Beta64 - Sonic adventure

Captions done by ChesterBoyReviews Sonic Adventure receives various different opinions in the Sonic community. Some say it's a lackluster game with poor gameplay and an even worse camera. Others however consider it one of the best titles in the Sonic franchise. As for me, I grew up playing Sonic Adventure. So nostalgia may be clouding my viewpoint a bit. But I do consider it as one of my favorite of Sonic's ''adventures''. And akin to Banjo-Kazooie for the Nintendo 64, Sonic Adventure was first conceived to be an RPG called as you can probably guess... ''Sonic RPG''. And not only that, Sonic Adventure was planned to be released on the Sega Saturn. In fact, if you ever played Sonic Jam for the Saturn, you may have already been playing Sonic Adventure's prototype. So on this episode of Beta64, I am going to discuss the beta of Sonic Adventure! Before Sonic Adventure was even considered, Sonic X-treme was being developed for the Sega Saturn. It was meant to be Sonic's first ever fully 3D game. But after many developmental issues including the game's switch from the Mega Drive, to the Sega 32X, and eventually to the Saturn, the game had be cancelled in 1997 one year after it was meant to be released. Behind closed doors though, many considered Sonic X-treme doomed from the start. Even the future head of the Sonic Team, having to see the conceptional ideas of the game, simply shook his head and said ''Good Luck''. The cancellation of Sonic X-treme is often considered one of the reasons for the Saturn's failure outside of Japan. Sega tried to fill the void left by Sonic X-Treme, by releasing Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island and Chaotix. But soon, it became obvious that the only people who can save Sonic were the same people who started it... Sonic Team. The senior game designer for Sonic the Hedghog 3 and ''Sonic & Knuckles'', began pushing the idea of a game called ''Sonic RPG'', to be the Sonic Team's next big title. But with the new generation of 3D-capable systems, the team decided to drop the RPG idea, and instead focus on story. While the game was being developed on the Saturn, Sega's next and last video game console, the Dreamcast, was shown to developers and Sonic Team had to choose whether to continue work on the Saturn prototype, or start over on the Dreamcast. Obviously, Sonic Team decided to begin development again on the Dreamcast knowing that they could include more in the game with this system compared to the Sega Saturn. But the team didn't want their work to go to waste, so they chose to include the earliest builds of Sonic Adventure under the title, ''Sonic World'', in a Mega Drive compilation for the Saturn called Sonic Jam. Unknowingly, gamers were actually playing a prototype of a game to be released a little more than two years later. During development, many people had written to Sonic Team asking them to add a character that would shoot enemies. Feeling that it would be odd in against the nature for the characters to have a gun, even though they eventually gave Shadow one in ''Shadow the Hedgehog'', the team decided to create a new character called E-102 Gamma. A similar situation created Big the Cat. The development team wanted a character that would move at his own pace and break up the intense action. So, Big the Cat was created and the fishing gameplay was chosen due to the fact that well... he's a cat. The Chao Garden was also created to break up the action. It was designed to give players, new to the Sonic series, time to get used to the controls and gameplay, and thusly become better at the Action Stages. During development, Sonic Adventure was kept well hidden from the public. But despite all the safety measures, the original concept of ''Sonic RPG'' was leaked after the Sonic Team have already decided against it. This led to speculation that the game would be called ''Sonic & Knuckles RPG''. A while later, a blurry, leaked screenshot made its way to the public which was thought to be an unrelated motorcycle game But of course, now we know it's simply Speed Highway. Two months before Sonic Adventure and the Dreamcast were released in North America, Sega teamed up with Hollywood Video to allow gamers to rent the system and the game ''Sonic Adventure: Limited Edition'' for three days, for only $20. Now before anyone starts to think that this was a prototype, ''Sonic Adventure: Limited Edition'' was simply the Japanese version, limited to a portion of the game with a few camera and bug fixes. Being that there were an incredibly large amount of screenshots and videos taken throughout Sonic Adventure's development, I only have time to show you the most impressive ones. If you really want to see them all, and I think you do, the link is in the description. First, let's take a look at some screenshots of Knuckles. This one shows him using the removed uppercut attack in what appears to be Red Mountain. The Egg Carrier in this image is much brighter and more colorful than the final version. Plus, it has a ton of other very noticeable differences. Another interesting screenshot shows Knuckles in front of an early version of the Casino. Notice how the button above the sign used to open the door is missing. This could mean that the player was originally able to enter the Casino without having to press a button, or maybe the switch was simply relocated somewhere else. There are also people walking out of the Casino. After looking at all of these videos and screenshots, I've noticed that the residents of Station Square are definitely not as lively in the final version. Now let's look at E-102 Gamma. This screenshot shows an early hotel lobby which has a ladder reaching to the floor above the front desk. Notice again that their are many more residents in the hotel. Most of which are actually interacting with others. There's also no carpet in front