Sonic Heroes PS2 Prototype Discovered After 20 Years

This is pretty cool. Gives a good insight in to the process for what is still a unique and fun Sonic Game

Cool!

It's worth noting this is a unique situation that may not fully illustrate the game's progress at the time. The PS2 port of Heroes was a pretty slapdash and last-minute port, since the original Heroes was originally only meant for Xbox and Gamecube. It was only after SEGA was given a fairly dire warning from Sony that either Heroes released on PS2, or they won't get to release anything at all did SEGA/Sonic Team very quickly cobble together the port. 

That's also why PS2 Heroes is the worst of the bunch, being unoptimized, running at 30fps, and having glitches that neither of the other two consoles have. Given this is just about two months from release, it's hard to say if the PS2 port is just particularly unfinished, or if this was actually the state of the game at this point. Unfortunately, I feel a Gamecube beta would've been a better find since it would better inform on where the state of affairs actually was at this point of development.

Still interesting to see a lot of the earlier/unfinished aspects, but it is hard to tell what's a result of this being a slapdash port mid-progress, and what's a result of the game just being two months away from being finished.

I would also heavily recommend the other build that has come with all the Hidden Palace releases last month - the long-awaited Crash 3 alpha demonstration disc: 

It's always cool to see stuff like this fall into the lap of the Sonic community. Legless Vector holding Espio's disembodied head is burned into my brain now.

Sonic Heroes PS2 Prototype

"it also includes a number of bugs and unfinished elements"

How is that different from the finished PS2 Version.

Jokes aside this is an interesting find :)

12 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It was only after SEGA was given a fairly dire warning from Sony that either Heroes released on PS2, or they won't get to release anything at all did SEGA/Sonic Team very quickly cobble together the port. 

I had no idea this was the case, I also had no idea Sony had the ability to just randomly strong arm a third party developer like this for not releasing a game on their console to the point of threats, I guess that speaks more to how much the Sonic IP was still valued back then 

4 minutes ago, Soniman said:

I had no idea this was the case, I also had no idea Sony had the ability to just randomly strong arm a third party developer like this for not releasing a game on their console to the point of threats, I guess that speaks more to how much the Sonic IP was still valued back then 

It was very early PS2 era when Sony had easily won the N64 era via the PlayStation and a lot of publishers had basically realised that Sony was the top game during that era. PS2 would go on to become a huge trend on top of it, so Sony did have the power to basically tell publishers to play ball or they don't come out on PlayStation at all, which would obviously be cutting yourself out of the best selling market. Capcom also got hit with a similar ultimatum at the time.

Basically you just need to look at their attitude with the PS3 launch to see how much power they had. They (more specifically, the lead creator of PlayStation) knowingly made the console as infamously hard to code for, and basically just say it was the devs' problem, and they'd learn because PS3 would naturally be the lead console following PS2. PS3's launch was a massively humbling moment for them.

14 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It's worth noting this is a unique situation that may not fully illustrate the game's progress at the time. The PS2 port of Heroes was a pretty slapdash and last-minute port, since the original Heroes was originally only meant for Xbox and Gamecube. It was only after SEGA was given a fairly dire warning from Sony that either Heroes released on PS2, or they won't get to release anything at all did SEGA/Sonic Team very quickly cobble together the port. 

That's also why PS2 Heroes is the worst of the bunch, being unoptimized, running at 30fps, and having glitches that neither of the other two consoles have. Given this is just about two months from release, it's hard to say if the PS2 port is just particularly unfinished, or if this was actually the state of the game at this point. Unfortunately, I feel a Gamecube beta would've been a better find since it would better inform on where the state of affairs actually was at this point of development.

Still interesting to see a lot of the earlier/unfinished aspects, but it is hard to tell what's a result of this being a slapdash port mid-progress, and what's a result of the game just being two months away from being finished.

I would also heavily recommend the other build that has come with all the Hidden Palace releases last month - the long-awaited Crash 3 alpha demonstration disc: 

 

I had no idea Sony gave them that ultimatum. Thats really unteresting. It would explain some of the issues in the game. Although my biggest gripe at the time wass the uneven and unreliable homing attack to jump between rails.

