The Vault Archives - Last Minute Continue: Recent Episodes
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Welcome to Free… but not. The following is a track we’ve talked about a few times and that even made its way onto Radio Redux on a couple of occasions. (Yes, that’s still going. Search on Apple, Spotify, our website or head over to @lmcpodcasts.) It never hit the Depository itself back in the day, but it has been in the collection, as it were, for a LONG, LONG time.
Anyway, this is a work in progress version of Free, the main theme of XBOX Kinect game Sonic Free Riders – or at least the Crush 40 version of that. Yes, the third riders game and Sonic project that deserves more love simply because hot damn was that thing turned around in a hurry!
It’s called the “the roughmix version” because that’s just what it’s labelled as: with the numbers being the date it was done presumably, since the file itself is dated August 2010. What we have here is Free, but at about maybe 75-85% the finished product musically. Ignoring the obvious fact that, you know, a minute and a half is missing from what we eventually got. It has music and vocals, but is missing a layer of guitar work. All those fiddles and twiddly bits are AWOL, as is a fair bit of mixing/producing on the track in comparison to the finished article.
And you know what? I honestly prefer it. It feels a bit like a more raw, stripped down version. The release of Free we got feels a bit… ‘too much’, in comparison.
Obviously, this is not super-duper different, it is not a demo version at its origin. Like we say, 75-85%. But it is noticeably different. I mean, imagine if we had an actual synthy demo version of when the idea for the track was being kicking around. But what would be the chances of that, eh?
In a completely unrelated point, if you’d be interested in us doing more videos about the finds from the old Depository days be sure to like the videos and subscribe. You never know, you might like our let’s plays and things while you’re waiting. There’s videos out almost every day and a humongous back catalogue, plus an embarrassing number of podcasts and other media too.
Be sure to follow us on our other channels as well before you go. Specifically…
Twitch ► https://www.twitch.tv/lastminutecontinue
Bluesky ► https://bsky.app/profile/lastminutecontinue.com
We’re on Twitter too, but we like you too much to put you all through that.
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sonicthehedgehog #sonic #sega
Cover by Sonic Warrior TJ
CHRISTMAS CHAOS is a collaboration project by members of the Sonic the Hedgehog fanbase, and organised over at Sonic Retro.
A 7 track promo was released over on Cafe-Blue.com (remember that?) in 2008 and for the life of us we can’t seem to find any evidence anything else was released. It’s also seemingly been scrubbed from existence and the Wayback Machine barely has anything on the release page itself.
What is below consists of the tracks that subsequently showed up in other places.
Polar Crush (Sonic 3 PC/Prototype)Day & Night (Sonic 3D Blast)MISSING TRACKS1. Sonic Warrior TJ – Knuckles & The Spirit of Christmas
4. Dustin Wyatt – Twinkle Dance Zone
5. Puto – Jingle Bells Chiptune Remix
6. Muteki – Greensleves Chiptune Remix
7. Roxahris – Joy To The World
So, much like last week’s video of the WIP of ‘Dreams of an Absolution’, this track featured on the ‘Absolute Absolution’ collection we put out in the year 764BC or whenever it was. But it came from the same place via the same method as that WIP version of ‘DOAA’. Because of that, it too was labelled as another ‘Work In Progress’ version at the time which I had been prepared to say here was a mislabelling in hindsight.
However, it is NOT the E3 version of His World (despite what ContentID and at least three publishing companies might think, apparently). For a start, this is twice as bloody long as the released E3 track, plus that has far more strings in it. Said strings also sound a bit more synthy here than on the E3 version to me, but I could be wrong on that. What’s not up for debate though is right at the end, where there’s a bit of a noise which sounds suspiciously like someone knocked a mic during recording while it was still live. I hadn’t actually noticed that before until I was putting this together.
So why bother putting this up at all? Well, this whole thing is actually a bit of a stealth showcase of bits and pieces from the Depository archive that we have knocking around for ol’ SONIC the Hedgehog.
The videos you see showcased in the background are from a variety of sources and time periods. They’ll all going to go up on @lmcextra at some point so you can nab them for your own projects.
They are:
– Several of SEGA Online’s game footage clips.
– A version of the trailer/movie that was to be used at Sony Gamer’s Day 2006.
– An early version of the trailer used at Leipzig Games Convention 2006.
– The final version of the XBOX launch trailer – dated 15/11/2006. So it looks like they had to do a tweak post-launch. Watching this uncut, the effects on Silver’s CG intro bit are particularly epilepsy inducing. Heck it gave ME a headache! So we made sure that was cut out here.
– The clean, HUD free B-roll that was eventually used in pretty much ALL the trailers in far inferior quality.
