Neue Vorabversionen von Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 entdeckt

Die Beta-Versionen der Spiele Sonic Adventure 1 und 2 auf Dreamcast sollen bisher ungesehenes Material enthalten. Bei Sonic Adventure handelt es sich um eine „Auto-Demo“ von Oktober 1998. Die Beta-Version von Sonic Adventure 2 ist in Mai 2001 entstanden.

Die „Auto-Demo“ von Sonic Adventure ist im Oktober 1998 entstanden und enthält eine automatisierte Demonstration des Spiels, welches Gameplay-Elemente, Zwischensequenzen und Charaktere zeigt. Die Demo wurde damals zu Presse-Zwecken benutzt, um eindrucksvoll das erste richtige 3D Sonic-Spiel zu präsentieren. Da es nicht möglich ist, in dieser Demo selbst die Figuren zu steuern, versucht man nun, die Demo soweit zu modifizieren, um sie spielbar zu machen. Es ist bereits bekannt, dass sich die Vorabversion deutlich von der finalen Verkaufs-Version unterscheidet. Der User Jen aus dem Sonic Retro Forum hat bereits einige Unterschiede dokumentiert :

– In the opening movie, Tails opens his mouth as he’s flying away from the building. In the final he keeps his mouth closed.

– Sonic’s standing position looks different at the start of the Gamma cutscene and the start of Speed Highway. His pose is similar to the one where he’s crouching low to the floor, but he’s not very low to the ground (if that makes sense – I’m sure you’ll understand when you see it =P).

– The camera angle at the start of Speed Highway is quite different.

– When Sonic pushes on the barriers in Speed Highway, a sound effect is played that sounds like something scraping along the floor. This doesn’t happen in the final (this can only be seen if you run the game in an emulator and thereby have the wonky timings, which makes Sonic repeatedly push the barriers before throwing himself to his doom).

– There are extra Tikal hint orbs in Speed Highway which aren’t normally there.

– Near the start of Speed Highway when Sonic goes onto the breaking glass, he would be propelled quite high into the air before falling down onto the glass. He just sort of skips up to it in the demo.

– If you watch the demo with the emulator timings, Sonic dies repeatedly but his ring count actually carries on after he dies. This is evident because he gets an extra life from picking up rings in the demo – this plays the Sonic 2 Chaos Emerald jingle rather than the final 1-up jingle.

– When Sonic hits the spring taking him to the helicopter in Speed Highway, he’s facing the camera (with his back to the helicopter) while in the air. In the final he’s facing the helicopter, with his back to the camera.

– The cutscene with Tails outside Casinopolis is playing the wrong music.

– In the same cutscene, Tails keeps creepily losing the textures for his mouth, nose and eyes. This also happens in the cutscene with Gamma and Sonic on the Egg Carrier.

– Well, Ice Cap – I think that speaks for itself. The camera angle when Tails escapes the avalanche is different from the final, it has the BETA TREES and a trick ramp that’s split in half. This is one of the more interesting ones for me, most definitely.

– In the cutscene with Amy and Gamma, there are item boxes inside one of the jail cells which aren’t there in the final. Likewise, there’d normally be a black Chao egg inside one of the cells which isn’t there in this version.

– The layout of Kunckles‘ Red Mountain looks a bit off but I could be wrong.

– Knuckles digs without the shovel claw.

– In the cutscene with Amy and Sonic near Casinopolis, the bird has no wings.

– In Final Egg, when Amy runs at top speed her hammer isn’t visible.

– The question mark and exclamation marks above Zero’s head look different. Likewise, Zero’s target looks different and he has different sound effects.

– In Final Egg, there’s a 1-up near the end of the demo that isn’t there in the final.

– In Gamma’s cutscene with the other E-100 robots on the Egg Carrier, the purple robot looks like he has a white face rather than black, but I’m unsure as to whether this is a lighting issue or not.

– There’s a couple of areas of Gamma’s Red Mountain that don’t look quite right to me, particularly with the enemy placement.

– In Big’s cutscene, Froggy’s model looks a bit odd. The colours look quite dark.

– Big’s level is just weird – where the heck is he? I don’t recognise the area. It looks similar to an area in the final that you get to by diving right to the bottom of the sea and then swimming up inside a cave. In this cave there’s a small island with a palm tree in the middle of it. However, this is not the same room – the water is way too shallow. Also, this isn’t where Big would normally start the level.

– Where are all the fish?

– When Big hooks Froggy, the „hit“ music doesn’t play.

– When Big catches Froggy, the Sonic 2 Chaos Emerald jingle plays. He then launches into his victory dance but the camera doesn’t zoom in on him at this point like it would do in the final.

Von der Auto-Demo gibt es auch ein Video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_773ASxWA3A

Bilder von dem Datenträger, Cover und Rückseite

Die Beta von Sonic Adventure 2 entstand 26 Tage vor dem offiziellen Release in Japan und enthält drei spielbare Abschnitte. Ein Level für Sonic, ein für Shadow und ein drittes Level sollte den 2-Spieler Modus demonstrieren. Anders als bei der Beta von Sonic Adventure, gibt es hier nur wenige Unterschiede im Bezug zur Verkaufsversion. Das City-Escape Level, welches für Sonic vorgesehen wurde, unterscheidet sich nur wenig vom Original. Bisher wurde dort nur festgestellt, dass Big the Cat in dieser Version des Spiels noch nicht eingefügt wurde.