Sonic Team Junior
From SRB2 Wiki
Sonic Team Junior is an amateur game development team consisting of several Sonic enthusiasts. They are non-profit, making games that are entirely free and also for fun, on their own spare time.
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Projects
Sonic Team Junior has had several projects under its name. A few were completed, one was never released, and one is currently being worked on. Sonic Robo Blast 2 is their main project.
Sonic Robo Blast
Sonic Robo Blast is the original that started it all. It was made by Sonikku, armed only with MSPaint and Klik N' Play. With these two tools, he created this full-length Sonic fan game, which was heavily well-received. Its graphics were crude and the engine was very buggy, but the key to Sonic Robo Blast was the gameplay, and it was also chock-full of secrets! Its lastability was perhaps its most acclaimed point.
Sonic Doom and Sonic Doom 2
At around the same time, SSNTails downloaded Sonic Doom, a Doom add-on made by Jeff Read. It replaced the sounds and some of the player graphics of Doom. SSNTails modified it a little further, adding such elements as Tails and Knuckles. More graphics were added and a plot was written.
Some time later, SSNTails started work on Sonic Doom 2. It was intended to be a "Total Conversion" of Doom, replacing entire levels, graphics, and sounds so there was barely a trace of the original Doom. It included 25 levels based on previous Sonic games. Tails and Knuckles were on your side, and it was up to the player to stop Eggman. SSNTails wanted to include original Sonic-style gameplay as well, but he was unable to enlist the help of a programmer.
Sonic Emerald Quest
Sonic Emerald Quest was a canned RPG originally conceived by Sonikku. Several design documents were written; the game was to featured three possible main characters, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, who would have their stories interact with each other, so events that took place in Sonic's story would have an impact when the player cleared it and played through again as Tails. Very roughly, the overall story focused on preventing Eggman and a cult known as the 'Dark Mobians' from spawning an army of monsters that would be used to overwhelm the planet (then dubbed 'Mobius' as per Western Sonic canon). The foci of the main characters had Sonic attempting to be one step ahead of Eggman and the Dark Mobians, Tails trying to fill Sonic's position and deal with the various assaults made by the monsters and Knuckles would be dealing with attempting to safeguard the emeralds, which were a large part of the summoning pact.
The game would have introduced a few other members of the, at that point, lesser-seen members of the Sonic continuity such as Mighty and Ray from the Sonic Arcade, Bark and Fang the Sniper from Sonic Fighters among others to form larger parties that could have been controlled. Designs were made for a few original characters, but little beyond move lists. There was no clear combat system drawn up at the time, and the game design considered several possible engines, ranging from overhead to full 3D (most likely derived from the SRB2 engine). However, shortly after SRB2 was moved into its present 3D state, work on S:EQ was halted and the project has since been canceled.
The only physical conceptualization of these ideas however, came in the form of the extensive soundtrack produced by Arrow.
Sonic Robo Blast 2
Sonic Robo Blast 2 is Sonic Team Junior's main project. It has been developed for over nine years. It's the proclaimed sequel to Sonic Robo Blast, with its plot picking up after Eggman's defeat in the first game.
The first incarnation of Sonic Robo Blast 2 was a version made in The Games Factory. It was 2D, and it had improved graphics over the original, as well as animated cutscenes, both thanks to SSNTails teaming up with Sonikku. However, the planned levels were too large for The Games Factory to handle, and Sonikku had ideas that simply weren't possible using the limited scripting engine. At that point, he turned to a C programmer named Stealth. Stealth redid the 2D Sonic Robo Blast 2 into its second incarnation, as a C program. This program later provided the basis for Stealth's own game, Sonic: Project Mettrix. However, months into this new endeavor, Stealth suddenly was unable to help. It was back to square one for Sonikku and SSNTails.
At this point, Sonic Doom came into play. SSNTails had the idea of using the Doom engine to make Sonic Robo Blast 2 a 3D Sonic platformer. That lead to its third, and current, incarnation. The first release using the Doom engine was SRB2 Halloween, a rather crude, yet budding, example of what SRB2 could be. Some time after, SSNTails released SRB2 Xmas, which was more faithful to a classic Sonic game. After that, designs on the final levels, such as Greenflower Zone, began. Demo 1, which included Greenflower Zone Act 1, was released next. After that, the rest was history. Sonic Robo Blast 2 became one of the most acclaimed Sonic fangames, liked by its 3D environments, involving gameplay, and its Internet play.
Staff
Sonic Team Junior consists of several Sonic enthusiasts. This list describes specifically their roles in Sonic Robo Blast 2.
- Sonikku: Director, Game Designer, Character Designer, Landscape Designer
- SSNTails: Producer, Game Designer, Visual Designer, Programmer
- Mystic: Game Designer, Level Designer, Beta Testing
- Alam_GBC: Programmer
- Logan_GBA: Programmer
- Orospakr: Programmer
- a441: Freelance Programmer
- Arrow: Music Production
- InstantSonic: Character Designer
- BlazeHedgehog: Texture Artist
- Mr. Encyclopedia: Mascot
- FuriousFox: Beta Testing
- Tets: Beta Testing
- Digiku: Beta Testing
