We made a ton of new discoveries in 2023 --
through a combination of talking to developers, translating foreign interviews into English
for the first time, and working with data miners and archivists to dig up buried info
on lost and forgotten games -- including three unknown Retro Studios projects that died on the
vine. And with so much trivia being unearthed, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite
findings of the year in a more concise video. After all, a lot of folks don’t have
time to watch every video we put out, and some might miss the occasional episode. So
without further delay, and in no particular order, let’s jump into Did You Know Gaming’s biggest and
best discoveries of 2023, starting with some love for Majora’s Mask. For half of its development,
Majora's Mask was gonna have an Adult Mask. The Hyrule Historia shows concept art of Adult Link,
noting: "Only Child Link appears in Majora's Mask, but for some reason, there are illustrations for
Adult Link." Hyrule Historia’s writers didn't know its purpose, but we found it after
translating some old Japanese magazines. According to co-director Yoshiaki Koizumi, the
mask was planned as a bonus feature. "...Adult Link would've just been a bonus feature. But [art
director] Imamura pointed out that just turning into an adult wasn’t very interesting, and it
didn’t make Link stronger or anything... [so] we decided not to include [Adult Link] this
time." The Hyrule Historia theorized these sketches were prototypes for Fierce Deity Link,
but that’s not the case -- the true origin of the Fierce Deity Mask is a mask that turned Link
into a Gigantic Fierce Deity. But it was too OP, so the devs split up its abilities and made two
less powerful masks from it - the Giant's Mask and the Fierce Deity Mask. In the final game, you
can only use the Fierce Deity against bosses, and the Giant's Mask is only usable in Twinmold's
boss chamber. But this wasn’t always so. Co-director Eiji Aonuma thought the masks should
be wearable anywhere, since all the others are. But then they’d have to add things like extra
animations so Fierce Deity Link could duck under doorways he’s too tall for, which would
take time, and Miyamoto only gave them a year to make the game. These stories come from Japan’s
Nintendo Dream magazine -- more specifically, the extra mini-mags included with the July, August,
and September 2000 issues. They hold about a dozen pages of behind-the-scenes secrets and stories
- details even Hyrule Historia’s writers didn't know. So we had ‘em all translated, and that's
where most of this info comes from. In one issue, programmer Kenzo Hayakawa says: "...The position
of most of the stars is determined by the player’s name. When night falls, look for your own unique
constellation." You could say every playthrough of Majora's Mask is personalized by what you name
your save file. We did a test with two saves -- one named Link and one named Zelda. Then we stood
in the same spot looking at the same patch of sky in both, and saw that Link's sky has about twice
as many stars as Zelda's. This detail wasn't known in the West until 2021 when a modder named Zel
found it in the game's code. Now we all know. In another magazine, Miyamoto comments on the
game’s crunch, saying "...this was one tough year, I assure you... As long as it was finished,
anything was acceptable. [laughs] I made it clear that's what was most important. At the start, the
staff seemed pretty stressed out. They were like, 'There's no way we can make it in a year!'" Near
the end of development, Miyamoto tried to ease the tension with small talk and what he calls
"naughty stories," but the Zelda team found him unbearable. Aonuma says he had to pull at least
one all-nighter, and didn't even have time to play the game start-to-finish before it released.
Majora's writers revealed that some of the NPCs are actually speaking for the developers. Script
writer Mitsuhiro Takano said: "We put our feelings into the mouths of Termina's residents. Like when
work was getting backed up, we wrote one carpenter to say 'Damn! I’ll have to stay up again… I wonder
if I'll finish this' and 'Damn! Guess I'm staying up again tonight… I wonder if it will be ready in
time.' [...] And after we completed development, I wrote the Mask Salesman to say: 'You’ve
met with a terrible fate.'" In other words, the team felt they'd met with a terrible fate
having to make a Zelda game under such crunch. Majora's Mask’s story and tone are pretty
different to past Zeldas. But one earlier Zelda game was also pretty unique - Link's
Awakening. That game's weirdness was mostly thanks to Yoshiaki Koizumi, who’s always kinda
clashed with Miyamoto when it comes to story- telling. In one magazine he says: "I worked on the
plot of Link’s Awakening - I did the main story, and Kensuke Tanabe wrote the side plots. I made
quite a strange story, and afterwards Miyamoto told me he'd 'never let me do it again.' But I
consider that a compliment. I had wanted to do something that wasn’t at all Miyamoto-esque."