– A very nice HD video showing off face view/close camera work of all three hogs.
Also…
– The Sonic render used is NOT the one from the pack art. It’s actually a variation created by SEGA for a GamesMaster magazine cover (#175, Aug 2006). Before I’m asked, sadly we don’t have a 100% clean version, it comes with the speed blur effect. Still we do have it full size as a PNG. Ironically. I think this is pretty similar in design to one I’ve seen being used to promote Sonic P-06. But whether or not that was something ‘official’ from the fan project I don’t know.
– By the way, the background for that PSD file is a completely different Crisis City render to that used by SEGA for their keyart which shows off the three hedgehog protagonists. (Which was itself used on the Dec 2006 cover of PLAY magazine.) Yet it looks like GamesMaster didn’t actually use that in the end. Interesting!
– The background at the start of the video IS a clean version of the one from the final front of pack, though.
– Also, because we’re very sneaky, you might want to check out the thumbnail. Yes, the thumbnail. That uses a clean version of the art… well, an early screenshot they tarted up a bit… for GamePro’s Sonic 06 cover. (#210, March 2006)
That’s more than enough for now and most definitely the last of these before Christmas. Or New Year.
If you’d be interested in us doing more videos about the finds from the old Depository days be sure to like the videos and subscribe. You never know, you might like our let’s plays and things while you’re waiting. There’s videos out almost every day and a humongous back catalogue, plus an embarrassing number of podcasts and other media too.
Where we also exist and you might be interested in following:
Twitch ► https://www.twitch.tv/lastminutecontinue
Bluesky ► https://bsky.app/profile/lastminutecontinue.com
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sonicthehedgehog #sonic #sega
Once upon a time people discovered work in progress/demo/beta (pick your poison on what you want to call it) versions of a couple of tracks from – note the caps, here – SONIC The Hedgehog. Otherwise known as Sonic 06, Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 without brackets, Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) with brackets, Sonic 2006… or that title that got rushed due to Microsoft putting pressure on SEGA to have it out before the PS3 launched. And which ever so kindly took itself in and out of canon in the same game thanks to a closed time loop created by temporal shenanigans.
Thinking about it, the Sonic franchise REALLY likes messing about with time. To an almost awkward degree. I guess you could say Sonic is time travels… and if you got that one, well done.
This WIP version of the awesome theme of Silver The Hedgehog, “Dreams Of An Absolution” by Lee Brotherton (later known as @BentleyJones), was one of those tracks. Much like other WIP versions it has got synths instead of lyrics, so you still get the elements missing from the tune.
Pretty sure we didn’t initially find/reveal it, it was early enough in SW’s history that it was one of those posts we lost when CuteNews broke. But Sonic Wrecks was probably the Sonic community site most excited about it at the time. Bundling it in with a bunch of other miscellaneous Sonic 06 tracks not on the official soundtrack to form the ‘Absolute Absolution’ collection. It had the K-Klub remix of DOAA on there too – and I bet most of you have ENTIRELY forgotten about that one.
Anyway, it was a part of the Depository from very early on, right up until its removal from the website. So welcome back, I guess?
If you’d be interested in us doing more videos about the finds from the old Depository days be sure to like the videos and subscribe. You never know, you might like our let’s plays and things while you’re waiting. There’s videos out almost every day and a humongous back catalogue, plus an embarrassing number of podcasts and other media too.
Be sure to follow us on our other channels as well before you go. Specifically…
Twitch ► https://www.twitch.tv/lastminutecontinue
Bluesky ► https://bsky.app/profile/lastminutecontinue.com
We’re on Twitter too, but we like you too much to put you all through that.
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sonicthehedgehog #sonic #sega
Originally released in 1999 and re-released in 2004, a collection of music from various SEGA titles.
NA-1Reprise & Deeply Sound Mix “We Are Burning Rangers”NA-2Sonic – You Can Do Anything ~Remix from Little Planet~NA-3DO DE DO DANA-4SWITCH AGAINNA-5Sona Mi Areru Ec Sancitu (Re-arranged)A LullabyNA-6After the Adventure…Theme from Phantasy Star IIINA-7
Cerebro detects that the technorganic alien race known as the Phalanx have returned and have contaminated a sentinel manufacturing facility.
Learning this, Professor X sends the X-Men (Beast, Psylocke, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, and Cyclops) to destroy the virus, but discovers that the virus has spread to Avalon, home of Exodus and Magneto.
Can they triumph? Who knows?! But there’s another SEGA Tunes collection of enhanced tracks to enjoy at the very least.
