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Chaotix/Hidden content

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Revision as of 01:13, 7 June 2010 by Hivebrain (talk | contribs) (Lost Sprites)

Various information regarding possible design choices in Knuckles' Chaotix (often referred to as Chaotix) was extracted through the process of ROM hacking.

Lost Sprites

Artwork Name Description
Knuxdrunk.gif
"Dizzy Knuckles" sprite Sprites of Knuckles spinning around. Possibly could have been used as part of a death animation.
21o0oef.gif
"Super Sonic" sprite An animated sprite of an unused Super Sonic. Colors are incorrect and fan-made, no known palette in the game matches. Unknown use; speculated as part of an intro/outro.
Chaotixtailsplane.gif "Tails in Tornado" sprite An animated sprite of an unused Tornado with Tails. Unknown use; speculated as part of an intro/outro.
Banner.png "Banner" sprite An unused banner-looking sprite. Possibly planned for use in the scrapped "Time Attack" mode.
ChaotixBubble.png "Bubble" sprite A bubble sprite. Obviously meant to be used in an underwater section, none are in the game.
Splash.gif "Splash" sprites Animated splashing sprites. Same case as above.
Bumper.gif Possible "Bumper" sprites Animated spherical sprites. A yellow variant exists as well which suggests it might be an unused bumper sprite.
Mosqui1.gif "Mosqui" sprites Animated Mosqui sprites, possibly used in intro. Incorrect palette, none found in ROM (yet) match.
ChaotixRobotnik.png "Robotnik" sprites While partially used, some specific animation frames of Robotnik in the "bad ending" are unused, as well as this background.
Test.png "Test" sprite Unused, however it was probably going to stay that way.
Tobu.png "Skull" sprite Unused, unknown what it was intended for. Possibly a joke sprite. The japanese text reads "tobu" (とぶ).

Mighty: A Sonic Clone?

The absence of Sonic the Hedgehog as a playable character in Chaotix resulted in a lot of speculation from various members of the community, which often resulted in questioning whether Sonic was ever planned for Chaotix. Furthermore, the speculation is fueled with the presence of leaked games such as Sonic Crackers, which offers a similar gameplay engine to Chaotix, except with Sonic and Tails as the only playable characters. However, careful observation proves that Sonic may not be entirely absent from this game. Mighty the Armadillo is one of the available characters in Chaotix, who shares a lot of the behavior of Sonic in Sonic Crackers.

Sonickmightysheet.png

As the sprite sheet above demonstrates, nearly all of Mighty's poses match up with Sonic's poses from Sonic Crackers, and occasionally Sonic the Hedgehog CD. Likewise, some of the unused poses in Sonic Crackers match up with Sonic.

Amy in Chaotix

Amy, while not a playable character in Chaotix, nonetheless makes a cameo appearance as an extra for the sound test screen. Input the following code at the color select screen to "unlock" Amy:

Chaotixamycode.png

Once the code is entered, Amy then appears at the sound test screen.

Amysoundtest.png

Removed Character

Through unlocking the level select, you can access an unused, removed character from the game. The code for the level select (input on the color test) is the following:

Chaotixdebugcode.png

This code will also unlock debug mode, which works exactly like the debug mode in Sonic Crackers. From there, you can access the stage select:

Chaotix stageselect.png

Inside the stage select, you can change the "player" option until you arrive to the option of "**********".

Tenstar1.png

Finally, once the new character is selected, it is possible to play the game with it. The Sonic Community referrs to this character, for convenience, as Wechnia.

Tenstar2.png

As you can see, the character is just a garbled version of Knuckles' sprites with Mighty's palette and moveset.

In addition, these leftovers are a result of Tails' leftover data. Proof exists that "Wechnia" is a leftover of tails by observing the Knuckles' Chaotix 1227 prototype and other accompanying prototypes until this feature was ultimately removed. By holding the Up button after performing a double jump, the character will fly, which is a trademark behavior of Tails in most incarnation of Sonic games he appears in. Further digging into the ROM of the Knuckles' Chaotix 1207 prototype by resident reverse-engineer Cinossu reveals the following life icons:

File:Chaotix1207 pal1.png

Chaotix1207 pal2.png

Sonic Crackers

The connection between Sonic Crackers was usually strong but it lacked concrete evidence. This was found in the early prototypes released by drx. xdaniel found text referring to Sonic Crackers while examining a savestate, it's possible for anyone to see it by following these steps:

  • Start the ROM in Kega Fusion.
  • Select TIME ATTACK in main menu.
  • Advance through PLAYER and NPC SELECT.
  • On ATTRACTION SELECT, create a Save State.
  • Now, start the ROM in Gens and load the Save State (note: the game has a chance of crashing at this point).
  • Enter the Genesis VDP viewer via CPU->Debug->Genesis VDP.
  • If you can't see anything, select a different palette.


If it works you will get a screen like this, note the graphics in the green box:
File:SonicCrackersS32X1.png
When the tiles are rearranged they would look like this:
SonicCrackersS32X2.png

Unused "Sega" sound

As it turns out, the Sega screen at the beginning of the game was to have an accompanying sound. This has been confirmed in Knuckles' Chaotix (prototype 0202), although the sound is different. In the final, it is a different sound, but still is never used. It is located in the final game under the sound test menu with the SFX I.D. of 6B.


Chaotix
Chaotix title.png

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