For Ocarina of Time, Miyamoto only let him work on a few side quests -- like the ones focused
on Skull Kid and the Mask Shop. After Ocarina, Koizumi started working on a non-Zelda game he
said used ‘certain systems to replay something over and over.’ "The plan I had was a game that
had a fixed time period of 3 days or a week or so, and the townspeople having fixed schedules
they followed. [...] It was while doing that that I went together with Miyamoto to
America. The whole time he was complaining about how things weren't going well with
[Majora's development], and I was just like, 'aw yeah that's too bad.' [laughs]. [...]
I was busy planning [that other] game. I was incredibly motivated, but then Miyamoto…
[his] little whispers started calling to me, 'Zelda… Zelda… Zelda...' And before I knew it,
my game was cancelled! [...] Once we got back to Japan, I had the entire situation explained to
me, and I [said] I would join the Majora team, but only if I was allowed to do things my way."
Koizumi would add many concepts from his canned game to Majora's Mask - a fixed three day loop,
townspeople living on a schedule, and so on. Besides Koizumi, another guy who greatly
impacted Majora was Takaya Imamura, probably best known as the creator of
characters like Star Fox, Captain Falcon, and Tingle. Just like Koizumi, Imamura was
brought in mid-development when the team were really struggling. Throughout these magazine
interviews, Koizumi and Imamura make it clear they were pretty much forced to work on Zelda.
Imamura was offered the job of art director - he tried to refuse but didn't have a choice.
Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the game wouldn't be the same without him.
If you'd gone to the 1999 Space World trade show, you'd see the moon didn't have a face -- not in
the playable demo or even in the promotional art. That's because Imamura added the moon's face
about two months before the game was finished, and the Moon's Tear and most of the other
moon-related content was created soon after. The moon's face was originally something
he drew as a sketch, but Koizumi loved it, and told him to give the moon a face that looked
like Majora’s Mask. But Imamura ignored him and used his own judgment. Imamura says he originally
drew the face of one of their superiors, but later changed it to the moon we know today.
The inside of the moon was once more like a graveyard. It became a grassy hill, an idea they
got from Space Battleship Yamato, a 1970's anime generally considered the granddaddy of Gundam and
the entire space opera genre. Koizumi explained: "With the world of Majora being so strange,
the inside of the moon being like the planet [Iscandar] provides contrast by being ordinary.
In a fairy tale world, it’s a realistic world - or maybe I should say a picturesque world - that
makes you feel the greatest sense of unease." In 2023 we also covered every cancelled Pokemon
game -- well, at least the ones we could find, as well as a few lost games and failed pitches
to boot. We got new info on pretty much every game we covered, but there were two projects
we had a noteworthy role in bringing to light. The first of which is Pokemon Pinball DS. Pokemon
Pinball for Game Boy was one of the earliest and most beloved spin-offs in the franchise, and
its GBA sequel got review scores on par with the mainline games. But then the series just
kinda died off. Unknown to the public though, a playable demo for a new entry on Nintendo DS
was developed in secret. The Pokemon Company said the game had the best graphics they'd ever seen
outside Japan, but sadly, it was never finished. Fans became aware of the project thanks to a
leak in 2021, where a spreadsheet saying Pokemon Pinball DS was planned to release around the same
time as Diamond & Pearl. And that it was being developed by Fuse Games -- the guys who made Mario
Pinball Land and Metroid Prime Pinball. No other info was available, and Fuse shut down almost
15 years ago, but we managed to get in contact with artist Matthew Nightingale, one of nine guys
who worked on Pokemon Pinball DS. He told us it would've been more of an adventure game, similar
to their take on Metroid. He believed the quality of Metroid Prime Pinball is what led Nintendo and
The Pokemon Company to visit Fuse's UK offices and fund development of a playable demo with three
stages. To help illustrate Matthew's description of the game, we commissioned artwork for all three
stages. The first stage was Sinnoh's countryside -- a board where player’s journey from one city
to the next. Pokemon appear as you traverse the route, like Diglett bumpers or Pikachu up a tree.
