Sonic R - 1997 Japanese SAT Preview Footage Unearthed

I've been in a Sonic mood lately. So I'm kicking off July for myself by uploading an old short Japanese preview of Sonic R for all Sonic fans, Saturn fans -- nay, everyone -- to see, with annotations demonstrating what's different in this preview!

This preview features some rudimentary details, most notable is a scratch version of the (in?)famous Sonic R theme "Super Sonic Racing" (But you would have to listen closely as the obnoxious Japanese announcer guy keeps blabbing his freaking mouth over it. =P)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRHkCD4lr9k

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This segment originated from a Sega promotional VHS tape titled "セガサターンビデオマガジン 1997年12月号" (or Sega Saturn Video Magazine - December 1997). I found the Sega video itself from Nico Nico Douga. Original URL source: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12904944

I hope you enjoy this footage!

 

Great footage! I have an earlier Sega promotional tape from Japan, which includes a 40% complete version of Daytona USA plus an arcade Sega Rally beta build. I take it these videos came out frequently during the Saturn's life over there? I'd love to see more from these, especially since they featured so much early prototype material. By the way, I've got a 30-second clip of Sonic R from the 1997 E3. At this point, the first level was still using the sunset background (which later became PC-exclusive) and you can quite clearly see the same early character position icons. However, I'd never spotted the glitch where others briefly have Sonic's jump sprite, although I'd heard the scratch vocal from its appearance on a similar European VHS. If you want I can look into uploading these in the near future...

 

That'd be cool. I think the folks at Sonic Retro would find that E3 video more interesting than this Japanese preview, as this one shows a build closer to the final.

 

Why Sega didn't make an actual sonic game with this I guess we'll never know.

 

Sonic R was the second phase of Project Sonic - a campaign intended to introduce Sega's mascot to a new generation. Also, it served to improve awareness of the franchise in Japan, where Sonic was never actually that popular to begin with. The first phase of this campaign, Sonic Jam, even featured an interactive museum area dubbed Sonic World, which is actually a slightly modified area from the planned third and final stage of Project Sonic, in development under the working title of Sonic & Knuckles RPG.

When members of Sonic Team were invited to help design Sega's next console, they realised that "Sonic World" would be better suited to what later became the Dreamcast (similarly, Shenmue was another such casualty of the same platform change). In between Sonic Jam and the game that evolved into Sonic Adventure, we have Sonic R. Considered somewhat of a black sheep, we should take into account that series producer Yuji Naka was very much involved with the planning of this game.

Travellers' Tales may have developed Sonic R, but many of its features came from the mind of Naka. Even the music's controversial lyrics were his decision to implement, and I believe the general idea was to create a racer to emphasise the character's speed... probably because he already knew that by contrast, Sonic World woud be relatively slower as a result of technical limitations. Of course, on the Dreamcast its only reason for being remotely slow was due to frame rate optimisation issues!

How's that for a short answer as to why Sonic Team never made a proper Saturn-bound Sonic game?

 

Considering your posting history, I can only assume your house was on fire and you had to truncate your feelings to make it out.

 

Close, but no cigar: I'm actually posting while on holiday (sort of - fortunately I have a VERY understanding other half who appreciates my need to prioritise all things Assembler over catching the sun). Of course, writing messages such as this makes it feel more like an extension of my normal day-to-day activities. Right, now I'm going to enjoy some daylight for a change... after all, it's what I've come here for!

P.S. Keiji, is it alright that I won't be able to upload that footage until maybe Tuesday at the earliest?

 

I'm not at any rush. =)

By the way, your Saturn posts always impress me.

 

Ironically, I'm soon going to the UK for vacation. Go figure!

 

So, are you saying that, due to technical limitations, they couldn't make a Saturn game that conveyed the sense of speed that the series was known for? And that's why they never released a regular Saturn Sonic game?

On a somewhat related note (related in a way that would take too long to explain), it occurred to me that a very large part of what was endearing about Sega was their goofiness - some of it intentional, some of it not. Nintendo can be extremely goofy too, but it's usually intentional.

 

I don't think the problem was technical difficulties with the Saturn achieving the kinds of speed normally associated with a Sonic game (just look at the flawless Sonic Jam compilation for proof of this), but more the World/Adventure concept - itself based on a heavily modified version of the NiGHTS engine - simply couldn't manage anything too fast, which is why the Saturn was associated with slower titles in the franchise.

For example, in comparison with earlier games Sonic 3D felt quite sluggish, while Sonic R was barely any faster. However, the very genre of this one made it feel a lot faster than it was in reality, although when the pace did pick up it was only in non playable sections, when after hitting a speed booster control is temporarily disabled.

The only real exception to this rule was Sonic's brief cameo in Christmas NiGHTS, but the speed and twitchy controls there rendered him virtually unplayable outside of a short-lived novelty bonus. A full game built around that idea may have been sorely missed, but who can honestly imagine playing through several levels in that same style? I for one would have grown tired longer than I did with Sonic 3D, and the leaked prototype of Sonic Xtreme isn't much better.

