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August 2000 News

(8-30-2000)
  • Hi, I'm Rich Rogers, a new member of the SSRG. I just opened up a new ROM Hack Archive. It is small now, but it will grow very rapidly once I start getting ROM hack posts. I am working on a few ROM hacks of my own, too. I am also submitting data to all the hacking guides once I find it. So check it out! You will like what you see...

    (8-29-2000)
  • Well, I have finally answered all my e-mails I received while I was away. If there is anybody else I forgot to reply to or whatever, PLEASE do resend your message or inform me in some way.

    (8-27-2000)
  • The Custom Level Archive has now been updated with a zip file of all the original mazes, so people looking for a place to start with mazes now have no excuse! Get on down there!

    (8-26-2000)
  • Looks like webpage remodeling is in the air! The following sites have received a major face lift:

    Sonic Team Jr.
    Organized Chaos
    The 'Zone Radio Network

    Check these remodeling jobs outs!

    (8-22-2000)
  • It's me Rocket and I'm back! I got back Friday as I mentioned I would, but some people were STILL wondering where I was and other stuff. The main topic of this post is to ensure everybody that the e-mails you sent me WILL be replied to. Understand that in a week, I got over 50 e-mails all waiting for responce. If you haven't recieved a responce yet, please be pacient. I'm a buisy person, but no doubt, I never leave an e-mail without a response.

    (8-21-2000)
  • Hi, Wiseman here. I've found something very weird. Yesterday I've downloaded a Japanese SMS game, Legend Of Illusion. MEKA identified it as the true Legend Of Illusion, Japanese version (and of course, the game is in Japanese). However, here is an extract of the text found in the first 512 bytes of the ROM:

    gg sonic & tails2 < ver1.01 > 1993/09/07 @sega/aspect co.,ltd

    This is very weird, because the game was copyrighted by SEGA and Disney in 1994, and the title is in lowercase (the Aspect Sonic or Disney games have this identifiers in uppercase). Inspecting other Aspect games: I think they were using a standard header and entry code, and they forgot to put the correct title in this game. However, this is NOT the title of Sonic & Tails nor Sonic & Tails 2. It has the same version and date of Sonic & Tails, but the name says its Sonic & Tails 2, and it's in lowercase.


  • Hello my name is Sparx and I am the webmaster of the sonic crackers hacking guide site,"Cracking the Crackers" I am new here and im enjoying the ssrg alot.I Am holding a big poll on my site wich will be one of the biggest sonic crackers/studium polls in history,where you will vote to name the levels.if you would please vote I would appreciate your help.I am also needing your help to find new info in th ROM so please lend a hand.

    (8-19-2000)
  • Hmmm...seems as if the update script is behaving very oddly today...it won't let me edit items. Anyway, if you have trouble going to any of those links, then go HERE instead. This is a document about what I did, and has a link to download the ROM. If you can't download it for some reason, then let me know right away so I can fix it!

  • Hey, Cyan here...firstly, it turns out that I'm not the first to discover the A+START and B+START level select codes in Sonic Spinball Beta; Ryoga Masaki discovered them first. I did, however, discover the C+B+START code.
    Anyway, today's main piece of news is also concerning spinball beta, and I don't think anyone else knows about this yet...though I might be wrong. Anyway, were you silly enough to believe that the reason spinball beta was so much bigger than the final was because of either the unpacked beta nature, or the krakTr0? Well, I wasn't! =P I was a bit suspicious about it from day one, so I tore apart the ROM a few minutes ago and had a look at what was inside...and I saw something facinating! I saw what appeared to be a header for a Genesis game right near the end of the ROM (at the 1 megabyte boundary) in interleaved format (most people would overlook this since it's not immediately recognisable as text). My first thoughts were that the ROM copier must have overshot and wrapped
    around (common), but on closer inspection it seemed that the header read something like SEGA MEGADRIVE, rather than SEGA GENESIS (as spinball beta does). So, I found the start of the 68k vector table (signified by an ASCII "P"), chopped it out, saved it out as an SMD, and fired it up. And it worked!!! Though it's been cut short, what's there seems to be a game called "Sub Terrania"; whether or not it's a beta is hard to say since there's not much of the game there, and I've never seen Sub Terrania before...
    Anyway, take a look for yourselves! My website isn't fully operational after the redesign yet, so I've made a ROM image of it ready-cut right HERE!
    Such a shame that it isn't all of it since it may have been a beta...after all, it would only take a bit of disk corruption on that server it was downloaded from for it to run into another file on the disk...and a great shame it wasn't Sonic 1 beta it ran into instead!
    Anyway, specific details about how I cut it out are available HERE.
    Sorry about this long post...

