Sonic Team Junior

Sonic Team Junior is the amateur game development team responsible for Sonic Robo Blast 2. They are non-profit and work on SRB2 as a hobby project in their spare time.

History and projects

Sonic Team Junior was formed in 1998 by two members of the Sonic fangaming community, Sonikku and SSNTails. Both of them had already created Sonic fangames before: Sonikku had made Sonic Robo Blast, a 2D platforming game created with the game-making tool Klik & Play, whereas SSNTails had made Sonic Doom 2, a Sonic-styled modification of Doom. The two joined forces to create a successor to Sonic Robo Blast, with plans to make more games later on. As the scope of SRB2 grew and development took longer than anticipated, these plans were abandoned. While Sonikku and SSNTails have since left Sonic Team Junior, development of SRB2 continues to this day with a team of individuals that have been recruited from the SRB2 community over the years.

Sonic Robo Blast

Sonic Robo Blast is the precursor to SRB2. It is a 2D platformer developed by Johnny Wallbank aka Sonikku, using the game-making tool Klik & Play (its successor, The Games Factory, was used for compiling). It was developed in 1997 and its final version was released in February 1998, making it one of the earliest Sonic fangames. While it was very primitive by today's standards, with crudely drawn graphics, rudimentary gameplay and many serious bugs, it was nonetheless popular in the Sonic fangaming community due to the large amount of levels and secrets it contained.

Sonic Doom and Sonic Doom 2

Also around 1997, SSNTails downloaded Sonic Doom, an add-on for the first-person shooter Doom made by Jeff Read. It replaced the sounds, music and some of the player graphics of the game with Sonic-themed resources. SSNTails modified it further by replacing more resources, adding Tails and Knuckles, and writing a plot. Shortly afterwards, he started work on Sonic Doom 2, which was intended to be a "total conversion" of Doom, replacing all levels, graphics, and sounds until barely a trace of the original Doom remained. Sonic Doom 2 included 25 levels based on previous Sonic games, but the gameplay was still Doom-styled. SSNTails wanted to add Sonic-style gameplay as well, but he was unable to enlist the help of a programmer.

On May 5th, 2013, Sonic Doom 2 v4.1 was released on the SRB2 Message Board, the thread for which can be located here.

Sonic Robo Blast 2

Sonic Robo Blast 2 is Sonic Team Junior's main project. It is the sequel to Sonic Robo Blast, with its plot picking up after Eggman's defeat in the previous game. Development on SRB2 was started in 1998 and continues to this day as the only game still actively developed by Sonic Team Junior.

The first incarnation of SRB2 was SRB2 TGF, a 2D version of the game that was made in The Games Factory. It was developed between March and July 1998 before being scrapped. Compared to Sonic Robo Blast, SRB2 TGF was considerably more advanced, featuring improved physics, new gameplay elements such as shields, springs and monitors, as well as improved graphics and animated cutscenes. However, the game soon brought The Games Factory to its limits. Many of Sonikku's more complicated ideas could not be replicated with the limited scripting engine, and the game would slow down immensely in the larger levels. The Games Factory was thus abandoned in July 1998 when programmer Stealth offered to write an entirely new engine in C for the game, still in 2D. This engine would later provide the basis for Stealth's own game, Sonic: Project Mettrix. However, progress on the engine halted two months later when Stealth was unable to help with the project anymore.

At this point, inspired by his experience with Sonic Doom 2, SSNTails suggested using the Doom Legacy source port of Doom as an engine, transforming SRB2 into a 3D game. The first release using the Doom Legacy engine was SRB2 Halloween, released in October 1999, followed by SRB2 Christmas two months later. Both releases were intended to showcase progress on the game engine and contained holiday-themed levels made specifically for this purpose. Work on the levels intended for the final game began with Demo 1, which was released in November 2000 and featured Greenflower Zone Act 1. Since then, numerous releases of SRB2 have been made, which have added further levels as well as new features such as netplay. See the Versions article for an overview.

Sonic: Emerald Quest

Sonic: Emerald Quest was a planned roleplaying game that Sonikku conceived as the next project for Sonic Team Junior after SRB2 was finished. It was never produced, but several design documents were written for it. The game was to feature three main characters: Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Their storylines were planned to interact with each other, so that events that took place in one character's storyline would have impact if the player finished it and played through the game again as another character. The story revolved around Eggman and a cult known as the Dark Mobians attempting to summon an army of monsters to overwhelm the planet Mobius. Sonic's storyline would involve trying to stop Eggman and the Dark Mobians, while Tails would try to defend the planet against various assaults by the monsters and Knuckles would try to safeguard the Chaos Emeralds, which played a large role in the summoning pact.

The game would have featured a few of the, at that point, lesser-seen members of the Sonic universe, such as Mighty and Ray from the SegaSonic the Hedgehog arcade game and Bark and Fang the Sniper from Sonic the Fighters, as part of larger teams that the player could control. Designs were started for a few original characters, but they did not progress very far beyond move lists. No clear combat system was ever designed. Several possible engines were considered for the game, ranging from a top-down view to full 3D (likely derived from the SRB2 engine). However, shortly after SRB2 was moved to Doom Legacy, work on Sonic: Emerald Quest was halted and the project has since been canceled.

The only part of the game to be finished was the extensive soundtrack produced by Arrow, some of which would be added as part of SRB2's own soundtrack from Version 1.09 onwards. Other tracks have been used in custom modifications for SRB2 such as Blue Heaven and Acid Missile.

