It was supposed to be the first Saturn or Dreamcast Sonic...and I just remember this horrible fisheye lens effect.
There was a Sonic spaceship game? A police car game of some sort? Sheesh. It's crazy what you can find if you go to the wikis for this stuff and scour the links to the fan sites at the bottom.