Welcome back to the Retro Spotlight, with the second part of our three part interview with the Kart Krew for Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart! If you missed part one, we recommend giving it a read before starting here. Otherwise, hit the jump and let’s continue!
If there’s one universal aspect people can agree upon when it comes to the Sonic the Hedgehog series, it’s that the music has always been pretty darn good. This is true even for Sonic 2006, a game which has become the punching bag for the series since…well, 2006. For many, one of the highlights to that soundtrack is Silver’s theme, “Dreams of an Absolution.” The man who sung his heart out on that track all those years ago, Bentley Jones, revisited the track just in time for Sonic’s 28th anniversary. And he made a music video to go with it!
That’s one tall building.
Sonic Robo Blast 2 has been around for twenty long, eventful years and despite this long development, the community has thrived throughout it all. Mods of all sizes have been the backbone of the project and one of the biggest, most recent mods is none other than SRB2 Kart, which changes the game from a platformer to a kart racer, similar to the Team Sonic Racing game released last month. We had a lengthy correspondence with the team behind the mod, Kart Krew, and like their project, their answers were massive! After working for ages to compile their answers, we’ve decided to split this particular Spotlight into three separate articles, which will be released in the following weeks. So enjoy part one of this three part series from the Kart Krew and the development of SRB2Kart!
In November of 2012, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed dropped to a positive critical and fan reception. Some considered it a contender with Mario Kart, while others would argue that, at the time, it may even have surpassed it. Transformed, unfortunately, had its fair share of bugs, some of which were sorted but many that, to this day, haven’t been. Fast forward to today, and after a healthy delay, we now have Team Sonic Racing. Gone are the transforming vehicles and colorful SEGA cast, instead replaced with Sonic mainstays and a focus on cooperative gameplay. And while in a few areas, Team Sonic Racing feels like a step or two towards improvement, it takes several flights worth of stairs tumbling backwards.
You’ve probably seen this tweet making the rounds online of unused Sonic 2 music being shown off to a classroom.
My teacher showing off music he did for Sonic 2 that didn’t make it into the game pic.twitter.com/jL0bohyXIO
— Kevin Slackie (@KSlackie) May 1, 2019
It turns out this student’s professor is David Javelosa who, if you aren’t familiar with him, is a freelance composer who used to be an Audio Director at SEGA of America. These days you’ll find him as a professor at Santa Monica College. You will typically find his name on western productions of SEGA titles including Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, Ecco – The Tides of Time, Spider-Man VS. The Kingpin and even was part of the SEGA Multimedia Studio to help with SEGA CD development.
After the tweet gained massive popularity the poster agreed to try to convince David to put his works online somewhere. Luckily he agreed to it and now you can find this online. A SEGA Genesis GEMS Test Module. GEMS of course was the sound driver used in many western Genesis games including Sonic Spinball. But in the video below it seems to center around Sonic 2. You can find more demo reels and music tracks from this channel after the jump.
Edit: Our livestream is done. Check out our replay of SRB2 Kart featuring me and NeoHazard. We check out mods and characters made by the community while hosting a free for all race server…. while tinkering with our stream setups live!
