Zone Quantity, Mystery Images, and “Broniks” in Latest Sonic 4 Site Leak

Zone Quantity, Mystery Images, and “Broniks” in Latest Sonic 4 Site Leak

This news has been bouncing around from site to site and more speculation has been running wild.

The Wiire is reporting that “Vash” from Game-Hackers.com has decompiled the flash website of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 and looking at the code, you can make many guesses as to what it all means.

Here’s the first bit of code that looked weird:

preorderBtn1 = new preorderBtn();

Pre-order?  Like, as in, a retail release?   The next line of code that catches my eye is “bronik.”  It is my new word (until I find one that exceeds it in cool):

<broniks text=”BADNIKS” />

One of the big questions revolves around the length of an “episode.”  The code leads us to believe that there will be 4.

zone1Btn
zone2Btn
zone3Btn
zone4Btn
zonesBtn

The final thing found within the site is a series of buttons within some mystery image that is currently not in use:

Could this represent the 4 zones of “Episode 1?”  Could it be 4 characters (who would be the green one)?  Are Sonic and Tails teaming up with Mario and Luigi (lol)?  Do the buttons represent the four platforms that this game will release on (Wii, 360, PS3, and iPhone)?  Your guess is as good as mine.

[via The Wiire]

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Slingerland

Slingerland is a staff writer and editor for both The Sonic Stadium and Sonic Retro. His area of emphasis is the inner-workings of the games and laughing at everything.

41 Comments

  1. Something to do with multiplayer? (not that I’m asking for it)

    Sega sure are making it easy… a little too easy… *shifty eyes*

  2. PS3 is generally associated with the colors black and red
    360 is white and green
    Wii is white and blue
    Ive never seen any iTem associated with yellow, whats strange is that Sony usually associates the PSP with black and yellow. Its all speculation but perhaps that iphone leak was fake… or all my assumptions are wrong

  3. 4 zones?
    I don’t think so…
    however with the buttons… it could represent anything, like change the main couler of the website
    i’m really excired for the new character info at tuesday, after all it’s confirmed that Sonic is the only playable character.
    *waits for more Sonic 4 info

  4. Uuugh, hope 4 zones isn’t correct. If there’s only 4 zones, there better be three Acts each. If not, there better be a fifth, “final” zone, which would be entirely possible, as that’s probably not something they’d talk about on the website.

  5. Well since the zones code says zone1Btn or… ZONE 1 BUTTON, etc. Then it leads you to believe those 4 buttons could be the zone buttons not currently in use. The fact that there is end code that says zonesBtn leads me to believe at any time they can add more “zones” whenever they want. This to me says, they’ll probably reveal at least 4 zones at one point in time. And maybe later on reveal more.

    I hope it doesn’t mean this game only has 4 zones.

  6. Broniks… ha. Sounds like my name crossed with ‘badniks.’ xD.
    Perhaps the four colours represent a menu screen? Story play, multiplay, challenge play, and options?

  7. The buttons could lead to descriptions of zones. The buttons may later have zone titles on them and you click on to read info like badniks, items etc

    Blue – Water
    Yellow – Desert
    Red – Lava
    Green – Forest

    A guess and most likely wrong.

  8. Well, it is episodic people. How many levels were you expecting? If you’re comparing the longetivity of this game to say MM9. Well, that is a full Digital game, this happens to be episodic. If that’s the case this game should be no more the 1000 points…I’d like to say 800 though.

  9. Really curious about the pre-order button mentioned in the code. Might be a DS cartridge or PSP disc released after every episode is up for digital download!

  10. I don’t think there will be 4 zones in the game, I think they will only show 4 zones on their website

  11. Maybe it’s the first four Chaos Emeralds…including that DAMN fourth one. 😛

    Seriously though, I like TailsTheHedgehog’s idea of the menu buttons. Sounds legit to me. 🙂

  12. /me facepalms
    Four zones makes perfect sense for an EPISODIC SERIES. Even better: given that each zone is two acts, three episodes (which is short for a series) gives you a game roughly as long as S3K. Come on people, basic math.

  13. @Matt: THANK YOU! I thought nobody was going to suggest the obvious. Maybe they’ll only have the first four zones on the site to avoid spoilers. I know we’ve made a lot of comparisons already, but look at Mega Man 9. They revealed only the robot master stages before the game launched.

