Furnessly
09-28-2011, 10:11 AM
I've decided to look at some games cause I don't really have anything else much to do, sadly don't have the ability that some people have of finding unused stuff and well hope anything here is useful.
Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf
There are a few things that are unused in this game. The menu text of Super Masters still appears in the ROM and is displayed in the tiles but unused, this is due to that the Tournament Golf text is nearly the end of the ROM along with the Title, the Ending and finally the Fantasy Zone minigame. They use Nemesis compression. Also the Japanese text is still in the ROM and again unused.
There is also a part of a golfer pose that is as far as I know is unused, it is stored at the end of the uncompressed part of the ROM. It is also loaded when you finished putting but doesn't load it entirely and isn't used. Speaking of which, I think that there are a few more unused poses for the golfer but they are compressed and not by Nemesis compression either.
http://i.imgur.com/McZJD.png
Sub-Terrania
As you might know, there are 2 betas (possibly 3) of Sub-Terrania hanging around online. A prototype leaked by scener group Fairlight was only briefly covered by X-Cult which seemed to be similar to Beta 1 in the GoodSet or Beta, Earlier in the no-intro standards. So this goes into more detail of Beta 1 since Beta 2 looks like an US beta version (testing for bugs). According to the date in the ROM, Beta 1 was built in July 1993 that is 5 months before the US final and 7 months before the EU and the other versions. Technically it is an more of a late Alpha than a Beta though.
Header name: SUB TERRANIA (final: SUB-TERRANIA)
The intro is different compared to the final, after the Sega logo the logos for Scavanger and Zyrinx appear that are changed and moved to the credits in the final. The intro in the beta starts with the pilot falling down, then a white rectangle appears with a man looking at a screen ready to launch out of the shuttle bay (piccy: http://i.imgur.com/Rvevq.png ), some intro text appears, a rendered ship shoots something and claws appear to grab it then some lasers shoot the claws (piccy: http://i.imgur.com/TGm7J.png ) and the ship flys with the title. The final uses an explosion instead.
The pilot falling down was moved to the stage intro in the final with an added falling into the ship animation.
The credits are at the About option on the Main Menu in this beta compared to at the end in the final. There are no credits for the Sega of America staff in this build, just the Zyrinx staff. There is no controls option, no sound test and there are debug features.
Game is harder than the final, the damage depletes faster and is easier to bounce to the walls. Also there is a time limit in the stages that was removed in the final (the graphics for the time bar are still in the final version as well but it is used for an acid meter and the final boss). Strangely in the final, you get a time bonus after completing the stage and it is always 1. According to producer Tony Van, he says that the game difficulty was altered twice before the difficulty that you see in the final. In game shot: http://i.imgur.com/9xlTa.png
Stage 2 and Stage 3 are swapped in the beta. There is no stage 8 since that sends back to the intro, 9 loads an underwater stage and instant death. The final boss and the ending don't appear to have been programmed at all at this stage. There is no Game Over sequence when you lose all your lives.
The Mission Briefing of Stage 1 has been reworded, the final being shorter. Piccy: http://i.imgur.com/8n6yr.png There is a cutscene on the intro to Stages 4, 5 and 6 that got removed in the final. Piccy: http://i.imgur.com/VdRUY.png
Music wise the only tracks in the game are Crystal Space, Sublevel, Enemy Mines and Power Flower. There might be more but requires hacking.
ROM wise, the data has been shifted between beta and final. Also the beta has an unusual size being 1.25MB while the final has 2MB.
Some interesting facts about the final, the High Score are related to demogroups and people in the demoscene:
Crionics - A demo group
Deftronic - Ex-Member of Crionics, programmer
The Spy - Ex-Member of Crionics, programmer
Murphy - Ex-Member of Crionics, programmer
Silents - A large demo group that some members formed Digital Illusions, the Zyrinx staff are from the Danish part of the demo group
Kyd/Balle - Jesper Kyd (music) and Mikael Balle (graphics), both members of Silents and friends of each other
Sionic - Ex-Member of Slients, graphics
Karvid - No clue
Guzzler - Ex-member of Silents, Programmer
Crux (Ruvan Fernando) - Ex-Member of Slients, programmer
Most of the credits are also who made the Hardwired demo on the Amiga.
Update:
I tested the drx prototypes and they probably are the final versions. The December 1993 build I originally thought might be slightly harder than the final in terms of fuel and armour but checking the build date on the final confirms that it is the US final. The Feburary 2nd build is possibly the Korean? final (it says for NTSC Mega Drives but it didn't come out in Japan and the Asian version seems to be the PAL version) and the February 3rd build is the PAL final. The only way that it is certain would be to compare them and identifying the changed bytes.
Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition
There is a test mode but don't know if it has been removed. Anyway using a Hex editor, address B240 references a test mode with an Object Menu (sprites presumably), Scroll Test (backgrounds) and a Sound test. Further down in the ROM has stuff like CHR-NUM and the Scroll Test has a number and a character (e.g. 0 Ryu, 1 E.Honda, etc). Sound test has BGM, SE and PCM channels to test.
As for which games are next. Well.. the drx prototype pack has lots of sports games, some of them don't even boot at all (one of them looks like its byte swapped), some are even final versions and a couple are broken. The more interesting games of the set have been looked at and covered at elsewhere especially the Sonic games have been pretty much picked out nearly every detail. If I find something interesting, then probably cover it.
Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf
There are a few things that are unused in this game. The menu text of Super Masters still appears in the ROM and is displayed in the tiles but unused, this is due to that the Tournament Golf text is nearly the end of the ROM along with the Title, the Ending and finally the Fantasy Zone minigame. They use Nemesis compression. Also the Japanese text is still in the ROM and again unused.
There is also a part of a golfer pose that is as far as I know is unused, it is stored at the end of the uncompressed part of the ROM. It is also loaded when you finished putting but doesn't load it entirely and isn't used. Speaking of which, I think that there are a few more unused poses for the golfer but they are compressed and not by Nemesis compression either.
http://i.imgur.com/McZJD.png
Sub-Terrania
As you might know, there are 2 betas (possibly 3) of Sub-Terrania hanging around online. A prototype leaked by scener group Fairlight was only briefly covered by X-Cult which seemed to be similar to Beta 1 in the GoodSet or Beta, Earlier in the no-intro standards. So this goes into more detail of Beta 1 since Beta 2 looks like an US beta version (testing for bugs). According to the date in the ROM, Beta 1 was built in July 1993 that is 5 months before the US final and 7 months before the EU and the other versions. Technically it is an more of a late Alpha than a Beta though.
Header name: SUB TERRANIA (final: SUB-TERRANIA)
The intro is different compared to the final, after the Sega logo the logos for Scavanger and Zyrinx appear that are changed and moved to the credits in the final. The intro in the beta starts with the pilot falling down, then a white rectangle appears with a man looking at a screen ready to launch out of the shuttle bay (piccy: http://i.imgur.com/Rvevq.png ), some intro text appears, a rendered ship shoots something and claws appear to grab it then some lasers shoot the claws (piccy: http://i.imgur.com/TGm7J.png ) and the ship flys with the title. The final uses an explosion instead.
The pilot falling down was moved to the stage intro in the final with an added falling into the ship animation.
The credits are at the About option on the Main Menu in this beta compared to at the end in the final. There are no credits for the Sega of America staff in this build, just the Zyrinx staff. There is no controls option, no sound test and there are debug features.
Game is harder than the final, the damage depletes faster and is easier to bounce to the walls. Also there is a time limit in the stages that was removed in the final (the graphics for the time bar are still in the final version as well but it is used for an acid meter and the final boss). Strangely in the final, you get a time bonus after completing the stage and it is always 1. According to producer Tony Van, he says that the game difficulty was altered twice before the difficulty that you see in the final. In game shot: http://i.imgur.com/9xlTa.png
Stage 2 and Stage 3 are swapped in the beta. There is no stage 8 since that sends back to the intro, 9 loads an underwater stage and instant death. The final boss and the ending don't appear to have been programmed at all at this stage. There is no Game Over sequence when you lose all your lives.
The Mission Briefing of Stage 1 has been reworded, the final being shorter. Piccy: http://i.imgur.com/8n6yr.png There is a cutscene on the intro to Stages 4, 5 and 6 that got removed in the final. Piccy: http://i.imgur.com/VdRUY.png
Music wise the only tracks in the game are Crystal Space, Sublevel, Enemy Mines and Power Flower. There might be more but requires hacking.
ROM wise, the data has been shifted between beta and final. Also the beta has an unusual size being 1.25MB while the final has 2MB.
Some interesting facts about the final, the High Score are related to demogroups and people in the demoscene:
Crionics - A demo group
Deftronic - Ex-Member of Crionics, programmer
The Spy - Ex-Member of Crionics, programmer
Murphy - Ex-Member of Crionics, programmer
Silents - A large demo group that some members formed Digital Illusions, the Zyrinx staff are from the Danish part of the demo group
Kyd/Balle - Jesper Kyd (music) and Mikael Balle (graphics), both members of Silents and friends of each other
Sionic - Ex-Member of Slients, graphics
Karvid - No clue
Guzzler - Ex-member of Silents, Programmer
Crux (Ruvan Fernando) - Ex-Member of Slients, programmer
Most of the credits are also who made the Hardwired demo on the Amiga.
Update:
I tested the drx prototypes and they probably are the final versions. The December 1993 build I originally thought might be slightly harder than the final in terms of fuel and armour but checking the build date on the final confirms that it is the US final. The Feburary 2nd build is possibly the Korean? final (it says for NTSC Mega Drives but it didn't come out in Japan and the Asian version seems to be the PAL version) and the February 3rd build is the PAL final. The only way that it is certain would be to compare them and identifying the changed bytes.
Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition
There is a test mode but don't know if it has been removed. Anyway using a Hex editor, address B240 references a test mode with an Object Menu (sprites presumably), Scroll Test (backgrounds) and a Sound test. Further down in the ROM has stuff like CHR-NUM and the Scroll Test has a number and a character (e.g. 0 Ryu, 1 E.Honda, etc). Sound test has BGM, SE and PCM channels to test.
As for which games are next. Well.. the drx prototype pack has lots of sports games, some of them don't even boot at all (one of them looks like its byte swapped), some are even final versions and a couple are broken. The more interesting games of the set have been looked at and covered at elsewhere especially the Sonic games have been pretty much picked out nearly every detail. If I find something interesting, then probably cover it.