"Sonic Chronicles" trademarked by Sega

[G.Silver]

In Sonic Heroes, the Japanese Big still sounds gratingly stupid. I don't know if that was the case in Adventure (my Japanese wasn't good enough then to make the call) but my recollection is that he didn't. Of course, since no one in Heroes would ever shut up they all sounded pretty stupid in either language.

I wouldn't say bored, but in Japanese, Rouge sounds like someone's hot middle aged mom pretending to be a James Bond character. I find that kind of hot, actually.

[big_smile]

Zoah was the winner of the naming contest.

It's too bad The GHZ wasn't invited to suggest a name. It would be cool having a Sonic villain that was called The Drāno (or named after some other GHZ-injoke).

^_^

[K2J]

Non-4Kids Rouge sounded like a ditz. Or, if you make her dizzy in Sonic Heroes, Howard Dean. This is probbably due to the horrid translation she got in SA2, which is still hard to understand since, as far as I can tell, the entire storyline was written in English by the California team. I couldn't really tell a difference between the two Bigs - but he does sound like he's... mentally deficient.

"Zoah" is OK by me.

[Dasher]

IGN has new pics.

[Green Gibbon!]

It's too bad The GHZ wasn't invited to suggest a name. It would be cool having a Sonic villain that was called The Drāno (or named after some other GHZ-injoke).

Yeah, hows come we got left out of that? I'm hurt.

Not that we'd have come up with anything E-rated anyway.

[DackAttac]

"Representative from the Green Hill Zone... was your forum able to conceive a name?"
"Yes, we have. Clint. Clint Taurus."
"...Clint. Taurus."
"Yes."
"...I like it. It's snappy. The kids will eat it up."
"They have been known to, on occasion."

[Isuka]

So... we are sticking with the Sonic X status windows?

[Crazy Penguin]

They look like placeholders. Those head icons on the bottom screen have to go too.

[Gaz]

Isn't it odd how we haven't had a video of this game yet despite it being announced months ago yet we've had screenshots, artwork and a video of Sonic Unleashed within a few days even though technically it hasn't even been officially announced yet?

[Ngangbius]

Maybe Bioware has better webpage security than Sega.

[G.Silver]

Yeah, hows come we got left out of that? I'm hurt.

Did the other names actually come from other websites?

[Green Gibbon!]

I dunno. People are talking like they were, or at least a few of them. I know Sega Europe's got this Sonic fansite PR thing orchestrated - I'm on their mailing list and all that, but I'm usually too lazy to participate in anything so I guess we're low priority. They did send me a T-shirt a while back, though!

[Segaholic2]

Yes, they were. Sega Nerds, another site I administrate, provided the winning entry. I rock.

P.S. I'm pretty sure this means I get my name in the credits in the special thanks somewhere, along with the rest of the site staff. This game better not suck.

[Shadow Hog]

I knew "Zoah" sounded familiar. Yup, right there in Panzer Dragoon Saga's OST.

I really need to buy that game. Really need to. That and Radiant Silvergun, but at least the latter emulates perfectly - PDS seems to freeze loading up some boss battle for me. :< (For the record it's in a large cave just after you get through a big desert region - not long after you meet Gash, really. The sound clip of Gash explaining the boss to you cuts off, despite the subtitles continuing on, and the camera continues its little panorama shot of you and the boss forever and ever long after both the sound clip and subtitles finished, never actually letting me fight the damned thing - effectively frozen.)

[Locit]

Wow, that sucks. One of the coolest features in the game opens up after that fight. I don't think that's a skippable cutscene, either, since it's already inside the battle system. I assume you've already tried mashing buttons furiously in a desperate attempt to cut it short? I know L and R slow down and speed up the cutscenes, respectively, so you might give that a shot to see if it messes with how it loads the interlude.

Basically the scene is just Gash saying how harmless the creature is and that you should kill it and be on your merry way.

[Shadow Hog]

Yeah, that's what the dialogue said. I'm pretty sure I've tried skipping the cutscene to no avail, but I wasn't aware of this L and R business. Maybe I'll give it a whirl - I'd like to have at least cleared disc 1, considering that was, at least in Europe, the "demo" of the game.

Might as well update SSF, too; it might come in handy.

