Difference between revisions of "Sonic Crackers/Hidden content"

Revision as of 13:40, 31 January 2021

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Sonic Studium?

For the longest time, people have opened up the Crackers ROM in a hex editor and noticed one small detail: The ROM header says "Sonic Studium," compared to "Sonic Crackers," as the title screen of the game says. Which name is "correct" is yet to be identified; however, what does "Studium" mean? Is it a typo? Is it nonsensical? Is it a joke?

SpinelSun pointed out on the forums that this was most likely a mere translation error. A common way things are mistranslated to and from Japanese is to use a romanization table letter-per-letter, which doesn't conform exactly to English or Japanese. Japanese has syllables with vowels after every consonant (barring a single letter 'n'). As such...

Stadium would become スタジアム, literally "Sutajiamu" (Japanese has no 'di' syllable; 'ji' is in its place). This is where the error occurs: in Japanese, the vowel 'a' is pronounced as in the English word "father". As such, the スタジ would sound very much like the English word "stud".

Thus, the name is in fact Sonic Stadium. "Studium" is a mere translation error by someone who does not understand both English and Japanese well enough to ascertain the original word. Other examples include Amy (エミー, Emī) being referred to as "Emy" in the Sonic CD PC OMAKE directory, and Knuckles (ナックルズ, Nakkuruzu) as "Knack[les]" in the Sonic & Knuckles Collection SONICSS\ICON directory.

Interestingly, the translator knew to convert the 'ji' back to 'd' at least. The error would have been more apparent if the header said "Sonic Stujium". He/She most likely looked up both "stujium" and "studium" in a dictionary, where he/she would have learned that "studium" is in fact a word in Latin, meaning "zeal".

If this wasn't compelling enough evidence, an excerpt from the Sonic Mars script shows Sonic Stadium as a title under the "Future SEGA" products category, along with Sonic 3+Media:Sonicmars49.png^[1].

Unused content

Art

Art	Description
	Jumping animations for Sonic and Tails for use in the field levels.
	Extra HUD text. Chaotix uses some of these terms in its Special Stages.
	A second, "thinner" HUD.

Tiles

Art	Description
	Unused stars that were meant to be along with the clouds. Apparently were going to be with the night palette.
	Unused tubes from the carnival level.

References

↑ File:Sonicmars49.png

Sonic Crackers, prototype version of Chaotix
	Main page \| Maps \| Hidden content \| Magazine articles \| Technical information Part of Chaotix development

[:File:Sonicmars49.png_p.7B.7B.7Bpage.7D.7D.7D-1] File:Sonicmars49.png

[1]

@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 }}
 {{UnusedRow|
-| sprite={{SpriteImage|Crackershud.png}}
+| sprite={{SpriteImage|SonicCrackers MD Sprite UnusedHUD.png}}
-| desc=Various HUD objects that are unused in this version of the game. "Combi" and "Limits" would appear in ''[[Chaotix]]'' later, though their existence here shows that these names were planned from the beginning.
+| desc=Extra HUD text. ''[[Chaotix]]'' uses some of these terms in its [[Special Stage (Chaotix)|Special Stages]].
+}}
+{{UnusedRow|
+| sprite={{SpriteImage|SonicCrackers MD Sprite UnusedHUD2.png}}
+| desc=A second, "thinner" HUD.
 }}
 }}