Chaotix (prototype 1207)

Knuckles' Chaotix Prototype 1207 for the Sega 32X was released by drx on February 23, 2008. This is the earliest of the Chaotix protos. Its compile date is December 7, 1994

Various Differences

General

• Graphics for a Sonic and Tails 1-up monitor/character select icons were found within the rom.
• Wechidna's palette in this proto is completely separate from any other protos and the final. It consists of mostly orange/yellow/red colors, implying that he was Tails at one point. Presently, he is unplayable due to crashing issues.
• A portrait graphic for Isolated Island exists but is not used.
• Graphics for a water splash are located in the rom. Identical to Sonic 1's splash graphics.
• There's an odd skull graphic with some japanese text underneath it.
• Flicky graphics were also found. (The animals that pop out of defeated badniks.)
• This version of Chaotix has an interesting intro stage. If you can actually get to the meeting with Metal Sonic in the stage before it crashes, Espio will just fall out of the sky and Metal Sonic will be in the far foreground afterwards staring at you, and after a few seconds, he will charge at Espio.
• That awesome SEGA screen with the pic from the manual is in this game.
• The title screen track has percussion thrown in, as well as most other tracks, as well as the aformentioned beep sound every ten seconds or so, in different variations depending on the track. Sometimes, those beeps seem like missing bits of sound that should be there, this is especially noticeable in Amazing Arena.
• All the Knuckles Ringstar malarkey (Title card reads Knuckles ringstar), as well as Heavy being called Heaby in the title screens. The level cards say Knuckles Ringstar.
• The backgrounds have scrolling issues, sometimes half the background lags behind, sometimes it doesn't.
• Graphics flicker a fuckton, making the few bits of gameplay a hell of a lot harder to look at.
• World entrance shows no screen, has no collection minigame, no slider...You just run right through its emptyness and arrive at an NPC SELECT screen ( with the tiles shown in that one above post, in this case only including Heavy, Bomb, Vector, Charmy and a bunch of unselectable question marks), after which you will go to a level select screen, with vastly different names, the only one without a picture is "Amusement Park" or Speed Slider (screens below). However, getting these circumstances require SEVERAL emulator resets. All these weird zone select names are bullshit, however, since the title cards keep the final names. Also, notice how they spell "Atraction" with only one T.
• Pause move-around mode is always enabled.
• There is a difference on which act you pick, but in Speed Slider all 5 are the same, and in Amazing Arena all acts after the second don't work. Also, the only way to select Speed Slider is through Stage select, since selecting "AMUSEMENT PARK" doesn't let you access it. Amazing Zone can't be accesed either, bur the two remaining Zones can. So, essentially, they're taken out of world entrance because they aren't complete yet.
• There's a level specifically labeled "NOT USED" in Stage Select. I'm not sure exactly what that proves, but it's probably either a deleted level, or an empty level slot (since some levels are missing here and there).
• As with the final, the backgrounds undergo colour changes and whatnot depending on the time of day selected, exceptuating Amazing Arena, which just changes a window's colour.
• In World Entrance, right before you do that World entering malarkey, there's a Speed Monitor underground.
• Time Attack actually works better than normal mode, and uses the same player selection method as the later protos. And by "works better", I mean it holds out without going bonkers for 10 more seconds.
• Sound Test is a barebones, and I do mean really barebones screen. Its a black background with white text. The songs are there, in all their scratchy, beepy glory, even songs that aren't featured anywhere reachable. Some songs are pretty different from the final, like 000D. Some even have different percussion than the ones in the other Chaotix betas, like the almost unhearable 000F. Are 0011, 0018 and 0025 anywhere in any other betas or hidden in the final game? 0011 is a slower mix of the main theme, 0018 sounds like something out of a Megaman game, and 0025 sounds like a bad ending of sorts. 0015 is a different mix of a track in the final, and so are 0017, 0019, 001B, 001C, and 0021. 0026-0028 are empty, and afterwards begin the sound effects, which are basically the same throughout Chaotix's development. There are exceptions like 0047 or 004B, however. After 0069 there's nothing. It would seem like they composed the entire game's soundtrack before actually making most of the levels. All the musical differences are based on the regular, keyboard notes, not the percussion that was later removed. Strangely, most of the songs that aren't really featured in the levels don't have that beep from the EPROM hardware patching.
• The title screen menu is wildly different from all other Chaotixes.
• There is a empty space in the character selection menu following Mighty, who originally was Sonic. So it obviously was tails.
• Cheat menus are accessable by Highlight OPTION, then Pressing A+START for Color Test, Pressing C+START for Sound Test (with preliminary graphics), Pressing B+START for Jam Out mode (Ever played ToeJam & Earl?). In Jam out mode pressing A, B, C, or START to play the many different DAC samples. Up, Down, Left, Right can be held to change between sound banks.

A+B+C+START will Exit the Jamout menu.

