MICROWAVE MEGAWEEK DAY 5: Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (Kraftwerk prototype)

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 5 closes the release event with arguably David’s most famous Sega credit: an August 1993 prototype of Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, the Western localization of Compile’s Puyo Puyo. Producer Max Taylor asked David to compose the Western soundtrack in the style of Kraftwerk, with arranging Kraftwerk’s “Home Computer” for the title theme. This prototype, dated a month before the September final, contains that arrangement intact, before Sega of Japan intervened for legal reasons and made compositional changes to the track before release. It’s not just the title theme: the build features entirely different samples, unreferenced PCM data, and over 200 in-progress localization changes documented in a newly-released disassembly by DaxKatter.

Head over to the thread now.