20 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It's worth noting this is a unique situation that may not fully illustrate the game's progress at the time. The PS2 port of Heroes was a pretty slapdash and last-minute port, since the original Heroes was originally only meant for Xbox and Gamecube. It was only after SEGA was given a fairly dire warning from Sony that either Heroes released on PS2, or they won't get to release anything at all did SEGA/Sonic Team very quickly cobble together the port. 

That's also why PS2 Heroes is the worst of the bunch, being unoptimized, running at 30fps, and having glitches that neither of the other two consoles have. Given this is just about two months from release, it's hard to say if the PS2 port is just particularly unfinished, or if this was actually the state of the game at this point. Unfortunately, I feel a Gamecube beta would've been a better find since it would better inform on where the state of affairs actually was at this point of development.

 

This has always been an unsubstantiated rumor, likely BS that has no basis in reality. Sonic Heroes was likely going to launch on all consoles no matter what because the stated goal of the game was to bring the series to the widest audience possible. Iizuka acknowledged multiple times in 2004 that the PS2 version was the worst version of the game, but he blames the base hardware for the system for that.

The PS2 version is the worst because the PS2 was notoriously underpowered compared to it's peers. If something had a PS2 port, it usually ran worse, looked worse and had additional loading time compared to it's counterparts on other platforms.

We need a re-release of Heroes like Colours, with the PS version buffed up. Maybe Sonic 3 Movie will help in this regard if say Amy, Rouge, Maybe Omega are also in it on top of shadow

Sega was damn near bankrupt by the time Heroes came out. They had already had two failed merger attempts while Heroes was in development by the time Sammy started buying into them. The Gamecube was also already pretty much dead by 2004 outside of Japan. The Xbox was strong but far far far far in second place and (despite Sega and Microsoft's best efforts) there was little actual overlap between its audience and the Dreamcast's. It would have made absolutely no sense to only ignore the console that was going through sales shortages in its 4th year on the market and ended up outselling all of its competitors combined 4 times over. Certainly not when Sonic Team licenced Renderware for their game engine and the only reason you'd do that is if you were making a game to put on PS2.

10 hours ago, Soniman said:

I had no idea this was the case, I also had no idea Sony had the ability to just randomly strong arm a third party developer like this for not releasing a game on their console to the point of threats, I guess that speaks more to how much the Sonic IP was still valued back then 

That's the luxury afforded when you essentially have control of the videogame market and have for all but about 6 years of the past three decades.

They’re playing on the beach. Espio says: dig us out! And Charmy says: they already took a picture of us and they’ll reveal it in 20 years. Sorry. And Vector says: LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE 

Sonic Heroes PS2 Edition = Sandbox Heroes.

On 1/2/2024 at 5:58 PM, Ryannumber1gamer said:

It's worth noting this is a unique situation that may not fully illustrate the game's progress at the time. The PS2 port of Heroes was a pretty slapdash and last-minute port, since the original Heroes was originally only meant for Xbox and Gamecube. It was only after SEGA was given a fairly dire warning from Sony that either Heroes released on PS2, or they won't get to release anything at all did SEGA/Sonic Team very quickly cobble together the port. 

That's also why PS2 Heroes is the worst of the bunch, being unoptimized, running at 30fps, and having glitches that neither of the other two consoles have. Given this is just about two months from release, it's hard to say if the PS2 port is just particularly unfinished, or if this was actually the state of the game at this point. Unfortunately, I feel a Gamecube beta would've been a better find since it would better inform on where the state of affairs actually was at this point of development.

Still interesting to see a lot of the earlier/unfinished aspects, but it is hard to tell what's a result of this being a slapdash port mid-progress, and what's a result of the game just being two months away from being finished.

I would also heavily recommend the other build that has come with all the Hidden Palace releases last month - the long-awaited Crash 3 alpha demonstration disc: 

 

Here is a GameCube build from a week later.

https://tcrf.net/Proto:Sonic_Heroes/GameCube_prototype_10.8