Tag: chaotix

Sundry Sunday: The Chaotix Case Files

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

I promised yesterday that the next Sundry Sundays were going to be great, and so they are. The official Sonic the Hedgehog Youtube channel, in association with podcast outfit Realm, is releasing a sequence of audio videos featuring the adventures of everyone’s favorite ridiculous video game detective agency, the Chaotix. Why are they called that? Who knows.

Actually I do know, because the three of them were introduced in the 32X game, and one of the few reasons to have gotten a 32X during its short lifespan, Knuckles Chaotix, suggested tagline: “It’s not great, but it is very weird.”

That game had absolutely nothing to do with detectives. I think the detective angle was added with the lore behind Sonic Heroes. From then on, they’ve popped up at random times, usually being pretty hapless. But all three of them are adorable, even and especially Vector the Crocodile, and mean well.

So for now there’s three things having to do with the Chaotix Case Files, a trailer (2 minutes):

…an introductory Episode 0 (9½ minutes):

…and a full Episode 1 (26 minutes).

And here is a link to it as a podcast. They’re roughly of a Saturday Morning Cartoon level of maturity, which I should be clear, is absolutely perfect for these guys, so pour a bowl of Trix, inundate that vessel with milk, and let the part of you that’s still ten years old listen in and enjoy it.

They even got Rebecca Sugar, creator and runner of Steven Universe, to write their theme song!

Doing Weird Things To A Sega 32X

The Youtuber: MattKC Bytes
What he did: Unexpected things to Sega’s aborted Genesis/Mega Drive add-on.
The address: here.
The length: about seven minutes.

The explanation: Did you ever play around with a 32X? Evidently not a lot of people did. It was straaaange. Unexpectedly powerful! A bit misjudged! Hosted a port of DOOM! Had a port of Virtua Racing that compares favorably with the Saturn version! Had that crazy hard-to-play Knuckles game that gave us Vector the Crocodile!

Have you ever hooked one up though? Its hardware is odd. It’s like a completely separate console to itself. The Mega Drive wasn’t made to support add-on processors and chips like that, so Sega used a clever solution: the 32X has its own video output, and also a video input. You plug the Genesis’ output into the 32X, and then the 32X into your TV. The 32X mixes the Genesis’ signal into its own, as if it were chromakeyed. Since the 32X cartridge supplies the program running on the Genesis as well as itself and they can talk to each other, the two processors and graphics chips should be able to sync perfectly, if awkwardly.

But: because the Genesis’ video signal emerges from that console through this external wire before reentering the 32X, it’s possible to do things to it while in transit. The Genesis supplies video timing information that the 32X relies on, so you can’t get a signal from the add-on without the Genesis’ AV plugged into it, but the Genesis does produce a viewable video signal that you can see on its own.

All the details are in the video, which has been embedded below for your convenience and amusement.

Sundry Sunday: Chaotix Neighbors

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

I’ll admit it, there’s this cable that goes into my brain directly from Youtube, and I use it to cut the number of game-related things I have to post daily on this site by a full seventh. I know you all suspected it, I’m just confirmin’ it. I’m like a vermin, for confirmin’. I’m a squirmin’ vermin for confirmin’! In German! No, no let’s not write Shecks my language skills cannot kassieren.

Record scratch you know who does fun cartoons sometimes? Doobus Goobus. Like that other person, Pringus McDingus. I’d understand if you mixed them up from their names. But DooGoo posts more often, and longer things! Just a little less polished. Pringus has a really appealing art style, while Doobus traffics in the internet’s default art style: purposefully ugly. Nothing against that as a style, just calling a misshappen spade that thing that it is.

The requisite preamble now complete, please enjoy five Sonic the Hedgehog characters using profanity at each other in an entertaining manner.

The Chaotix Neighbors (& Knuckles) (Youtube, 1 1/2 minutes)