of the back door and there's no sign of that floating television. Which for the life of me, I can't remember it's name. Did it even have a name? I'm going to call it the Tele-info-advisor! In the cutscene where Gamma and the rest of the Egg Carrier crew are commanded to find Froggy, you might notice that every robot is a diferent color. But in this screenshot from the beta, it shows them to be all the same color. This was either changed to make it easier to distinguish Gamma from the group, or perhaps it was to make it obvious that the robots are different models. Amy appears in a couple of unknown areas in her prototype screenshots, such as this one. Big also appears in an unknown area, which kind of resembles the entrance to Twinkle Park. And let's not forget about Tails, who appears in a couple of unknown areas himself. One area is located in the sky, and the other takes place in the dark. These lights in the screenshot look kind of like lampposts. So perhaps this level takes place in some sort of city, or around a large building or house. A few of Tails' screenshots have some minor differences in them. This one shows the cutscene after Emerald Coast. If you notice, there are no chairs or tables near the pool. Another screenshot the Tornado 2 on the Egg Carrier, but it appears to be completely intact in normal form. In the final game, Tails has to perform a landing in the Tornado 2's Turbo mode without landing gear. This makes the landed plane look very different from Tails' prototype screenshot. Being that Sonic is the main character of ''Sonic Adventure'', he was obviously captured in more screenshots than the other characters during development. This leads to many screenshots of Sonic with various beta elements. So let's start with the tip and work our way to the tup! This screenshot shows Sonic in an early shower located in the Casino. It looks very different from the final version and Sonic doesn't appear to be using the same animation. The docks here don't seem to have any dash panels like they do in the final game. And this next quality screenshot shows Sonic in an early Station Square. And let's not forget these screenshots of Sonic in an early Chao Garden. The Icecap Action Stage went through a few changes. This screenshot shows Sonic on a bridge in the Icecap stage that can't be accessed in the final version. And this other one shows Tails snowboarding in an unknown part of Icecap. Notice all these dead trees? None of them exist in the final Icecap stage. Also, this image of Red Mountain's bridge in the prototype is definitely a brighter red than what's shown in the final game. Now of course you remember this giant two-headed dragon you met on Sky Chase, right? Oh.. you don't? Well, that's probably because it wasn't used in the final game! The model can actually be placed in Act 1, if you viewed the game in object placement mode. In fact, the dragon can only be placed in the first act of Sky Chase. Hackers have actually managed to restore some functionality to the dragon. You can attack the dragon.... but it won't damage it, and the dragon can't damage you either. The quote-on-quote battle ends when the Egg Carrier fires at Sonic and Tails causing the dragon to disappear. This probably means that the dragon was intended to be destroyed by the laser, since it can only be found in Act 1. Now prepare yourselves.. the stage Windy Valley has more changes than ALL of the other stages combined! Ok, that might be an exaggeration.. but it did change quite a bit. First off as you can probably tell, the stage looks completely different than the final game. And it appears that even Amy and Big would've been playable in the prototype version. It also seems that the stage was originally designed for running through as fast as possible as evident by the large amount of half-pipes and slopes. In the final game, shots of the early version of Windy Valley can be found in both the intro, and in Amy's first cutscene, where she recollects the time she spent with Sonic. Interestingly, two high-quality bitmap images were found in the Sega Dreamcast loop checker disk. These captured images were actually taken of the 3rd section of an early Windy Valley. May 21st of 2013, the user Orengefox on Sonic Retro, released a downloadable version of the Sonic Adventure Pre-release Autodemo. The demo was originally given to a limited number of Japanese retailers to show off the various in-game cutscenes and gameplay in a loop. Even though the Autodemo isn't playable, hackers have managed to break the loop allowing them to access and play almost the entire game. They've also found an incredibly large amount of unused and early stages, and even prototype music tracks and two test stages! Which have both been ported over into the PC version of Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut. The two test stages were designed of course, to test various gameplay scenarios. From loops, to hills, to stairs, and everything in between. Much to everyone's surprise, the stage model for the prototype of Windy Valley was also found in the Autodemo. Sadly though, the images that textured the model are long gone. And attempts to play the level causes it to crash, due to those missing files. There were also 29 music tracks in the demo. Many of which differ in various ways from their final counterpart. I'm going to show you the differences between four of the majorly changed tracks, in order to keep the video length at a decent amount. The first track is the theme for Speed Highway Act 1. The autodemo version has a slighty faster tempo than the final version. The early track called ''Danger! Chased by Rocks!'' is definitely missing some instruments making it feel very empty compared to the final version. Emerald Coast Act 1 also has an early music track in the autodemo. It seems to be missing an underlying guitar track, and the drum track