I saw a few sonic adventure videos and footage on secrets of sonic team, and in 1998, during the sonic adventure you could hear what seemed a japanese version of the main theme of the game. It seemed nice, I wonder why did tehy change it on the final... Does anyone have that song? Anyone heard it too?
As far as I know, "Open Your Heart" has always been in English. The source of your confusion may be Sega's intention to change the U.S. soundtrack the way they did with Sonic CD (Sonic is not "moody and atmospheric", dammit! >_<#). Mercifully, it seems laziness won out and the original soundtrack remained in the U.S. version.
Who said research is a bad thing? After reading Neoblast's post I looked around to jog my own hazy memory on this very subject and discovered there was indeed a demo of "Open Your Heart" featuring guide vocals by Jun Senoue, which was fortunately replaced in the final mix with Johnny Gioelli's more familiar track. I'm not sure if this early take ever made it into any released version of Sonic Adventure (though I'm sure a prototype may still feature it), but due to certain group members having obligations elsewhere a slightly revised line-up of Crush 40 made its only known appearance during the Japanese press conference where this game debuted. If you'd like to see - and hear, for what it's worth! - the song being played more like how it was during this work-in-progress stage, check out the footage on Youtube... just let me warn you in advance for the genuinely awful "Engrish" and poor sound quality!
Ah yes, you're not the only one who noticed the differences between the version from the Sonic Adventure -Tokyo International Forum video and the final Crush 40 version of the song. I remember this from when I first registered on these forums & was so obsessed in finding an early prototype Dreamcast version (which I was told existed by one person here but was told by members of Sonic-Cult that one was never leaked). An awesome song it is! It's love to cover it on guitar someday. Also, parts 28:33-28:37 in that 30 min video (a nice fill-in) was removed from the final song.
If it's the same site we're thinking about, then Sega already dropped it unfortunately: http://www.sonicteam.com/sonicadv/snd/index.html You can still access some of the pages through archive.org, though I don't remember there being an available MP3.
Ahh! Thanks, I appreciate it! BTW, the old link I posted above can be accessed through the http://sonic.sega.jp/ domain, instead of dead link at sonicteam.com.