You hit Pokemon with the pinball to stun it, then tap it with your finger to catch it. If you
didn't click fast enough, it runs away. After a while the city gates open so you can shoot the
pinball through and reach the next table, the city stage. Catching Pokemon is simpler and faster
than past games, so by the time you're through the countryside and city, you've collected enough
Pokemon to form a team. Then it's time for the demo's final board where you fight a Gym Leader.
The Gym stage is double-ended -- on one end you have your flippers with a Pokemon between them,
and on the other end is the Gym Leader's Pokemon. You power up attacks by hitting the ball to
specific areas, then with enough power you can fire your ball into a hole, making your
Pokemon attack. The table only has one ball, so if you lose control of it, the Gym
Leader can nab it to charge their own attacks. Pokemon Pinball DS also would've
had Wi-Fi multiplayer battles that played out just like Gym battles. Matthew says the
game also would've had an evolution mechanic, and probably would've come bundled with a GBA-slot
rumble pack. Nintendo and The Pokemon Company were really impressed with the demo, but for some
reason they never greenlit full production, so nothing got made beyond the playable demo.
Matthew wasn't invited to any high-level meetings, but he suspects it came down to contract disputes.
Pokemon Pinball games didn't exactly print money like the core series, so there wouldn't
have been as much to go around for all parties involved. Fuse ended up going bankrupt
in 2009, partly because Pokemon Pinball didn't go to market. As for where that demo is now... We
asked Matthew if it was lost to time after Fuse went belly up, but he said no; Nintendo paid
to develop it, so they must still have it in their possession. The second game we had a hand
in unearthing was Pokemon 2000 Adventure -- a browser game that was Lost Media for decades,
but we helped restore it and make it available online. More on that later -- first let's look
at the game itself. Pokemon 2000 Adventure was an officially-licensed title that ended up
being better than Nintendo expected it'd be when they signed the contract -- so they shut it
down... but by then, a million people had already played it. This one’s history is pretty unique.
Pokemon’s second movie, Pokemon the Movie 2000, was distributed by Warner Brothers in America.
Along with the movie, Nintendo fully licensed and gave permission for WB to make promotional
materials to sell more tickets. Nintendo probably expected posters, art, trailers, and maybe
cheap web games like Pikachu Tic-Tac-Toe. But they weren't expecting Warner Brothers to
spend millions producing a 3D Pokemon game. But that's exactly what WB did -- they
contracted a studio called Cyberworld, who’d made things like virtual shopping malls and
a Harry Potter game. Think of ‘em like DOOM -- 3D spaces full of 2D sprites, but running in a
browser -- kinda impressive for the 90's. So WB wanted to use this 'cutting edge' tech to
promote the new Pokemon movie. We talked to Eddie Ruminski, one of Cyberworld's developers
who told us it was their most popular game to date -- and that's when Nintendo freaked out and
sent them a cease and desist. Nintendo thought Warner Brothers exceeded the contract's allowable
scope, and didn't expect WB’s promotion to include something that was legitimately a video game. Back
then, the only 3D Pokemon games were Pokemon Snap and Stadium. So Nintendo thought fans would see
this first-person adventure and think it was the series’ new direction. They saw it as a threat,
and feared it'd cause brand confusion. Eddie was sort of a junior programmer at the time, but
he was the only guy at Cyberworld familiar with Pokemon. The company got a pre-release VHS of
Pokemon The Movie 2000, sat Eddie in front of it, and asked "how the hell do we turn this into a
video game?" After they bounced some ideas back and forth with Warner Brothers, here's what they
came up with. Right now you're watching one of our playthroughs of Pokemon 2000 Adventure
and you're hearing the game's soundtrack. The game opens with Professor Oak giving you the
lowdown. Then you pick one of three Pokemon teams and a difficulty, and explore three islands in
any order you want. Sometimes your path’s blocked by environmental obstacles that require Pokemon's
special abilities to get past. Like these volcanic lava plumes -- we used Poliwhirl's Water Gun to
extinguish the flames, then he got XP and evolved into Poliwrath. Eventually we found Moltres -- it
asked us a trivia question about Lavender Town, and after we got it right, Moltres gave us the
Red Ancient Sphere. Then on the next island, we used Lapras to freeze a lake and cross
it, melted an ice barrier with Vulpix, and answered Articuno's trivia question to get
another sphere. On the final island, we cleared some electric barriers and evolved a couple more
Pokemon, and got the final sphere from Zapdos. Then Oak thanked us for saving the world and gave
us a certificate for beating the game. The game's only about 10 minutes, but there's replayability
thanks to the three Pokemon teams and difficulty settings. By the time Nintendo struck down the
game, the devs had been paid, they got to see the movie before it hit theaters, and they got to say
they'd worked on a massively successful Pokemon game. [Eddie: "It was the greatest compliment
via cease and desist, saying, 'sorry, what you made was too much like a good video game.' At the
end of the day when it was pulled, it was like, we've already been paid. That was a $2 million
dollar deal to make that game. Once it was pulled, it was like, we did the work. It was really
popular. We hit the million downloads that we like, didn't even dream of to begin with.