Marvel Comics, X-Men 2: The Clone WarsClimbing The TempleThe Brood Queen & Her ClawsFactory FloorAs Fluid Rises In The CitadelAvalon 3BrainchildSentinel Core Escape
Sound of the Sonic Stadium (SoTSS) was a twice-yearly musical showcase of SEGA and Sonic remixes from members of The Sonic Stadium Message Board (SSMB).
In this challenge, which ended up being the only such project to complete, remixers were set a series of challenges. All submissions must: 1. Include a piano – yes the plinky-plonky thing you sit at. 2. Be no longer than 3 mins, and 3. The remix must be a handheld source.
The results was a combination of tracks from the Game Gear, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.
Caos Passiva de Gizoid (Gizoid’s Passive Chaos)Throwback HedgehogYou Are SpecialMy Way or the HighwayWhat U Want… for Dead LineJungle ZoneSonic Sees the DoctorCast of the Giant
“Whether you’re a die-hard fan of the entire series, or you only played for five minutes on your friend’s Sega Channel before quitting in a fit of rage, Ecco the Dolphin made a distinct impression on gamers across the globe with its unexpected, immersive, and haunting world of marine exploration, aliens, and time travel.”
This album is also available on Bandcamp.
TranquilityEchoed Sentiment (feat. Jay Zaffos)ZCO: The One In The EndSquints of MedusaMedusa’s VentsGoodnight Sweet OceanReverb the PorpoiseTreasure CavesGeofracturaCity of ForeverCorals BassFour Ways of Mystery, Up and Down (The Great Geyser)Defender of the FutureEccos (feat. Alexander Liss)Below the Deepest BlueDances with Sharks / From the Masts of the BallingerUndercavesScrolling MadnessThe Vents MonSt. Gabriel’s MaskFamiliar WavesDolphin Ex MachinaEcco Jr. Ending (Part 1)Sound Test 14The StomachManantial CristalinoThe Tides of TimeSo Long, and Thanks for All the FishConvergenceOcean RideThe Globe Holder (feat. KBT)Sound Test 19TubeChasing the Vortex / Porpoise at the Gates of WonkaTurning Time BackwardsTwo TidesSea of DarknessAirborne RiptideAquamarine Bagel
This is RadioSEGA‘s first remix album or, if you will, compilation of remixes from back in 2016. Their way of thanking their listeners for their support for the past 10 years. It features ten tracks by eight artists, arranging music from ten different SEGA games.
The album is also available on Bandcamp.
Synthetic ParkAm I Only Dreaming (RoBKTA Sleepers Syndicate Remix)Big Trouble In Little ChinaKaze MakaseI Just Skipped Time YesterdayThinking About UDobuita After DarkLet’s TapA Generation DividedA Bridge Too Hardcore
A five track mini-album and compilation of festively themed parody tracks from the creative peeps at Sonic Paradox.
You’re A Mean One, MephilesEggman’s Mech is Burning Things DownMiles the Two-Tailed Fox BoyIce Cap the Snow ZoneSEGA, Help Us
It’s been a while since we’ve had an update on the SEGA Beta discs, and that’s honestly because they’ve not been a priority versus some of the other things happening online or offline for that matter. That doesn’t mean things haven’t been happening however.
As of the other week all the discs are no longer in our possession. Our main priority is the safe preservation of these items. We know we can’t devote the time needed to do what needs to be done with them, and the work done so far needs to be built on. Luckily we know just the people for that.
Throughout the entire process, from the very earliest days, we’ve been in pretty much constant contact with an organisation dedicated to the preservation of old video game media: Hidden Palace. Which is not to be confused with Skyblaze’s excellent RadioSEGA history show The Hidden Palace, who we also work with every so often.
HP have throughout the process been in the background offering advice and been a sounding board for ideas. They’ve been nothing but courteous and supportive – and they are precisely the people we want to continue the work. So we’re now working with them in partnership.
It took a while for things to fall in to place: we weren’t ready, then they weren’t ready, then we weren’t ready again. There was postal strikes and all sorts of things that got in the way. But now all the disc builds and the Sonic Rush E3 stick are safely over in the US in their hands and they are already at work on things. Beginning by revisiting the Shadow The Hedgehog Beta 4 build. Interestingly while it seems that, yes, it was indeed a bad burn, certain hardware reads it better than others does. So there’s hope the team might be able to pull together a more complete or stable build down the line. (If you’re interested, Dreamsyntax did a YouTube stream of the existing build back in January.)
In time, when the team have something to show, including any of the other discs – such as the Shadow E3 build (there’s two discs for that, so fingers crossed) – we’ll probably arrange a joint stream or podcast or something like that to go through things and add some background. That’s all very much in the future though.
