Prerelease:Sonic Heroes

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

To do: http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Heroes/Development Work on the pages as shown below. There's a lot of interesting stuff surrounding them. Start with the concept art page. Find the original sources that are unsourced if available. Early screenshots.

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Sonic Heroes.

After the ill-fated discontinuation of the Dreamcast, Sega had no choice but to move their IPs onto the other consoles. Sonic Heroes was made to be a big return for the self-titular character on multiple consoles, which also led to extensive marketing that branded 2003 "the year of Sonic".

Reception for the game was overall mixed-to-positive, praising the gameplay elements but criticized the physics and glitches present in various ports. Retrospectively, it's seen as a divisive game, but it's also considered one of the last competent Sonic titles of that era before its unexpected decline in the next entry.

Development Timeline

2002

• April - Sonic Heroes enters development.

2003

• April 23 - Heroes is first announced in a Sega of Europe press release.
• May 9 - An E3 2003 prototype is created for all three consoles.
• May 11 - The earliest known footage for Heroes with the Sega watermark embedded is created on this date at 12:59PM. This footage also likely begins to circulate online, under the names "e3-sonich511_qt" and "E3_SONIC".
• May 14-16 - Sonic Heroes is formally announced and showcased at E3 2003.
• Jul. 11 - Japanese voice recording sessions begin. These sessions were conducted sometime after the English voices were recorded, as Knuckles' English grunts can be heard in the pre-E3 2003 video.
• Jul. 20 - Japanese recording sessions are completed.
• Sep. 26-27 - Sonic Heroes is showcased at Tokyo Game Show.
• Sep. 28/Oct. 2 - A PlayStation 2 prototype is compiled. Although it has a disc-burn date of October 2, the files are dated September 28.
• Oct. 8 - A GameCube prototype is built the week following the aforementioned PS2 build being made.
• Oct. - A GameCube demo is built for the bonus disc as a reward for pre-ordering Mario Kart: Double Dash!! that contain demos and videos of various upcoming games, with Sonic Heroes as a playable demo being one of them.
• Oct. 30 - Two more GameCube prototypes are built for debugging purposes.
• Nov. 18 - One last GameCube prototype is built likely for review purposes.
• Nov. 24 - One last prototype is built for review purposes.
• Dec. 18 - Original anticipated release date in Japan.
• Dec. 30 - Sonic Heroes is released in Japan two weeks later than expected. A tester who worked on the game later confirmed that along with Sonic Team's struggles with multi-platform development, a "Show Stopper bug" that affected the door switches which prevented the player from progressing through the stages is what partly contributed to the game's delayed releases worldwide.

2004

• Jan. 5 - Sonic Heroes is released on GameCube in North America.
• Jan. 27 - Sonic Heroes is released on PlayStation 2 and Xbox in North America.
• Feb. 6 - Sonic Heroes is released in Europe.
• Nov. 17 - Sonic Heroes is released on Windows in Japan.
• Nov. 26 - Sonic Heroes is released on Windows in North America.
• Dec. 9 - Sonic Heroes is released on Windows in Europe.

Sub-Pages

Early Development

Concept Art There was a scrapped pirate-themed level?

Early Ideas & Cinematics A pre-9.28 prototype Omega voice clip?

Builds

2003 A lot more completed than before, but still quite not there yet.