SegaSonic Bros. at California Extreme this weekend

[Pengi]

The prototype of the unreleased arcade puzzle game, SegaSonic Bros., will be at California Extreme this weekend, at the exA-Arcadia booth.

http://www.caextreme.org/

Will anyone here be attending? If so, be sure to get as much footage as possible!

[Sean]

Wasn't this meant to be dumped at some point? I also wish it didn't take us well over two and a half years to get any footage of it.

[Neo Hazard]

It was, but the story is supposedly the wonderful prototype community stepped in and informed the owner he would be blacklisted in their circles if he released the dump. It is dumped but may be a long time before it sees the light of day.

[Badnik Mechanic]

7 hours ago, Neo Hazard said:

It was, but the story is supposedly the wonderful prototype community stepped in and informed the owner he would be blacklisted in their circles if he released the dump. 

Wha... They... But... Why!? 

Why is that a thing!? Why would anyone do that!? What possible reason is there for them to threaten a guy over dumping an unreleased game!?

[Legendary Emerald]

13 hours ago, Neo Hazard said:

It was, but the story is supposedly the wonderful prototype community stepped in and informed the owner he would be blacklisted in their circles if he released the dump. It is dumped but may be a long time before it sees the light of day.

What prototype community? Anything I've ever seen on prototyped games came from dumps that were released publicly; what faction of people DON'T want access to the things they obsess over? Sounds like gate-keeping nonsense.

[Tracker_TD]

37 minutes ago, Legendary Emerald said:

What prototype community? Anything I've ever seen on prototyped games came from dumps that were released publicly; what faction of people DON'T want access to the things they obsess over? Sounds like gate-keeping nonsense.

Well for reference, ShouTime has a Patreon where he wants about $500 per dump, though at some point the goal jumps to like $5000.

...we're probably not getting those dumps.

[Mr Loopone]

2 hours ago, Legendary Emerald said:

What prototype community? Anything I've ever seen on prototyped games came from dumps that were released publicly; what faction of people DON'T want access to the things they obsess over? Sounds like gate-keeping nonsense.

Well... It just depends on where it came from whether it is a pirated cart/scene release back in the day, bought out of luck, the seller knew what they were selling or a community got involved with it. In the case of some prototypes some people had donate money or release reproduction carts in case of Mega Drive/NES games to cover the costs to buy the cartridge/disc/ROM board to dump.

Then there are some prototypes that chances of release either cost too much to be released or hoarded by someone especially if they are from the Japanese community who rarely give anything out, even commercially games. It is because they believe the value of the cartridge/board would go down but its not always like that. With some we were lucky to get them since there was either one remaining unit but badly damaged and with Dive Bomber Squad one of the arcade boards Konami confiscated it before it had a chance to be shown and the one that is available was aging and might have been from an earlier version (it wasn't finished). One famous prototype that we'll never get to see is Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures on the Genesis. That has been around with a few owners. One person who was involved with MAME had a ROM dump but lost the flash drive that had the ROM. Castlevania Bloodlines with the airship stage is another example however earlier and later prototypes have been released. Marble Madness 2 is another game that we aren't going to see either.

In terms of Sonic games. Sonic 1 had a well known prototype (a preview build, might have Sparkling and Clock Work Zones in them) but it is at a container locker and there's no access to it, chances of that getting seen is slim. This one has a well known contributor to MAME but wants well a lot of money since he knows that its a Sonic game. It is lucky that the Sonic community has plenty of prototypes from various games with some other well known series only have a few that are released.

[Neo Hazard]

13 hours ago, Mayor D said:

Wha... They... But... Why!? 

Why is that a thing!? Why would anyone do that!? What possible reason is there for them to threaten a guy over dumping an unreleased game!?

 

8 hours ago, Legendary Emerald said:

What prototype community? Anything I've ever seen on prototyped games came from dumps that were released publicly; what faction of people DON'T want access to the things they obsess over? Sounds like gate-keeping nonsense.

It's a problem we've run into plenty over at Retro. By dumping a rom for the rest of the world, collectors believe that devalues the cart, disc, or in this case board, that houses the game. The community is pretty close knit and the only way you can even have a chance of getting in is through money and having some rare stuff yourself. A lot of this comes from experience and ShouTime himself, it sucks but collectors like to think they have priceless artifacts that no one else does or can.

[shdowhunt60]

It's artificially keeping the market value up by maintaining scarcity. It's really, really short sighted and stupid.

I was pretty amazed by the idea that there's apparently an entire community that's behind this, because you know, you'd think collectors would be able to recognize that this shit has a limited shelf life, and is slowly disappearing, but then I remember that this is the same kind of short sighted stupidity that causes people to salvage old computer parts for their gold content even though the actual gold content is not even worth the effort.

[Badnik Mechanic]

It's broken.

[Neo Hazard]

Says you.

And here's a second video:

 

[SchemingMinor]

I have been in this fandom for 20+ years and this came out of left field for me. Maybe I have been out of the loop, but I've never recalled discussion about this vaporware title for the past decade or so and then suddenly seeing this dropped on my Twitter dash was like finding a long lost Christmas present. I just cannot get over the quality of those Eggman sprites. He looks absolutely animated, and yet poor thing keeps getting shocked.

I wonder if we will get any marketing information released about this title.

[Sean]

That's really neat. Here's hoping someone makes a fan recreation of the game even if it uses different or minimal graphics compared to this, because Sonic theme aside it actually looks like a decent puzzle game in its own right. Plus I'm assuming a recreation is more likely at this point than seeing the actual game dumped anytime soon.

[shdowhunt60]

1 minute ago, Sean said:

That's really neat. Here's hoping someone makes a fan recreation of the game even if it uses different or minimal graphics compared to this, because it actually looks like a decent puzzle game in its own right. Plus I'm assuming a recreation is more likely at this point than seeing the actual game dumped anytime soon.

That's the assumption we have to make at this point.

I'm impressed that it runs, it's just too bad that we're not going to have any access to the binaries. It looks like a pretty basic puzzle game, but you know, that's going off what limited footage we have of this.