SRB2 credits

Game design

• Sonic Team Junior
• SSNTails
• Sonikku [Johnny Wallbank]

Programming

• altaluna
• Alam_GBC [Alam Arias]
• Logan_GBA [Logan Arias]
• Zippy_Zolton [Zolton Auburn]
• fickleheart [Colette Bordelon]
• orospakr [Andrew Clunis]
• TehRealSalt [Sally Cochenour]
• Oogaland [Gregor Dick]
• Callum Dickinson
• Graue [Scott Feeney]
• SteelT [Victor Fuentes]
• Jazz [Nathan Giroux]
• Golden
• toaster [Vivian Grannell]
• Chaos Zero 64 [Julio Guir]
• Hanicef
• Hannu_Hanhi
• hazepastel
• Nev3r [Kepa Iceta]
• Shadow Hog [Thomas Igoe]
• Monster Iestyn [Iestyn Jealous]
• Kaito Sinclaire
• Kalaron
• Furyhunter [Ronald Kinard]
• Lat'
• LZA
• Shuffle [Matthew Marsalko]
• StroggOnMeth [Steven McGranahan]
• Morph
• LJ Sonic [Louis-Antoine de Moulins]
• JTE [John Muniz]
• Sonict [Colin Pfaf]
• james [James Robert Roman]
• Sryder13 [Sean Ryder]
• Wolfy [Ehab Saeed]
• tatokis [Tasos Sahanidis]
• Ors [Riki Salminen]
• MascaraSnake [Jonas Sauer]
• sphere [Wessel Smit]
• SSNTails
• Varren
• VelocitOni
• Tatsuru [Ikaro Vinhas]
• Cue [Ben Woodford]
• Lach [Lachlan Wright]
• mazmazz [Marco Zafra]
• Zwip-Zwap Zapony

Art

• VAdaPEGA [Victor Araújo]
• Arrietty
• BlazeHedgehog [Ryan Bloom]
• SuperPhanto [Graeme P. Caldwell]
• ChrispyPixels
• Boinciel [Paul Clempson]
• TehRealSalt [Sally Cochenour]
• Dave Lite
• Blade [Desmond DesJardins]
• CoatRack [Sherman DesJardins]
• DirkTheHusky
• Jeck Jims [Jesse Emerik]
• Fighter_Builder
• KinkaJoy [Buddy Fischer]
• toaster [Vivian Grannell]
• SwitchKaze [James Hale]
• SeventhSentinel [James Hall]
• Nev3r [Kepa Iceta]
• Monster Iestyn [Iestyn Jealous]
• GuyWithThePie [William Kloppenberg]
• Alacroix [Alice de Lemos]
• Hyperchaotix [Logan McCloud]
• DrTapeworm [Alexander Moench-Ford]
• Senku Niola [Andrew Moran]
• MotorRoach
• TelosTurntable [Phillip Robinson]
• Scizor300
• sphere [Wessel Smit]
• Instant Sonic [David Spencer Jr.]
• SSNTails
• Inazuma [Daniel Trinh]
• VelocitOni
• JEV3 [Jarrett Voight]

Music and sound production

• VAdaPEGA [Victor Araújo]
• RedXVI [Malcolm Brown]
• DemonTomatoDave [Dave Bulmer]
• Boinciel [Paul Clempson]
• Cyan Helkaraxe
• clairebun
• SeventhSentinel [James Hall]
• Nev3r [Kepa Iceta]
• Monster Iestyn [Iestyn Jealous]
• Arrow [Jarel Jones]
• DrTapeworm [Alexander Moench-Ford]
• Stuf [Stefan Rimalia]
• Shane Mychal Sexton
• Big Wave Dave [David Spencer]
• instantSonic [David Spencer]
• SSNTails

Level design

• fickleheart [Colette Bordelon]
• FuriousFox [Hank Brannock]
• Fawfulfan [Matthew Chapman]
• Boinciel [Paul Clempson]
• TehRealSalt [Sally Cochenour]
• Blade [Desmond DesJardins]
• CoatRack [Sherman DesJardins]
• Mystic [Ben Geyer]
• Jazz [Nathan Giroux]
• toaster [Vivian Grannell]
• SeventhSentinel [James Hall]
• Nev3r [Kepa Iceta]
• Shadow Hog [Thomas Igoe]
• Kaito Sinclaire
• DrTapeworm [Alexander Moench-Ford]
• Revan
• QueenDelta [Anna Sandlin]
• sphere [Wessel Smit]
• SSNTails
• Rob Tisdell
• Torgo
• JEV3 [Jarrett Voight]
• Sonikku [Johnny Wallbank]
• mazmazz [Marco Zafra]

Boss design

• Mystic [Ben Geyer]
• toaster [Vivian Grannell]
• Shadow Hog [Thomas Igoe]
• JTE [John Muniz]
• Prime 2.0 [Samuel Peters]
• SSNTails
• Sonikku [Johnny Wallbank]

Testing

• Discord Community Testers
• FuriousFox [Hank Brannock]
• Playah [Cody Koester]
• OmegaVelocity [Skye Meredith]
• HEDGESFMG [Stephen Moellering]
• ST218 [Nick Molina]
• Prime 2.0 [Samuel Peters]
• Sonict [Colin Pfaff]
• Tets [Bill Reed]

Special thanks

• iD Software
• Doom Legacy Project
• FreeDoom Project
• Kart Krew
• MistaED [Alex Fuller]
• Howard Drossin
• CodeImp [Pascal vd Heiden]
• Randi Heit
• sirjuddington [Simon Judd]
• SRB2 Community Contributors

Produced by

• Sonic Team Junior

Published by

• A 28K dialup modem

External links

• SRB2's homepage