Random gubbins I discovered in latest issue of Retro Gamer that I thought you lot might find interesting (Part XVIII)

Sonic 2
Yuji Naka was lured away from Japan to America to join STI  (SEGA Technical Institute) because he was promised royalties on the sale of Sonic 2 - he got nothing but his basic salary for Sonic 1. And as SEGA at the time paid people based on seniority, his break-out hit earned him bugger all.

A lot of content was created for Sonic 2 that never made it into the game. Interestingly, Yuji Naka was in charge of the Japanese/American collaboration between STI and Sega of Japan created to develop the title, but heavily favoured the Japanese-made content. A recent example is Oil Ocean Zone in Sonic Mania - this was originally created for Sonic 2.

SEGA decided that the international development of Sonic 2 was too much of a ball ache - Sonic 3 was handled by the Japanese half of the Sonic 2 team, and Sonic Spinball by the American remainder. (Plus new hires, presumably.)

Sonic 2 originally featured a time-travel plot. This was dropped during development, but hints can be seen in the levels that were created for the game. Some feature dinosaur enemies, and Oil Ocean Zone was intended as a post-Robotnik dystopian future level. This plot was later used in Sonic CD.

Changes were being made to the Sonic 2 ROM right up until the last 48 hours before cart production. Changes were even made to the game between the first and second batches of carts, fixing minor bugs and such. The two versions of the game have different serial numbers, just to drive OCD collectors mental.

Amiga CD32
Usually remembered as a colossal commercial failure, it seems the machine was killed off (after just 10 months on shelves) by Commodore upper management not being able to organise a piss up in a brewery, and letting the company slip into administration, rather than lack of success from the hardware itself. The major problem? The machine was produced in the Philippines, and when Commodore lost a patent law suit, stopping imports of the machine, machines ended up stuck thousands of miles from potential buyers. Commodore lost $8.2m, the stock exchange stopped dealing in Commodore stock, and the company started to nose-dive.

The console sold surprisingly well at launch. Three different magazines were launched, covering just the Amiga CD32. The machine was £299, which undercut the 3DO (£399) and CD-i (£499). The only CD-based machine that was cheaper than the Amiga was the Mega-CD, at £219. But that didn't take into account the cost of the Mega Drive required to make the Mega-CD work.

Software sold well, too. The machine accounted for 31% of software CD sales at the start of its life (compared to 1.8% for the CD-i), and by the time it was discontinued, over half of CD software sold in the UK were CD32 games. Software continued to be released for the machine two years after it was discontinued, as did at least one of the format dedicated magazines.

The major problem for the console software-wise seems to be a lack of high profile exclusives. Retro Gamer lists five "Essential Exclusives", but in the text only two seem to have not been ported to something else at some point - one saw contemporaneous Mega Drive and Mega-CD releases, and another was also on the Amiga 500. (Admittedly, one CD32 disc was probably easier to deal with than the 15 floppies the A500 version came on, but was that a compelling reason to buy a CD32?)

After Commodore went pop, potential buyers included Amstrad, Sony, Acer, Samsung, Goldstar (now LG), HP, and Philips, but no deal was reached. David Pleasance, CEO of Commodore, wanted to try to sell the rights to the system to a hi-fi company, thinking that a tweaked CD32, designed to fit into stackable hi-fi set ups, could be a potential future for the system. This, too, never managed to get beyond the planning stage.

Oil Ocean Zone?

Retro Gamer isn’t sold anywhere near me anymore

Yeah, the problem is that I never want every issue. I always flicked through to see if there was enough inside to warrant a purchase.

If subscribed to T3 and Stuff in the past, but they only made me want to spend money I don’t have on things I don’t need.

I always manage to read RG from cover to cover. I probably wouldn't buy all of them off-the-shelf, but they manage to make stuff I'm not interested in, um, interesting. If you see what I mean. E.g., I really liked the Amiga CD32 article, but never would have bought an issue in a shop to read it.

retroking1981 wrote:

The CD32 was definitely a big failure.

We'll, yes, it didn't set the world on fire. But it wasn't the doomed-from-the-start, lol-what-were-they-thinking, complete-and-utter-shit-storm it's remembered as.

Yeah, by rights it should’ve been a more popular second-fiddler to the Jaguar.

My Grandpa bought an Amiga CD32, he was a bit of an Amiga nut (my first gaming thing was a hand me down 500 from him).

My main memory was the controller being bloody awful.

He sold it on fairly quick.

I bought an Amiga CD32 in 3rd year secondary school. It came with Diggers and another game I have totally forgotten the name of. Diggers was cool though and the in-game speech blew me away at the time. I didn't buy any more games for it and must have sold it to help fund my Christmas PlayStation that I got either that year or the following one!

So, the Ataribox. Preorders and console details/specs were due last Thursday, aye?

Here’s a surprise. “The countdown to the Ataribox launch on Indiegogo has been officially paused. Because of one key element on our checklist, it is taking more time to create the platform and ecosystem the Atari community deserves. Building Ataribox is incredibly important to us and we will do whatever it takes to be sure it is worth the wait.”

A crowdfunded console missing it’s deadline? Well I never.

If any badgers are actually interested, signing up to their mailing list now bags you a 33% discount on launch consoles.

From what I can gather so far it’s looking like a Steam box with built-in classic Atari games on top. Still hard to be sure though.

“Because of one key element on our checklist” = ‘Because we had NO FUCKING IDEA how hard it actually is to manufacture and release real products …’

I have noticed most CD32s on eBay come with a third party controller.

There's even a hardware modding scene. Found a video of a guy on YouTube with a floppy drive "emulator" that uses USB sticks. Turns the '32 into a full Amiga.

Out of curiosity, then, what's the biggest flop anyone's bought into? I have a history of picking the losing horse (Dreamcast over PS2, Neo Geo Pocket over GBC), and was even meant to get a Saturn for Christmas until my parents saw the PlayStation was cheaper. But I've never taken the plunge on something that really tanked, like a Jaguar or 3DO.

Never bought into a real flop. 

Our first computer, the BBC B, was always tinged with disappointment because my brother and I both wanted a Spectrum instead, which had loads more games, many of which we could have borrowed/copied from friends.

My Dad spent weeks looking at all the options (he did the same with everything - getting new stuff was never as exciting as it could have been in our house), and concluded that the BBC would be better as it also had more educational software and we might learn to progamme on it.

To be fair, I think my brother did learn some BASIC and make a few programmes, but mostly it just meant we had fewer games to play. At least there was Elite and a good number of the Ultimate Play the Game titles.