    (8-17-2000)
  • Sorry about the lack of update on the Custom Level Archive lately, but I had a big horrible hard drive flirp, as we call it in the trade! Anyway, I'm back again, and you can now mail your customised goodies to goon@emulationzone.org

    (8-13-2000)
  • While Tristan is away this week, I took the liberty of creating this weeks TSSZ News Segment for Seven. You can listen to it on demand by clicking here.

  • Did any of you notice that there is actually a level selection system in Sonic Spinball beta? It's true...this exclusive information brought to you by Cyan! On the title screen, A+START opens the Showdown level. B+START opens Lava Powerhouse. Now, I know what you're thinking...C+START opens the remaining level...well, you're WRONG! It's actually C+B+START, for some peculiar reason...probably because the entire game is peculiar, but there you go! There is currently no known way to view the end sequence, and the cr4kTr0 that apparently appears at this point... Anyway, if you don't already know this, don't forget to credit me! =)

    (8-12-2000)
  • SSRG is pleased to announce our very own trophy cabinet! We have gathered all our awards in which we have worked hard for and respectively earned and we have put it all on one page for people to see. You can check it out here.

  • I will be gone for almost a week. Sunday (tomorrow), I will be leaving at 3:00PM to go with a band to play some music. I won't be back until Friday. I just thought I would let everyone know so they don't start wondering again. In the mean time, Andy will still be able to assist you in any way he can.

    Damian Grove
    (aka Rocket/Saxman)


    (8-11-2000)
  • I made some software changes to WEMU radio station. I dumped the flacky MP3 streamer that we were using and I replaced it with something alot more stable and configurable. Thus, no more mysterious "Connection lost" situations.

    Also, I modified the playlist to incorperate all the songs we have in our current song archieve: all 204 of them! (I estimate that we now have around 16.5 hours of music online.) The streamer has been setup to pick a file for streaming at random, thus the station will not suffer from the predictability of a playlist.

    The only down side to this approach is that the site does not really have a genre, except, perhaps, a general video game music theme. This will change in the future as we will change things to match a particular style.

    In any event, if you don't like this format, we have several other stations that are part of the 'Zone Radio Network ('ZRN) that follow their own format. Check out, http://radio.emulationzone.org for more info.



  • Ops! Apparently, the correct alias for vistor #100,000 is actually SonicAd, Pikachu as reported earlier. We appologize for the mix-up.

    (8-6-2000)
  • The staff at SSRG would like to congradulate Pikachu for being vistor #100,000! This historical achievment in SSRG's history occured on 8/06/2000 at 3pm EST.

    .. and for those that are curious, visitor #100,001 was Kulock of www.mooglecavern.com. Click here for a screen shot. Oh well, better luck next time at #200,000!

  • We are close to hitting the 100,000 mark! Perhaps it will be you? In any event, if you are vistor 100,000 please take a screen shoot of it and email it Andy. The lucky visitor will get their name posted on SSRG.

