MICROWAVE MEGAWEEK DAY 4: DJ GEMS Demo and Sonic 2’s Club Scene

DevStash x Sega Retro present Microwave Megaweek is a 5-day prototype and development material release event happening now on Sega Retro’s forums. Earlier this year, interviewer Ashley Rojas – representing her newly-founded game preservation nonprofit DevStash Inc. – visited former Sega of America audio director David Javelosa to preserve as much of the musician’s game industry work as possible. From never-before-seen internal documentation to long-sought prototypes, Microwave Megaweek serves as a physical representation of both David’s career and Sega of America’s audio history.

Day 4 centers on DJ GEMS Demo, a collection of David’s original Genesis compositions assembled as he prepared to leave Sega in late 1994. Built by Developer Technical Support programmer Kenneth Chao upon Sega of America’s internal GEMS test program, it effectively exists as a demo tape in cartridge form, complete with tracks from titles like Baby Boom and Iron Hammer, as well as unique animated artwork of Sonic and Tails. However, the demo’s biggest claim to fame is “Club Scene”, a Ute Lemper-inspired cabaret song David composed earlier that year for Multimedia Studio’s CES Demo. Created to familiarize himself with GEMS, David had caught wind that Sonic 2 was in development and pitched the song for that game after the game had already wrapped. First surfacing on YouTube back in 2019, the cartridge has now been fully dumped for the first time.

Head over to the thread to dig into everything, and check back tomorrow for Day 5.