My concern is that Sonic Team couldn't possibly have made a decent game starring their mascot with all the limitations of the Saturn as its host console. Although we'll never be sure, I suspect the Sonic World area would have run even slower were it not for the fact it's entirely closed off. There's little chance of a much larger stage being possible without the need for frequent loading sequences, and Sonic Adventure only managed to avoid this problem because disc accessing was short and kept to a minimum. By contrast, The House Of The Dead's overall pace was virtually killed by the regular interruption of load screens!

 

Personally, I don't think the loading on House of the Dead is that much of an issue. The turd textures are the only thing that let that game down.

Yakumo

 

Here's another idea: since they felt they couldn't make a proper 3D Sonic on the Saturn, why not make a 2D one? An original 2D Sonic on the Saturn would've been awesome, and the Saturn was more than capable of running a great 2D game. Maybe it's because they were trying to move public perception of the Saturn away from seeing it as a 2D machine. Still, it's a shame it never happened.

 

The biggest issue with the Saturn is draw distance. It is acceptable in Sonic R because the track allows things to be predictable. In a free roaming environment it would be horrible, especially moving at high speed.

 

Not so true. It's programming skill. the Saturn could draw just as far in to the distance as a PlayStation. Just look at Road Rash or Need For Speed. It only suffers pop up due to the amount of polygons on screen and lack of programming skill for the system. The original Daytona and the CCE edition are good example. Same tracks, more experience = less pop-up. Games like Stella Assault, Exhumed and Quake draw way off in to the distance. To be honest, the N64 was one of the worst for pop-up. That's why many games were situated in fog city.

Yakumo

 

I don't actually think draw distance would have been that much of a factor, although to be fair NiGHTS is quite a bad example if you look really carefully. However, this is most obvious during the flight sections where you don't really have time to see the resulting pop-up happen. If you've ever made use of the boundary exploit in Sonic World, it's clear that Sonic Team was really pushing the NiGHTS engine to its absolute limit - had the enclosed level been any larger, you'd have really noticed this particular issue become a major problem. On the subject of Saturn games with really good draw distance, I found King The Spirits (or High Velocity as it was known in the US) quite impressive.

As for the possibility of there being a 2D Sonic title on Sega's 32-bit console, I've read somewhere in the past that at one point this was very much considered. Actually, the plan was for a high-speed 2.5D kind of setup with the character models and most interactive objects - such as rings or enemies - all pre-rendered sprites created using Silicon Graphics workstations. Meanwhile, the stages themselves were mostly polygonal, topped off with some 2D flora and fauna. From what I can remember, this was being developed at Sega Technical Institute around the time of the ill-fated Sonic Xtreme and ran in the console's standard resolution at a projected 30 frames per second. Then again, I've heard conflicting things about whether this reached a playable stage or not...

While I accept the later Japanese version had some further improvements made to it, does anyone honestly rate Daytona USA Championship Circuit Edition that much higher than AM2's earlier conversion in terms of its visuals? I found the draw-in was barely changed, and just after the start/finish lane on the 777 Speedway the entire pit lane area has a tendency to disappear completely, giving the impression of the whole course floating in mid air against the bitmap background! Also, huge sections of Sea Side Street Galaxy are similarly poor, though I guess the overall texture mapping quality was a huge leap over the original effort. Regardless of its glitching and inconsistent frame rate, I thought Sega Touring Car was another decent-looking racer.

 

For me the problem with SEGA Touring Car wasn't how it looked but how inconsistently it played, either the cars were far too twitchy or it felt like you were trying to steer a yacht through gravy.

As for the whole 3D Sonic thing though, I think the Saturn could have pissed a super fast platformer with just a little bit of clever programming. If CapCom could use the 4MB cart in a pseudo 3D game like Final Fight: Travesty or whatever it was called, just think what SEGA themselves with their own extensive tool libraries could have come up with for Sonic. That way the 4MB RAM cart would have had a release outside of Japan and then who knows what could also have been released in the west or been saved from cancellation or the switch to Dreamcast. Just a thought...

 

Racing games are a bad example. A free roaming platformer taxes a system in ways different from a racing game. For one thing, you have a much more complex collision system. Racing games only have to show a small area so you can bump up the polygons or cheat and cull polygons behind props in the scene because you are only going to be viewing them from one angle.

The Playstation did not have a 3D game like Sonic Adventure. The closest was maybe Croc, Spyro or Tomb Raider. Those games could not handle decent draw distance, so they used lots of little rooms and sub-areas that would add walls to confine the environment and allow for loading transitions as you passed from section to section. In a Sonic game you run around fast, so the levels would have to be big to accommodate that running around. Otherwise the game world would not feel like a Sonic environment.

Quake and Exhumed were compartmental in design too. They had to redesign Quake because the Saturn could not handle a faithful conversion. It ended up being really good, but it was designed around the limitations of the hardware.

 

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