is way more complex than the final game. The theme of Chao Garden is notably different than it's final counterpart. In the early theme's mix, the drums are put more towards the front of the song causing the listener to mainly hear the drum track. This drum track also sounds completely different than the final version. The user Drx from Sonic Retro also posted an early version of Sonic Adventure on August 31, 2008. This was actually a trial version used at E3. And even though it was created six months after the Japanese release, there is still one major difference between this version and the final release..... Knuckles' voice changed! Knuckles' voice in E3 1999 is more gruff and has a deeper tone than the final. But instead of me explaining it, why not listen for yourself? There's some very interesting unused objects in Sonic Adventure. Let's begin with the ones left over from the earlier versions of the game. This spring model used in Sonic Jam goes unused in Sonic Adventure and was likely used as a placeholder until the final model was completed. The texture used for this model doesn't fit correctly. Obviously, because it was designed for the final model. Speaking of placeholders, this loading screen used in the autodemo is left over in the final game. A prototype character select screen is located in ''CSELECT1'' and ''CSELECT2'' as six still images; one for each selection. In addition to the five Chao emotions in the final game, there are also four other emotions that weren't used. While we don't know what these emotions mean, I can only guess that the last two are depressed and embarrassed. And perhaps the first happens when the Chao receives a lot of attention. This stopwatch goes unused in Sonic Adventure. It's possible that the item was intended to freeze enemies, the stage's timer, or maybe even add back time in the E-102 Gamma stages. In Sky Chase Act 2, Tails and Sonic are flying in the Tornado 2 instead of the original Tornado in Act 1. Despite being two different versions of the plane with different names, both Act 1 and 2 use the health bar with the same name. Apparently at first though, Act 2 was meant to display a new health bar for Tornado 2, as shown by this unused graphic. Perhaps one of the most interesting unused things found in Sonic Adventure, is this image of one of the developers holding a drawing of realistic blue hedgehog. While I was watching some early announcement footage with some of Sonic Adventure's developers, I came across another image of a realistic hedgehog. From what I can tell, the image found in the game was taken while the video for the announcement was being shot. Notice this guy here. He is likely the videographer that took the video. The fact that the computer in the background is on the same screen in both, also proves that they were taken at roughly the same time. Graphics aren't the only unused oddities in Sonic Adventure. The Japanese level list located in ''1ST_READ.BIN'' lists almost every single level in the game. Plus, a few extra. Three empty level slots are labeled as: Mushroom, Jungle, and Desert in the list. Being that they are very broad titles, they could've been used on the list as possible ideas that were never expanded on, or perhaps they were simply there as placeholders. There are two blocks of text in the game that were never seen in Sonic Adventure. This first block was likely to be said by Dr. Eggman, if E-102 Gamma failed his training mission in the stage, Final Egg. Another interesting line of text says: What makes it so interesting is that Sonic is the only character available to play when starting a new game. Meaning that a different character, possibly Tails, was going to be playable from the start instead of Sonic. Now let's move on to some really fascinating unused Tikal voice clips. This first one warns the player about the Leon Badnik. Interestingly, even though the voice clip was removed, the enemy remains in the final game. The next clip warns us about the enemy Golah. What makes it so intriguing is that the enemy Golah from Sonic 2 and Sonic Blast, was renamed ''E-17 Gora'' in Sonic Adventure. This means that the team was originally going to call the enemy by its original name, but renamed it later in development. Though these clips are pretty interesting, the most amazing unused voice clip of the bunch, is where Tikal discusses Super Sonic. Take a listen. As you heard, this means that Sonic would have originally been able to use Super Sonic in regular levels as well as the final boss battle, by collecting 50 rings and pressing the action button while jumping. This could've been removed for a number of reasons: Firstly, stages would have to been designed for Super Sonic and normal characters. Since Super Sonic can move extremely fast and hover over water, levels would have to be designed to accompany those abilities. Stages such as Red Mountain would have to be completely redesigned for Super Sonic, and perhaps the development team didn't wish to go to all that trouble. Another theory is that since Super Sonic requires all seven Chaos Emeralds in earlier games, they didn't want Sonic to simply be able to use rings, but instead to stay true to the source material, they chose to allow him to change in the final boss battle, with all of the emeralds in his possession. So that's the beta of Sonic Adventure! As with Super Mario 64, Sonic's ''adventure'' into the third dimension, was one filled with scrapped concepts, redesigned stages, and tons of new ideas. It still amazes me the ingenuity of the Sonic Team! They created what it never been even considered before! I mean, just look at Billy Hatcher, it just screams originality! So if you still want to learn more about the development of Sonic Adventure, surf over to Sonic Cult! The link is in the description. So this has been Beta64 with the Sonic Adventure beta. Thanks for watching!