So when it was pulled, we were all happy."] Warner Brothers was happy too -- a million
downloads got them more promotion than expected, and Pokemon 2000 went on to become the
second-highest grossing Japanese movie to ever hit American theaters. So everyone was
happy except Nintendo. Eddie held onto the raw files for 23 years, then after he saw
our video about restoring Pokemon Garden, he reached out and sent us the files.
One of the Garden archivists, Rufus10, and his friend DoomTay did some wizardry to get
it working again -- which was a lot harder than it sounds. All credit goes to those guys. And
for preservation's sake, we also archived the game's concept art, storyboards, soundtrack,
and all the raw files. If you wanna play the game yourself or check out those files,
there’s a link in the description. Moving on. Last year we documented a few scrapped games
that’d never been seen before, and uncovered new details on cancelled games we barely knew
anything about. And we were fortunate enough to be able to do that again this year. For this
next segment we’re gonna highlight a few scrapped games we uncovered from Retro Studios. First up
we’re looking at a prototype game described by its developers as “Portal with combat”. Just after
they’d finished Metroid Prime 3, Retro created a prototype for a Portal-like game called Adept
that’d never been seen or even heard of publicly until we unearthed it. The footage you’re seeing
is an early proof of concept running in the Prime 3 engine, and that’s why you aren’t seeing tons of
polish. Its purpose was to illustrate mechanics, and was more of a playable pitch that Nintendo
said no to than a fully fledged big budget game. This was late 2007 into early ‘08 when
Retro was putting together the Prime Trilogy collection for Wii, and trying to figure out
what their next big project would be. Portal had just come out -- and Adept was gonna take Portal’s
general premise and evolve it. Instead of portals, Adept used cylinders. There’s Teleportation
cylinders, but instead of just two like in Portal, you can make as many as you want. Another type
is Force cylinders, which push anything that goes inside upwards. They're mostly used for
jumping, but you can attach them to ceilings to push downward, or on walls to push sideways.
This is an Attraction cylinder; in this clip you magnetize yourself to attract a healing item, and
here an enemy's about to throw projectiles at you, but you hit him with an Attract so all the
projectiles are sucked back and kill him. There’s also Fire cylinders that melt ice or light things
on fire -- enemies included. Careful though, 'cause they can do the same to you. Ice cylinders
are pretty similar; useful for freezing objects, putting out flames, and killing enemies.
Enemies can't see your cylinders, but you can make an infinite number to
kill them, solve puzzles, and so on. Adept’s prototype was made by one guy -- Prime
2 and 3 programmer Paul Tozour -- who got enough excitement internally at Retro to present it
to the whole company, and eventually Nintendo's higher-ups. This footage was presented to the
Nintendo producer who oversaw Retro's projects, Kensuke Tanabe, but it didn't click with him.
