YOU GOT IT BOSS o7

as most people know sonic cd has two [almost] entirely separate soundtracks - the original, used for the japanese and pal region releases, and a different one made for the american release. the jp soundtrack is your typical upbeat early sonic fare, with added flair and lots of fun sound samples thanks to cd audio quality, while the us one replaces most of that with super grungy and more atmospheric tracks. i'm not sure if there's ever been an official source on why the entire soundtrack was swapped out, and i'm too tired to check lmao [there are no sources for this post. it's all dude trust me], but the prevailing theory is that the localisation team thought that americans wouldn't care for the playful and energetic original soundtrack, since it was 1993 so everyone hated fun or something

the general consensus is that the jp ost is better and fits the gameplay more, and most future games to musically reference sonic cd use the japanese tracks as their basis [and the 2011 port of sonic cd defaults to the jp soundtrack no matter what region you're in, though it includes both versions and lets you swap soundtracks whenever], but the us soundtrack has its fans for its atmospheric style and uniqueness among sonic soundtracks. [personally i'm a huge sonic cd us soundtrack defender - tidal tempest present, all three metallic madness mixes, and the special stage theme are absolute hidden gems to me - but i do think it's weaker in the context of the game it's for by virtue of most of the good and bad future mixes not being tonally distinct enough from the present mix or from each other to immediately clue you in on which one you're in the way the jp songs do.]

okay now we've gotten the basics out of the way we can get to the fun stuff. my absolute favourite Sonic CD Music Fact is that for every stage's set of four tracks, the present, good future, and bad future mixes are stored as streamed audio, but the past mix is *always* sequenced music, relying entirely on the sega genesis' sound chip. when you send sonic back in time in the game, the music itself goes back in time with you by virtue of being both composed and played back with less powerful tools! isn't that cool?? they did meta stuff in their video game! in 1993!! they had the constraint to do that with the music on their game for the console addon that was all about better audio and video quality, over a decade before faux-retro caught on and most developers were willing to adhere to any limitations they weren't absolutely forced to by the hardware they were working with! they willingly kneecapped a quarter of their soundtrack for an incredibly small detail that most players at the time of release wouldn't understand and it STILL sounds good as fuck! it's so cool!!!!

the past tracks being sequenced is also why i say that the two soundtracks are *almost* entirely different - while replacing streamed audio is just a matter of composing a new track and swapping out the files, sequenced audio for a console like the sega genesis/cd is as much a programming task as a composing one. manually unravelling the old tracks, replacing any needed instruments and programming in new ones, sequencing all the new tracks properly, putting it all back together, and then testing to make sure that all that replaced code didn't accidentally fuck up anything somewhere else in the program would've taken more time than the localisation team had to get the game on american shelves. as a result, the past tracks in the us release are unchanged from their original versions, for better or for worse. as far as i know, no official past versions of the us soundtrack have ever surfaced, and we have no idea if any were even composed in the first place

o7 YOU GOT IT BOSS!!

as much as i love making robots who Think Like Robots there's none of that here! photon is the ghost of someone real shoved into a metal body and just as unpredictable and irrational as any meat brain is. too obviously mechanical to be a person, too painfully human [mobian. whatever] to be a robot. [and don't you worry, i've definitely thought about how this in-between existence would collide with other robots in the series. give me a minute to stop crying every time i think about mecha sonic mkii and then i'm sending his ass to scrapnik island]

he derisively calls sonic 'meat sonic'. at first it was in response to being called 'metal sonic,' but now that he has his own name it's just this bizarre orphaned punchline kept alive by some mix of complacency and spite. for what it's worth meat sonic thinks it's funny as fuck that photon calls him that

photon can't cry, at least not at first. just doesn't have the physical functionality built into him. he tells himself that it's no loss, he/sonic hated crying anyway, but it's definitely not good for him that such a deeply psychologically necessary function is gone!

of course my autistic ass has thought about the jules and photon dynamic. it's weird, and awkward, and steeped in a thousand layers of feelings that neither of them know how to articulate, but i reckon they do like each other and they are good for each other. jury's still out on whether they can claim to be family, but it's hard not to at least be SOMETHING with the probable only other person on the entire planet who understands at least a little bit of what you're going through, y'know

out of all the things he can't do anymore, photon REALLY misses eating. leftovers from his organic-by-design brain keep telling him that it's been way too long since he ate and he'd feel better if he slammed back a chili dog. he can usually laugh off being asked a fundamentally robot-proof question like when he last slept or if he needs a shower and genuinely not be hurt [much] by it, but he gets real quiet if someone accidentally asks him if he wants anything to eat

because he struggles to conceptualise his body as His Body, he's really bad at treating the possibility of hurting himself with the appropriate gravity. as a result, he's prone to letting himself get injured if it means he gets more done in a fight, or ignoring minor damage until it compounds enough that he's falling apart, or pushing himself until his systems short out. thanks to this reckless approach to personal safety, he's been fully ship of theseus'd at least once since his original neo metal sonic body, which i'm sure is great for that aforementioned difficulty connecting himself with the body he's in

of course!! as thanks here is a photo of her with her birthday present [entire small cucumber]

here's my cat if you want it

oh hello