[Ritz]

Cassini plays the whole scene just fine for me, but for whatever reason, it wouldn't let me switch to the 2nd disc at the end. It could've been the fault of either the emulator or the iso, but hey!

Also, a quick Google search shows that the freeze was fixed "like 10 releases ago", so an update probably would help oodles.

[Shadow Hog]

Right, well, anyway, the update worked. That was one freaking long boss fight. Doesn't help that it was months ago that I last played PDS, and as of such my "let's dodge the enemy's attacks by moving off to the side! lawl!" skills were somewhat lacking.

I really hope Sega officially perfects Saturn emulation some time so I can legitimately own this one. Without having to pay $200. My understanding is that Gametap comes pretty damn close, so maybe it's only a matter of time...?

[Locit]

Awesome! Remember, green is good, clear is vulnerable, and red is WHAT ARE YOU THINKING GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE. Unless you have a shield, of course. Oh, and on that note always pet your dragon. </cryptic>

The actual source code of PDS has been lost, so I'm not sure how that might affect an "official" emulation.

And Ritz, once you save at the end of a disc there's no real trick to switching to the next. You just "turn off" the Saturn and boot up the next one- your save file should be perfectly suited to continue on disc 2 unless I've misunderstood the problem.

[Shadow Hog]

...well, I was thinking they'd just run it through whatever emulator of choice they're using, honestly. I mean, it's not like they used the source code to any of the Sonic games to make Mega Collection (although I'll concede that they did use it for some games in Gems, with varying results - CD was worse, R was considerably better and the Fighters I can't say since I can barely play it anyway, seeing as all the movelists are in Japanese on my version).

It really is a bummer that it was lost, though, since that nixes any chances of a proper revival - well, I mean, there are other methods they could try, of course, like trying to "guesstimate" as to what they did originally, or completely decompiling the entire game and trying to make sense of whatever code the decompiler puts out (and having done myself that with IA32 code, let's just say they'd have to be DAMN devoted to even remotely want to do that - it turns the simplest C code into a giant ASM headache, so I can't imagine attempting an entire game's worth of that), but honestly, just emulating it would be fine too, so long as it plays relatively closely to how it did on the Saturn itself.

Also I'm pretty sure Ritz is referring to how it usually worked for, say, the PS1 Final Fantasy titles, where you'd clear one disc, open up the lid, swap discs, and keep playing without a reboot - which the Saturn generally doesn't do since it boots you to the BIOS whenever the lid opens. Usually. If it doesn't then something's typically going wrong.

[j-man]

They emulate Saturn games now?

[Ritz]

And Ritz, once you save at the end of a disc there's no real trick to switching to the next. You just "turn off" the Saturn and boot up the next one- your save file should be perfectly suited to continue on disc 2 unless I've misunderstood the problem.

Oh, it's not like that; if I recall correctly, the emulator wouldn't even read the disc. Which, come to think of it, probably means it was the fault of the ISO, but I'm not going to try playing the game again until my new PC arrives, so I can (Hopefully) run the thing at a reasonable framerate!

They emulate Saturn games now?

Go back to bed, Jeremy.

[Shadow Hog]

Try setting the CPU Priority up a couple of notches to "High" - I found that doing that makes SSF run considerably better. Not perfect, mind (the timing seems a bit jittery, which isn't noticeable in gameplay so much as it is with the music typically being faster than normal), but pretty good - Radiant Silvergun actually runs pretty close to its usual 60 FPS when I run it on my home computer as such.

[Arcade]

The Nintendo DS games tend to look like GBA games unless done in 3D, in 3D they look like N64 games, only they look a bit better because of the smaller screen size, plus they can have up to 1 GB, so that helps too.

Unfortunatelly, the "GBA" look is too easy to get, so fake screenshots pop up anywhere...

I will just wait, every lazy bum can do "GBA" junkie...

[Dasher]

BEHOLD!

http://www.sega.com/gamesite/sonicchronicles/us/

Never saw this awesome art before, Seeing Amy there makes me hope she will be the main heroine of this story. Really this game has me more pumped up than Unleashed (naturally), I just want a Sonic game which I can sit back and enjoy.

Loving the art so far! keep em coming~!