My thanks to Hidden Palace for taking this on, and basically watch this space!
Since we released our version of the Sonic Rush E3 build, pulled off of a rescued dev cartridge – read the full story here – a number of you have been on tenterhooks awaiting for a new update in regards to the rest of the discs and what prototype builds they may contain.
We do have an update for you on that today, although as I’ve previously warned it’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of the results.
Essentially, since the last build LMC and it’s friends have been in discussion with various people about the builds and been who have been both very generous with their advice and great sounding boards for ideas. A particular thanks to Hiccup for a whole boatload of reasons, as well as those places that are still taking an interest in things.
It took a little whilst for things to align with real life business and with all the craziness going on with strikes, etc over here in the UK (and indeed Europe) I didn’t want all the discs ‘out’ at the same time for safety sake.
So for now in this update we’re concentrating on the PS2 and Xbox discs. This was for a few reasons: the GC NR Reader stuff is trickier for a start. You need very specific hardware and we want to make sure we’ve got the right partner for working on it. Besides, when it comes to the early Shadow The Hedgehog builds, which are the one we’re all most excited about, it made sense to focus on that theoretically easier Xbox disc.
Let’s go over the results, my thanks to Taylor, BlueCha0s and others for their notes which make the bulk of the summaries below:
Sonic Gems Collection – PS2 RC2While the build date was listed down on the disc (right) as 19/7/05, this may not actually be accurate according to the data supplied by dumping program MPF.
Incidentally, yes, we’ve edited the disc image here and for the majority of the pictures to remove any individual’s names.
This was the one we held the least hope for, in terms of discoveries. For the simple fact that RC2 in this context refers to ‘release candidate’, i.e. a proposed final product that may end up being the one released to retail. And… yes, it was as we thought. Whilst there was no issues with the disc or the build, at the end of the day it was just Sonic Gems Collection for PlayStation 2. With nothing in the way of obvious changes.
With it just being the game you can buy, under the circumstances we won’t be releasing this one. If you are a Sonic fan and do get a chance to pick up Gems Collection – particularly the superior Gamecube version – do so. Even with subsequent re-releases, it’s a worthwhile addition to your collection and with some interesting elements given Sonic CD‘s subsequent history.
SEGA Classics Collection – PS2 PAL AlphaThe team aren’t sure of the build date of the final PAL and NTSC versions, but according to the disc information this one seems quite a few months off of the final release.
The game’s ID reads as “SCUS-00.000”, suggesting the title had not yet been assigned an ID by Sony at the time of compilation. Aside from that, no in-game differences were noticeable. Given that this is a compilation of pre-existing SEGA AGES 2500 titles from Japan just with a fancy menu it uses to launch into them, this is perhaps not surprising. But we had expected there to be some degree of visual differences between this and the finished product. Particularly with the menu design – such as it containing some ‘in-house friendly’ toggle options for trying it out, etc. As it is, it looks like this version of Classics Collection was, in terms of presentation and function, tied up pretty quickly.
You can check out the build for yourself here.
Shadow the Hedgehog – Xbox Beta 4We’ll start with the link to the dumps – yes, dumps – on archive.org. Because this one proved a lot trickier than we’d hoped and is still an ongoing story. You can find them here.
Okay? Now the bad news… They don’t work.
At least not yet.
Let us explain…
Presented within are 2 different dumps of Shadow the Hedgehog Beta 4. Despite what was initially thought by others, this disc actually is encrypted and therefore cannot be read in a standard DVD drive. However, the research team did manage to get the disc to read on a retail Xbox 360, suggesting that despite being a Beta, this build is retail signed.
The game wouldn’t boot due to not being on the 360’s backwards compatible whitelist, however.
Despite these signs of luck, this disc gave everyone more than a bit of trouble, to the point where, after days of solid graft, no successfully working build compiled and with the options to hand whittled down to zero.
Although there are some really light surface scratches, somewhat to be expected considering its age and history, as previously reported the disc looks to be in good condition and doesn’t show any signs of damage or disc-rot. Even so, every dumping technique tried spewed out different errors to the last, hence the two dumps presented here.
The working theory is that it’s unfortunately a bad burn at a fast speed, quickly spun up to test something and not used much beyond that. Speaking from my personal experience this would not surprise me in the slightest, getting builds burnt was a process no one wanted to do and was a surprisingly laborious process simply due to the amount of bad burns produced.
Still it is possibly it’s rough trip before rescue and the years since hasn’t helped its case despite the lack of any visible signs of degradation on the disc itself.
