Sonic Shuffle

Sonic Shuffle is the second Sonic game released for the Dreamcast, and the only one to be co-developed by Hudson Soft, the same people behind Mario Party. Taking place after the events of Sonic Adventure, Sonic and his friends receive a mysterious message asking for help, leading to them being teleported to a dream world known as Maginaryworld, where they must assist the fairy known as Lumina by collecting various pieces of the Precioustone before it's too late.

Unlike other entries in the series, Sonic Shuffle is a party game, where four characters must compete against each other by collecting Precioustone pieces before time runs out. It's also the only game of that genre in the series history, although it would see a spiritual successor of in the form of a side mode featured in Sonic and the Secret Rings, almost seven years later.

Sub-Page#

Prototype Info

Unused Graphics#

Bomb Relay Face#

MG049.MDL contains an unused texture for the Bomb Relay minigame, which has a crudely-drawn white cloud with a face. Likely meant as an emote of sorts when the bomb blows up.

Unused Models#

NIGHTS Dart#

The Sonic Darts minigame has an unused dart via MG102.MD, which pertains to NiGHTS, who despite having a cameo appearance when the game is played on Christmas Eve, is not playable. While all other characters have their faces on their darts models, NiGHTS only went as far as having their name on it as a placeholder. This seems to suggest at some point, NiGHTS was meant to be a playable character.

Debugging Material#

Present in the SUBPROG directory are files for debug tools, which were used during development. To access these features, replace TITLE.BIN with any of the below files:

Model Viewer (MDLVIEW.BIN)#

This allows you view all the environments in the game, alongside their textures separately. You can also change the background color from black, white, red, and blue by pressing the Y button.

Level Viewer (TEST_0.BIN)#

This uses the Nindows debug system for games developed with the Ninja libraries from SDKs like Space Channel 5 and the Scud Racer. It functions similarly to Windows in appearance and lets you use a keyboard and mouse to navigate menus and view the party boards outside of a game scenario, albeit in a buggy fashion.

High Poly Viewer (HPVIEW.BIN)#

Let's you view all the models that are used during cutscenes, alongside with their animations and how they look in terms of lighting.

Minigame Demo (EXDEMO.BIN)#

This shows the opening of every single minigame in the game, and what their position should be.

Mini Event Menu (EVENT.BIN)#

Allows you see all the special events with the game, along being able to choose your own character and how much they have in their inventory.

Sound Test (ONES.BIN)#

You can listen all the music, voices, and sound effects in the entire game with this menu.

Debug Menu Text#

Text from the debug menu from the PAL prototype can be located in TITLE.BIN, before the text is used for VMU access. To enable the menu:

• If running the European debug version, hold Y during the Sega logo.
• If running the Japanese version, set the byte at address 8c0fcd63 to 01.
• If running the North American version, set the byte at address 8c1a6256 to 01.
• If running the European retail version, set the byte at address 8c0fba97 to 01.

Sonic Shuffle DEBUG MENU
BOARD Stage No %d
Mdl File Viewer
HI-Poly Viewer
PST=%d
GENERAL
SPECIAL
CLEAR
START SELECT (VS)
START SELECT (Story)
RECORD Announcement
Rank Demo
Tutorial Demo
Sonic Room
Void EVENT
Duel
Movie
SOUND TEST
Event No %d
TEST-0
Mini Event Menu
Ring
Badbge Enemy_%d PST_%d
EXDEMO.BIN
Leave a hand
DEBUG MENU:Proc start fail
PLAY

Sound Debug Menu DrvVer %1X.%02X.%02X
Select Game[%s]
Select Game[%s]
Select Trap[%s]
Select Mev [%s]
Select Btl [***]
Select Tut [***]
Select Rec [***]
Select Sev [%s]
Select Bev [***]
Select Srm [***]
Select Vev [***]
Select End [***]

Cut Minigames#

There's two minigames internally to referred as CMG41.BIN and CMG61.BIN in 1ST_READ.BIN , which don't have their own files to be loaded in the game. Besides this, it's completely unknown on what these scrapped minigames were supposed to be like.

Bonus Content#

Eight 1024×768 wallpapers can be found by checking the files. It features various characters from this title, such as Lumina.

References#