Retro's handlers at Nintendo didn't seem to know what Portal was, and didn't really play games made
outside Nintendo. Here's Paul: [Paul: "Nintendo Japan is very insular, and there is very much
a 'not invented here' syndrome. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that they
do have these extraordinary design skills, they've all trained under Miyamoto-san... At
one point I bought a copy of Portal, tried to give it to Kensuke Tanabe, tried to explain to
them, 'I'm gonna pitch you this game concept, but could you please take a look at this,
because it's amazing, and it'll help you understand what I'm going to pitch.' And
they said 'sorry, we can't accept gifts, company policy'... It was not intended as a gift,
it was intended as 'I'm letting you borrow this, so you can see a game that has really incredible
design.'"] Paul blamed himself for Adept's failure to launch -- as the designer, it was his
responsibility to sell the concept. The pitch version also had an overly-complicated UI
that Paul later wished he removed for simplicity. After Tanabe said no, Retro management told Paul
he could keep working on Adept, but only if it became a Nintendo DS game. But Paul didn't think
it’d work on DS, so the whole thing fizzled out. After Prime 3, a few devs started working on the
Trilogy Collection for Wii. Meanwhile, three other games were being prototyped in a playable form
including Adept, and our next unearthed game, The Blob Game. This was an unfinished DS project,
but unfortunately we don’t have any footage of it, so we'll show other games that seem similar. The
Blob Game was a physics-based 2D puzzler where you play as a sticky blob you'd use the touch
screen to stretch the blob in one direction, then let go and it'd fling in the opposite
direction. We talked to three ex-devs, with one saying, quote: "The project was
pretty far along when it was shelved, including tooling being in place and a pitch to
attach [Boos from the Mario] IP." Some concept art leaked back in 2020 for a game with Boos
from Mario, but till now fans didn't know what the gameplay would've been or if it was ever
playable. According to Retro artist Sammy Hall, the game would've taken us to, quote:
"very very unfamiliar territory. Deep in debt at Haunt University… Powers & abilities...
Broomies... Possession powers... [And a] spider boss..." Oftentimes the way development works is
gameplay's cooked up first, then an existing IP's attached to it later. From what we were told, it
seems the Blob gameplay existed as the prototype, and all the Mario-related was only in the
artwork and pitch documents. Everyone at Retro really liked The Blob Game and thought
it had potential, but Nintendo's response to the pitch was that there were, quote: "a lot
of teams who could build that title." And they didn't want Retro spending their valuable time
on that kinda project. The game was killed off, but the tooling from its development eventually
made its way into Donkey Kong Country Returns. In 2013, an internal pitch at Retro Studios
proposed that after Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, their next project should be
Star Fox. Unfortunately it was shot down by Retro's leadership -- and the project was never
known publicly until we made a video on it. The game would’ve been called Star Fox Armada, and
was dreamt up by Eric Kozlowsky, a former Retro artist who worked on games like Uncharted and Mass
Effect. Eric gave us a full 12 page pitch document on the game and told us all about it. The game was
aimed at Wii U with an art style that emulated the puppet aesthetic from the series' early promo
images. Retro sorta had a knack for rebooting Nintendo franchises -- like Metroid and DK -- and
Eric wanted the studio to take a crack at Star Fox too. Star Fox has taken a lot of forms over the
years -- but the series peaked both critically and commercially with Star Fox 64. So Armada was
gonna pick up where 64 left off both in terms of story and gameplay. According to the pitch, Armada
would essentially reboot the series as if no games had been made since 64. After Andross’ defeat,
General Pepper realizes that Corneria and the Lylat System need to be rebuilt. But the war left
the Cornerian government lacking the resources it needed to rebuild its military and civilian
sectors. So the remaining forces stay back to defend the Lylat System, and Star Fox is hired to
search nearby systems for allies and resources. But along the way, Fox and co will discover
a threat far greater than Andross ever was. As far as gameplay’s concerned, Armada would’ve
combined the gameplay of Star Fox 64 -- i.e. Fox would keep his butt in a vehicle at all times --
with new open world and multiplayer mechanics. In single player, players accept missions
aboard the Great Fox and travel to planets, sectors, installations, and asteroid belts to
complete them. And the mission’s spoils -- both cash and resources -- can either be sent back to
Corneria or used to upgrade your ships or buy new ones like the Land Master tank and Blue Marine
submarine. Armada was also gonna have optional side quests that leaned more into the mercenary
angle -- Star Fox have always been mercenaries, but past games didn't really focus on that
detail. Overall, Armada would've had less of a linear structure like the old games,
and expanded into more of a mission-based structure. Fox never gets out of his ship in
missions, but he could walk about the Great Fox. Eric compared it to how the Normandy works
in Mass Effect where you can select missions, interact with the crew, and purchase upgrades.
