Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure

Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure
Developer: Sonic Team Publishers: Sega, SNK Platform: Neo Geo Pocket Color Released in JP: January 11, 2000 Released in US: November 30, 1999 Released in EU: December 3, 1999 This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has a hidden level select. This game has regional differences. This game has a prototype article

Sonic Pocket Adventure is basically Sonic Unadvanced. This also marks the second time Sonic appeared on a third-party console prior to Sega leaving the first-party console business in 2001.

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Prototype Info

Debug Mode

Change byte 0x1F of the ROM to 0xFF in a hex editor to enable Developer Mode. (This is done automatically in some ancient emulators such as "Rather a Pokemon Emulator?" and NeoPocott, for some reason.) When the Sega screen is displayed, press Option to jump to the main debug menu.

An interesting function of the debug mode is that it allows the player to switch between Sonic and Tails by pressing B. Pausing the game no longer causes the Pause banner to appear and it is possible to trigger a free-movement mode by pressing A + B. Additionally, you can also press Start+Select at the SEGA screen on an emulator or frontend like Retroarch to get here as well.

Beginning

This is pretty straightforward. Simply pick the level with which you wish to start the game, as though it were any other level select screen.

The "Test" levels are just clones of Neo South Island, which will crash the emulator when selected.

The Zone names are largely accurate to the final game. Neo South Island is shortened to "South Island" for space reasons, Aquatic Relix is spelled "Aquatic Relics", and Aerobase is spaced as "Aero Base".

Go To Room

This will take the player to the puzzle and option screen.

Direction

This will take the player to the ending scenes.

Sound Test

Opens up a simple sound test, clearly more developer-facing than the fancy animated sound test players can unlock on the Game Options screen.

Debug Option

A bit more difficult to understand.

• DEBUG DISP - Toggles the display of X/Y coords of the player in the HUD.
• ATK DISP - Toggles the display of hitboxes around destroyable objects (Enemies, Monitors, etc.).
• BDY DISP - Toggles the display of hitboxes around the player.
• MUTEKI - Toggles invulnerability for the player (can't be hurt).
• ALL CLEAR - Toggles a full savegame.

(Source: Sonic Retro)

Regional Differences

To do: Is this everything the region changes? The text is all in English regardless.

Sonic Pocket Adventure uses a single multi-region ROM but varies some details based on the console region.

Photo Pieces

Every Zone in the game features a number of hidden Photo Pieces which can be arranged into character artwork in the Puzzle Room. Oddly, the "Tails"/Miles naming seems to be inverted compared to what would generally be expected, and Sonic's arms are miscoloured in one of them.

Japan	US

Time Attack Name

When first entering the "Time Attack" mode, one must beforehand enter a name which will then be saved whenever a new time record is reached in the game. On the Japanese console, you can use katakana and hiragana in addition to alphabetic characters. On the International system, it's only the latter (obviously).