    (8-4-2000)
  • I got some news from Elliot Rosenberger, the guy who found the Sonic Spinball beta ROM, about Sega and it's going to court. Apparently, the owner of "The Sewer Line BBS" had a ton of ROM's in which were uploaded. However, there were also a few beta versions as well. One of these included the beta of Sonic Spinball. Somebody way back in 1993 had downloaded this (yeah, it's been on the net THAT long). Sega is taking the owner of this BBS (Sabella) to court for this. You can read more here.

  • Wiseman has emailed me an interesting editorial about the PSX2. Ironically, it's about something which he knew all along: it's too difficult to program. This trait is hampering the quality of games to the point where it's affecting sales of PSX2 games in Japan. Read all about it here.

    (8-3-2000)
  • I found some info on who dumped the Sonic Spinball beta ROM. Notice first how the ROM is 10meg (1.25mb) instead of 8meg (1.00mb). This suggests that there is info added to the END of the ROM. I looked and for sure, there was. This is part of the 'crack-tro' they created introducing themselves being the people who dumped it. Here is what I found in one part of the crack-tro (please excuse the quick language included):

    PREMIERE 1993 PROUDLY PRESENTS - SONIC THE HEDGEHOG SPINBALL - BETA. - SUPPLIED BY WINSTON. - GIVE OUR BBSES A RING - END OF THE WORLD . BIOMECHANIC DREAMS . FUCK WHAT U HEARD . -OR- SCHIZOPHRENIA - GET THE NUMBERS FROM SOMEWHERE OR SOMEONE. - GREETINGS THIS TIME ARE GOING OUT TO - CENSOR - MAGICAL - FAIRLIGHT - BASELINE - ANTHROX - ELITENDO - PARANOIMIA - PARADOX - QUARTEX - CYNIX - ACCUMULATORS - DENIAL - THE LYNCH MOB AND EVERYONE ELSE WHO THINK THAT SHOULD BE MENTIONED HERE - SPECIAL THANKS TO PSYCHO OF CENSOR FOR THIS INTRO. AND NOOGMAN OF COMPLEX FOR THE COOL LOGO. - I GUESS IT WILL RESTART NOW. LATERS

    Also, according to the header, the "beta" was released in August of 1993. The final release of Sonic Spinball was released in September of 1993. This means that the "beta" is really the final test version of the cart.

    There you have it. I don't have any other info avalible unfortunatly, but this can basically give you an idea of who dumped the cart and the age of the game itself.

    (8-2-2000)
  • As part of our on going commitment to the emulation scene and to video gamers alike, the Emulation Zone is proud to announce EmuLinks.Com . The goal of this new web site is to pick-up where many search engines, like Yahoo, leave off by offering a complete database of links geared toward emulation and video gaming. Since it’s coded, owned and operated by us, you can be sure that we will strive to offer our viewers an unbiased service they can depend on.

    What makes our site unique from many “link sites” on the web is that our site is completely automated. This allows us to do things to our database of links unimaginable or too difficult to incorporate on site that are edited by hand, such as real time user feedback.

    The site is currently in its final beta testing phases, but just about all the bugs have been ironed out. I would like to cordially invite those with a Sonic the Hedgehog related web site to on stop on by and submit a link to your site. Our team of reviewers will go through the link submission and review the sites accordingly. You should be able to find these links under “Game Fan Site/Sonic the Hedgehog” or by clicking here.

    If you don’t have a Sonic the Hedgehog related web site, we would like to welcome the public to play around with the site, add links to their home pages and give feedback on what they think of the place.


    (8-1-2000)
  • SONIC SPINBALL BETA HAS BEEN DUMPED!

    Yes, it's true! I got an e-mail from Elliot Rosenberger with a link to it. I was a little curious as to how good of a hoax it was. However, to my surprise, it WASN'T a hoax! It is convincing enough to where I believe it is real! However, it is a late beta, so it isn't completely earth-shattering. Though it is quite an exquisite discovery. You can get it here. Some things that are different are the intro, the music, a DEBUG feature (press pause), and as for the boss on 'Showdown', he can't be destroyed, but that's beta for ya. Anyhow, spread the news!

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