The main gameplay would take place on a TV, while the Wii U Gamepad acted as a ship's control
panel showing data about the current mission, and which parts of your ship had taken damage.
If a wing or something's taken too many hits, the player needs to tap icons on
the Gamepad to repair it in real time -- so you wouldn't have to constantly
look down to aim like in Star Fox Zero. If you wanna play co-op, player 1 would use a
Wii Remote and Nunchuk, and player 2 would use the Gamepad, serving as the ship's gunner with
a 360 degree view. They'd handle repairs and control the ship's shields -- if a bunch of
enemies fly in from the left, player 2 could move the shields to that side and gun in that
direction. But if this wasn’t up your alley, you could play online with one friend or a group
to complete missions in multiple ships. There also would've been a mode where you can have dogfights
with friends like in Star Fox 64’s Versus mode, but online instead of just split-screen.
The reason the game was called "Armada" is because it encourages you to build up your own
squadron. You and your friends can make your own team and call it Star Hawk, Star Snakes,
Star Dogs - whatever you want - and even design your own anthropomorphic characters if
you didn't wanna be Fox and co. In Star Fox 64, sometimes Star Wolf would show up and attack
in the middle of a mission. That would also happen in Armada, but it’d be other online
players dropping down on you. Folks who just want a single-player experience could turn this
off, but for everyone else, enemy mercenaries pouncing on you is something that'd happen from
time to time. Eric hoped that players could use the Wii U’s Miiverse to put bounties on other
teams, like if a team called Star Llama messed you up mid-mission, you could hop on Miiverse
and put a 500 credit bounty on their heads. Star Fox games haven't sold well since N64, so
this pitch had to sell management on. All the online features were a main selling point to keep
fans playing after the main campaign. The pitch doc calls it an "evergreen title" and mentions
DLC intended to bring fans back for more by adding new ships, missions, and planets over time.
Nintendo didn't have any evergreen titles in 2013, but Splatoon sort of filled that niche a couple
years later -- and it's been incredibly successful ever since. So why didn't Star Fox Armada ever get
made? Eric pitched the doc to Retro leadership in January 2013. They basically said "oh cool" then
passed on it, and it doesn't appear it ever made its way up the chain to Nintendo. Eric ended up
resigning from Retro a year and a half later, partly because of the studio's top-down nature.
Other studios he's worked at had cultures that were more open, where pitches stood a chance of
being turned into actual games. When we talked to Eric, he emphasized this was a skeleton of a
document, which would've needed fleshing out from all the brilliant people at Retro. Unfortunately
though, internal pitches just never got approved at the studio -- and other former Retro employees
told us the same. As of this video's publication, Retro Studios hasn't released a single game since
Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze back in 2014. So after rejecting the Star Fox Armada pitch, what did they
work on instead? Eric wouldn’t say. After Tropical Freeze, Eric spent a year and a half working on
a game that was never released, and that's all he was willing to say. Whatever Retro was making,
it's still considered top secret. As for Star Fox -- Nintendo later teamed up with Platinum Games
to make Star Fox Zero, which unfortunately ended up as the worst-selling game in the entire
franchise, and there hasn't been another Star Fox game since. Fans are still waiting
for the day Fox'll make his return -- whether it's a reboot from Retro or maybe in-house at
Nintendo, hopefully that day isn't too far off... Now we’re gonna talk about two scrapped Sonic
games we got new info on: Sister Sonic and Sonic Chronicles 2. Well, our Sister Sonic coverage
is more like us setting the record straight and debunking rumors, but it’s a pretty interesting
scrapped project. Back in 1991, Japanese studio Nihon Falcom released a side-scrolling Action RPG
starring a female bounty hunter called Popful Mail for the PC-88. A few years later, rumors spread
that Sega wanted to localize a Sega CD version for America, and replace Mail with Sonic's
long-lost sister. But not a single screenshot has ever been seen, and if you go looking
for proof that Sister Sonic ever existed, the only citations are from Electronic Gaming
Monthly’s rumor section. The rumor was that Sister Sonic would be at an upcoming Toy Fair...