  14. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, VECTOR THE CROCODILE! Let’s find us some sweet, sweet computer room.

    But seriously, I bet they’re for the zones.

  15. Or, as someone said somewhere else, it could be that there are four episodes. The buttons would be used to link you to the four different episode’s pages.

  16. Blue = Original “Genesis” style Sonic
    Yellow / Brown = Tails
    Red = Knuckles
    Green = Modern Sonic with green eyes

    4 zones? I wonder if it’d be 4 main zones (“beach,” “jungle,” “desert,” and “volcano”) with multiple stages (shoreline area, middle beach area, etc.). Idk, maybe I’m looking too far into it lol.

  17. Well, I do like the sound of the pre-order bonus. I was pretty sure Sega would eventually release this as a physical disc, but it’s nice to have a little more security about it. Wonder what sorta goodies might be with it. o.o

  18. I finally know the plot of this game, Eggman becomes a surfer dude and creates a huge army of broniks to try and stop Sonic from ridin’ his waves, brahnik.

  19. i hope its for zones… it makes sense, episodic games i have seen generally contain 5 episode, correct me if im wrong but monkey island had 5, strong bad’s games had 5, and all Sam and max seasons had 5, so episodic is really a good idea because if there’s truth to the pattern set by episodic games we should have at the very least have 20 zones to play by the very end, and on top of that id expect download-able content such as extra mission, extended challenges, and even though Sega said no extra characters to play with id wager that its probably either
    A) in reference to episode 1 in which other charecters are introduced through out other episodes
    B)they could be downloadable, and just not used in a story mode
    lets just hope super sonic is not a playable character… if thats the case we lose the ability to transform sonic.. so lets hope super sonic goes back to a transformer… not that super sonic in final zones is bad… i just want for freedon in eveyr zone for that transformation and generally super even in unleashed feels slow… we need seizure inducing speed from super s!

  20. I doubt those colours represent characters..
    They are probably just zone buttons when you click on them they give you info on each one.

  21. Green Character:

    Jet
    Vector
    Manic
    Scourge
    Metal Scourge

    Scourge would be an awesome playable character.

  22. If we are going by eye color then:

    Blue- Tails
    Green- Sonic
    Yellow- Silver
    Red- Shadow or Super Sonic (Since Shadow is for sure not in the game)

    Maybe this will be Silver’s first time travel to the past? no, I’m just being silly.

  23. Those 4 buttons could be associated with each zone, but since a forest is represented as the first zone (as shown in the trailer, as well as a tradition from PAST GAMES) it could be the console info.
    I think it’s best if I leave my assumptions at that.

  24. It would only make sense if this is a direct sequel to the original 3 Sonic games (I include S&K in this as part of Sonic 3) that a new character would be revealed, what made those original games work was the introduction of Tails and later Knuckles to expand the universe. In the end the characters got a bit stupid and mostly lame but if they are going back to formula then chances are we’ll get a brand new character with the appeal that Tails and Knuckles originally had.

    For me, here’s hoping.

    Mycho out!

  25. @Mycho – –Oh, and TO ANYONE ELSE WHO THINK IT’S CHARACTERS.–
    Sonic was the ONLY CONFIRMED CHARACTER. Get that through your heads, people. (The others probably took a break if you ask me.)
    If there was a new character involved as well as Tails & Knuckles, then they would have left the latter 2 on the Character Countdown List! (Someone tell me how to do italics or bold in comments and I’ll happily emphasize what I mean.)

    Now that it’s been a while since the announcement, perhaps those buttons could be the in-game features…
    It would be quite logical, actually – the Zones buttons wouldn’t look like that unless they were reordered on the site to match the actual zone (because the second (green) button could represent the first zone) and buttons like those are used for typical in-site navigation (when you arrive, then they are put on the side).

  26. I’m willing to bet the green button is for people like AKnotholeresident from Youtube who complain about Sonic having GREEN EYES! 😛

    My best guess is that they’re for the Zones since they may be a bit too long for characters, based on past websites for Sonic Characters. If they are characters, it’d be kinda early for Knuckles to reappear if this is a direct sequel to Sonic 3 and Knuckles. The green button may be Eggman if that’s the case… or the red one is Eggman. Who knows.

  27. The colours could mean there are going to be four episodes, perhaps characters for the
    later episodes, stage banners, or perhaps options.

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