Sky Chase - Sonic Adventure Autodemo

Both acts of Sky Chase in the Sonic Adventure Autodemo.

I'd say this version is about 70% of the way there, most of the stage is in place but there's a lot of small changes scattered around. To start with, there's no sound at all. To avoid a soundless video, I threw in the theme from the final.

The HUD is text-based. The (also text-based) score tally is also present, since Sky Chase doesn't use the regular stage clear function, which it was wiped from for the demo.

The Sky Chases aren't separated by stage IDs, rather they share a single stage as acts 1 and 2, like their names suggest. This was changed most likely to give both acts a separate stage manager function; They still share the same file in the final.

The Tornado moves the same but its lock-on behaves differently:
- In the final game, you hold A to lock-on and it fires a laser when releasing.
- In this version, the lock-on automatically targets any enemy it overlaps and rockets can be fired at it by pressing B.
The rockets can be seen in the announcement footage and are still part of the object list in the final game but aren't used, being replaced by the laser.

The turrets attached to the Egg Carrier have a different design that resembles the giant cannons of Sky Deck, they even fire green bullets in the same shape.

The dragon is still present in Sky Chase 1, spawned via the stage's manager function. It doesn't do much, it flies on the same path from the early footage and collides with the player at the end. Given that the cannon boss is missing in Act 2, a boss battle with the dragon was likely planned for the end of Sky Chase 1, which would then be followed by the cannon firing cutscene.

Neither of the cutscenes for Act 1 or 2 are present, despite them being shown in footage of versions earlier than this. The animation for the Egg Carrier firing exists in the file, but the one for the Tornado 2 transformation doesn't. We've speculated that they may have been full cutscenes (loaded from event files), which were removed in the Autodemo aside from the ones in the demo reel. To show the second half of Sky Chase 2, I had to use cheat engine to manually change the Tornado 2's path.

The camera is missing but the clouds and Tornado evidently expect it to be there. woofmute has a video with it added in through the camera editor if you'd like to know how it looks:

Download as a mod via X-Hax's GitHub:
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[dramaticexit]

I'm so happy that the dragon is real in at least one build!

(I know about the SADX developer tools, but it doesn't mean it just exists in there, shhh)

[adrian]

Really cool seeing that dragon in action. Loving the Autodemo videos, keep up the great work!

[curlybrace]

Man. So awesome getting to see the dragon.

[GoldenGrenadier]

I kinda hate how sonic never flies the tornado anymore. Everybody forgets sonic can actually fly a freaking plane.

[shalpp]

that crosshair glitch just looks like an lcd matrix lmfao

[soovcat]

the dragon just makes this level SO MUCH COOLER, even if it didn't do anything they still should've kept it in

[chiefsonic]

There's the dragon. Really cool seeing these new Autodemo videos. Keep it up.

[shatteredscry]

I wish we could have a coffee and you tell me nonstop cool facts about Sonic Adventure 😭 Noone I know (personally) is so well versed into it

[akibared]

I imagine the dragon would've been a throwback to Panzer Dragoon, like the rest of the stage. So you would fly around him, and destroy him piece by piece. I think he was removed because the whole thing feels completely out of place and random - you're chasing the Egg Carrier, and suddenly some fuckass dragon comes out of nowhere and starts flying around it. The spectacle was not worth the pacing issues.

[eeveemaster]

WE KNOW THE DRAGON'S PATHING NOW!! I CAN'T WAT FOR SOMEONE TO MAKE IT A MOD

[proximalelk]

I have a theory why the dragon was scrapped.
Imagine the end of the development of the game. The devs fixed a bug, completely unrelated to the dragon, but for some reason it broke the dragon (classic programming moment). So, instead of fixing the dragon, they just scrapped the it because they had no time to fix it.
That also answers the question why there are so many leftovers of dragon in the final game: they didn’t have time to completely remove it from the game.

[TrackedToasted]

"it doesn't much"
-the description

[woofmute]

i've spent so long in this stage for the last few days that the dragon is my friend now.

[GigglyMan]

Weird how other than the cutscenes and sound this is one of the more complete parts of the autodemo

[TheHylianBatman]

I really love Sky Chase, so it's really cool to see the dragon in it finally!

[Knightblade]

Its been really cool seeing the autodemos for SA1 really loving them.

[brianpso]

Watching this in motion gives me goosebumps holy shit

[KiraSlith]

I know they had to switch models due to the polygon count so they could get more jets, canons, and mines rendering at once... but it would've been nice to have the Sky Deck canons here in Sky Chase just for the sense of verisimilitude. As-is, neither segment really feels like your attacking the same Egg Carrier as the other.

[leilaclarridge]

I hope that if they really do remake SA1 like it's been rumored they will, they include the dragon in at least one of the sky chase levels

[LucyDiamond]

Unused Sky Chase Act 1 Dragon Robot my beloved ❤