but that never happened. In fact, it was never shown anywhere at all. EGM's gossip was uncited,
with no reference to press releases, dev quotes, or even anonymous sources. To make sure the game
was even real, we poured through old Japanese magazines, and eventually found sources proving
Sister Sonic did exist... but the rumors were only half-true. In Beep Mega Drive magazine’s November
1992 issue, the director of Sega Falcom announced five games in development. One of them was Sister
Sonic. And it wasn’t just a reskin - Sister Sonic would be a full-on remake. Before we go on, keep
in mind Popful Mail was originally developed by Nihon Falcom, and Sega Falcom was a joint venture
to bring Nihon's PC games to Sega consoles. So, in the magazine, director Kazutaka Yano says
that Sega Falcom doesn’t just port Nihon Falcom titles -- they reinterpret them in their own
way. And this is where he mentions that Sister Sonic is a remake, and that the character is
‘like a female relative of the Sonic family’. He also says the game’s Sonic rebrand was just
because Sonic’s already popular around the world. Further down the page, it says: "[Sister
Sonic is] an action RPG based on Popful Mail, starring the first female Sonic character, Sister
Sonic, as the main character. The protagonist being a bounty hunter hasn't changed, but Sister
Sonic isn't a cute character like Mail -- she's a more mature girl. Expect her to have a flirtatious
and sexy charm! [...] It'll release in Japan and overseas at nearly the same time with Japanese
subtitles." So let's clear up some misinformation that spread from EGM. First off, Sister Sonic
wasn't an American localization of Popful Mail. It was a remake releasing worldwide, including Japan.
Second, Sister Sonic wasn't Sonic's sister - she was a sexy relative. And third, Sega never
tried passing the game off as an original work, and never hid its Popful Mail origins. Actually,
if they tried to pass it off as an original game, it might not have been canned. We bought this
book from Japan - it says when Popful Mail fans heard their favorite game was being turned into
Sonic, they started a mail-in campaign asking Sega to faithfully port Popful Mail to Sega CD.
They must've sent a ton of letters, because Sega rolled over and did exactly that. Popful Mail
for Sega CD released in Japan in 1994, and in America a year later. But even without Sonic, it
was still a remake; look at the PC-88 original next to the Sega CD version... it's almost
unrecognizable. And with Sister Sonic canned, only one Sonic RPG ever released in the series’
30 year history. And there might've been a whole series of RPGs if it wasn't for one man. Sonic
Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood was a Nintendo DS game developed by Bioware, the same studio
behind KotoR and Mass Effect. Sonic Chronicles ended on a cliffhanger, and Bioware said they had
"a precise idea" for what’d happen in the sequel, but unfortunately a sequel never got made. For 15
years Sonic fans wondered what’d happen next, so we reached out to Chronicles’ lead
designer Miles Holmes to get some answers. And for context, here's the first game’s plot,
heavily summarized. Thousands of years ago, there were two warring echidna kingdoms: the Knuckles
Clan and the Nocturnus Clan. These bitter rivals all went extinct -- except for one last echidna
called Knuckles. As the last of his bloodline, he lives in solitude guarding the Master Emerald. At
the start of Chronicles 1, Knuckles is kidnapped by some unknown warriors. Sonic and friends rescue
him and discover the warriors were part of the Nocturnus tribe, including a female called Shade.