• Knuckles features different climbing sprites in this build. Also worth noting that the control is sightly different. You have to keep B pressed to climb, otherwise Knuckles falls off.
• In the final, "*******" uses Knuckles' art as well as Knuckles' palette. In this proto, however, the tails 32x palette is intact! This means that Sonic and Tails were in fact ported over to 32x, along with new art and palettes.
• All the 32x art here is uncompressed, in final most of the static art uses the C42 compression! You might be able to find some new sprites, everything that uses the 32x VDP is viewable using this version.
• On the NPC select menu from Time Attack, the music is DIRECTLY from sonic crackers; no difference whatsoever.
• The text SonicCrackersS32X can be found in Time attacks attraction screen. The S32x stands for Super 32X.
• Background for the Data Select screen isn't in yet. Controls are also reversed - up is down and down is up. Needlessly annoying.
• When Mighty does when he wall kicks is very interesting, and it's "automatic." Another thing to note is that the sound effect when he clings to a wall is different. (It's Vector/Espio/Knuckles' sound when they cling to a wall.)
• The cutscenes before the bosses are fully implemented in this proto, although the boss music starts directly in the cutscenes instead of playing "Have Some Fun" song.
• Time can't go up.
• When you clear a level "Mechanical Dance" song plays instead of "From Party to Party".
• Training 0 stage may have been use as an Engine Test level because it isn't like the other training levels and in the final it's replaced by a copy of Training 1.

Bonus Stage

• The Bonus Stage crashes after very little time, and I didn't notice much different, apart from a monitor being a clock and another just a circle with the word "UP" on it.

Special Stage

• The Special Stage has transparent checkerboard floors that while flickering becomme yellow again (as in, half the squares are transparent when you do find the checkerboards), and at one point, the junction from the tube to the "outside" part, there's a huge-ass hole. There's no limits, nor rings, it's all empty. There's issues with the way the tube bits (3D models) are connected, and you can sometimes see a black line, especially when it goes diagonally down. The level just repeats itself until you fall, you can't run out of rings.
• No get blue spheres message, no objects, no end, no nothing. Basically the empty track keeps looping itself. (Only checked the first special stage, but I'd assume the same goes for the rest)

Training Level

• Training level shows Botanic Base title screen and plays the same music (Door Into Summer) that is found in the title screen.
• Introduction level in stage select is vastly different from Introduction in "main" mode, at least from the few scroungable moments of gameplay, and plays the same track that the final does, however, in this beeping, percussion state.

World Entrance

• Selecting World Entrance 1 brings you to an almost exact copy of the World Entrance - everything's identical except for the music, which plays the Combi Select BGM, and the layer priorities on doorways, which don't overlap Knuckles and co. in the copy. Neither the copy nor the World Entrance have the "EXIT" or "PLAY" signs, and you can't walk off to the left to exit to the title screen.

Speed Slider

• Speed Slider appears to be based roughly off the rocket stage in Sonic Crackers. It has been edited since then; so, nothing matches exactly; however, there are noticeable similarities.
• The pallette change in Speed Slider between the lower and upper background occurs too high, with the result that you can see some of the tents appear green instead of red until a certain height.
• Lots of loops in this Zone. None of them work though - you get three-quarters of the way around and just fall off. You also can't climb on the 'solid' side of the loop - Knuckles just spazzes out before falling to the ground.
• The Zone has no end-sign - you simply run across the flat section and reach this wall. On the other side is a small piece of land, and then blank void.
• The boss is not implemented.

Marina Madness

• Marina Madness is unplayable, gameplay crashes upon touching the ground.
• Marina Madness' Act 4 boat doesn't move, nor does Act 5's.
• Collision in Marina Madness is sorta screwed when dealing with the boats that bob up and down. The non-bobbing boats don't seem to glitch out, however.
• The clouds and some other background details don't appear until after the title card has cleared.
• The invincibility stars are very different - there's less of them (only two at a time, it seems), and they're small, gold, five-pointed stars. The stars also only surround the first player, unlike in the final when both players are surrounded. Also of note is that icons for your current powerup don't display at the bottom of the screen yet as in the final. Finally, in the final, this area contains a Speed Shoes in addition to the Invincibility.
• In Amazing Arena 5, the cutscene for the boss entrance is in and fully functional. However, the boss itself never appeared, leaving the level incompletable. = /
• The boss is fully implemented.

Amazing Arena

• What's interesting is that this build's Amazing Arena actually has a light switch at least on the first level, near the first clock (just hold right when you start the level to hit it). The hologram Eggman is also functional and can hurt you with his fists. The next build with a switch near that first clock is the Jan 19 build, and even then its hologram's fists don't cause damage and instead just flail around for humorous effect.
• The boss is not implemented.

Techno Tower

• The boss is fully implemented.

Botanic Base

• The boss is implemented, stops music though (may have been an emulation error, although sounds played).