The Two DumpsThe first dump was completed using “DVD2Xbox” on a modded original Xbox as no other tool would complete the rip, instead the process erroring out when facing a slight inconvenience. DVD2Xbox pushed through this and the final result was 3194 files copied successfully, with 229 failing.
No signs of life from this dump, unfortunately.
Dump 2 was made using an RGH modified Xbox 360, manually pulling the files from the disc over FTP. The team reports that this one seemed way more promising, with every file having claimed to copy. But despite that… the files it couldn’t complete instead were sent over FTP as empty 0 byte files.
You’d think this would give an indication as to what files were definitely damaged, but DVD2Xbox managed to dump certain files that the FTP method couldn’t and vise-versa.
Slightly better, but still not working.
Unsuccessful methods:
1) File manager on a modded OG Xbox, which gave up upon hitting a damaged file and pulling the files over FTP from an OG Xbox: The disc would only spin once every minute or so, and only two files would get written to, leaving all the data inside them. After an hour, only about 30mb copied to the destination PC and considering the headache it’d cause to even attempt to fix the files afterwards this was abandoned.
2) Further experimentation with the 360: Files would still do the same thing of “successfully copying” but still remaining 0b in size no matter if dumped on the HDD or a USB. Fail.
3) DiscImageCreator: We simply don’t have a reason for this one. After getting a few people on the case, we could never actually get the dump to start, it’d just always say it’d been provided with an invalid argument and error out.
This isn’t a fully dead end, so if anyone has any further ideas, they could give this another shot and invite folks to get in touch.
What WAS successful:
I’m just going to post the notes I was given here in their entirety…
I managed to drop the “default.xbe” file from the prototype into the final game files. The game actually boots doing this! However, not without issues.
The game will make it to the title, at which point if you try to load a retail save it’ll tell you the file is corrupted. This either probably says that the save file format changed, or maybe a different game ID (hence why the retail 360 refused to boot it but still detected it as a game just fine)?
Going to the options screen, the jukebox shows 3 songs from the true final boss. If you enter this jukebox and press anything, hardlock.
1 player will actually load. The cutscenes from the final game play with no problem, but the game crashes shortly into the Westopolis loading screen. Maybe a change in data structures?
Going forward:
We do think a couple of options exist to help fix this build.
1) Splicing as many files from the DVD2Xbox dump into the 360 dump as possible in the case of those missing or those bigger in the D2X dump. Whilst the team tried as much as they could, there’s a knowledge gap to get everything working based on this, but doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
2) If anyone in the community has access to the appropriate drives and firmware to rip this using PC based methods, this would massively help.
3) It is possible the files are being held hostage by those minor scratches, and if we could gain access to any good resurfacing tools, maybe we’ll luck out. That said, to quote the person concerned: “Having spent a lot of time with this disc, I personally doubt it but I’d love to be proven wrong.”
So this is where we are now. Not exactly where we want to be, but we’ve ticked off two discs and are left with questions about the other.
The builds are up for anyone to have a look at and fiddle with. There may be some stuff in there that you can get from that alone, and let’s hope we can get something working out of this version of Shadow at least. We’d would love to see this working considering there’s a debug file on the disc not present on the final EU Xbox build. (We can’t verify if it’s in the US one or not.) Feel free to have a poke around with the files and if you have any ideas peeps from the team are open for a chat about it. Though give it a couple of weeks for them to finish off New Year’s activities.
Regardless, here’s the fruits of their labour for now.
The soundtrack to the original stage show developed for the theme park SEGA World Sydney.
Another collection of "enhanced" tracks, with vocals by Roadkill - presumably not the rat.
The Complete Mess Collection was a release crafted as part of the eighth anniversary of The Sonic Show.
Inspired by Sonic Generations and influenced by Jun Senoue’s punk-heavy work in the Sonic Adventure titles.
Part of a trinity of creative endeavours by Sonic Paradox for Sonic’s 20th anniversary.
Rewind into the past and you’ll find 2004’s Action Metal. Another free album and the real early days of the band.
'The Sonic Stadium Sound Team’, created a 45-track collab of remixes and reinterpretations of Sonic music old over the course of 2011.
A community project put together by the creative and extremely talented folk of the SSMB
The soundtrack to the original stage show developed for the theme park SEGA World Sydney.
“Triplets born, the throne awaits… a seer warns of a deadly fate. ‘Give up your children, separate. Bide your time. Lie in wait.'”
Once upon a time, a long time ago, we found a website - and stuff was there that really should not have been...
If you're a SEGA or Sonic fan there's a variety of musical experiences you probably didn't know existed.
When Radio Redux was young we ended every season with a karaoke competition. We called it The Wrecks Factor. (5 Collections)