Knuckles is shocked 'cause he thought he was the last surviving echidna. But apparently no --
the remaining Nocturnus have been imprisoned in another dimension called the Twilight Cage
for thousands of years. The mysterious god Argus locked them in there, along with a bunch of alien
races from other planets, though no one knows why. Shade's squad came to Earth to steal the Master
Emerald, and use its power to free the rest of their tribe. But later it turns out the Nocturnus'
chief, a guy called Ix, has a secret evil plan. After the whole tribe's freed and back on Earth,
Ix is gonna wage war to conquer the planet. This surprises Shade, who wants no part in a war of
aggression, so she joins up with Team Sonic. Ix takes the Master Emerald and warps back to
the Twilight Cage. Our heroes chase after him, yada yada yada, Super Sonic defeats Ix, and
the rest of the Nocturnus are left to rot in the Twilight Cage. Team Sonic heads home
victorious, but realize time had been flowing slower in the Twilight dimension while they
were gone. It was just a few hours to them, but several years passed back on
Earth. And with no one to stop him, Eggman took over the world. And the
game ends there -- on a cliffhanger. And here's how it would've continued in the
sequel, straight from Sonic Chronicles' lead designer Miles Holmes: [Miles: "Picking it up
from the cliffhanger, they come back and it's now Eggman's world, right? So that's a little of
a Back to the Future 2 kinda vibe. We talked about Skynet in Terminator 2, when you get to see the
future, when you get to see [where] Kyle Reece is from, but now it's all Eggman's stuff. So in
this case, Eggman unchecked by Sonic has been able to do what he's always wanted to do and
remake the world in his image. So a lot of the population's been rounded up and they're prisoners
or they're slaves or whatever. You've got Eggman's machines, in a very dystopic Terminator future.
Part of that would've been the fun of getting to go to famous world landmarks and seeing
them remade in this Eggman style, so going to Paris and seeing Eggman's gear all over the
Eiffel Tower, sort of watching down with a big eye or something like that. So those would've
been some of the locations."] When Sonic and co return to Eggman's Earth, their ship crashes,
and everyone's scattered to the winds. So the player's following multiple parties and populating
them in different locations -- always on the run, always fighting to see another day. Eventually
they’re able to free some populations and start to build a multinational army to storm Eggman's
base and restore world order. Just as they're about to do exactly that, Argus shows up --
the mega- god alluded to in the first game, but even Super Sonic's not strong enough
to beat Argus. So in spite of everything, Sonic and Eggman join forces to take
him down. Eggman uses his mega death laser to fire Super Sonic out like a bullet
to break through Argus' defenses -- ending the first boss phase. With Argus weakened,
the Twilight Cage opens -- and everyone who was trapped inside is set free and joins in a
massive climactic battle to finish off Argus. So Knuckles has freed his fellow echidnas and
everyone else in the cage, and with Shade he can potentially continue his bloodline. Eggman
runs off, yelling "until next time Sonic!" And so the status quo returns... The End… Well, except
for the final teaser. The first game says the Twilight Cage is a pocket dimension where the
Nocturnus and other alien races are imprisoned, but you never know why. The truth would've
been revealed in the sequel -- long ago, an oracle told Argus that someday he'd die at the
hands of a mortal. So to prevent his own death, Argus swept the universe imprisoning any race that
may be a threat. But the final teaser would reveal the oracle's prediction was actually a trick.
By gathering all these powerful races, Argus was unknowingly building a super team that
could destroy him. And beyond that -- with the oracle being able to take down something
as powerful as Argus, even if indirectly, they’re dangerous. And a dangerous, mysterious
being like that is something any writer could work with if they wanted to continue the series
-- at least that’s what Bioware seemed to be going for. Bioware would've considered
their work finished with this duology, but hoped another studio or Sega themselves
would continue Chronicles as a series. So... why didn't Chronicles 2 get made? The
first game sold well, and reviews weren’t too bad. Chronicles was basically free money and
brand exposure for Sega, and Sonic Team even told Bioware they wanted to use Shade and Argus
in their own games, and the Bioware guys were thrilled to hear it. Well, long story short, tons
of Sonic comics from 1994 to 2006 were authored by a man named Ken Penders. And in Ken's view,
the comic characters he created belonged to him, not Sega. And Chronicles’ characters took
inspiration from them, like how Shade is similar to Knuckle's girlfriend Julie-Su. Two months after
Chronicles launched, Ken started copyrighting all his creations, then a series of lawsuits kicked
off between Ken, Sega, Bioware, and the comic publisher. If you want the full explanation
go watch our video on lost Sonic games, but yea - a whole mess of legal issues triggered by
Ken Penders is why Chronicles’ 2 never got maid. Don’t forget to check out our
new game -- pre-orders are available right now. And If you want more
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for watching -- see ya next time.
