0.3.0 - a front end, and a time attack

A front end of its own, and a time attack built out of a stage-select screen
the shipped game never lets you reach.

You still need your own ROM

These downloads are not the game. They contain the game's code,
statically recompiled, and none of its data — no graphics, no music, no
level data, no ROM image. Start one without a ROM and it stops at the setup
screen.

You supply your own, legally obtained copy of Knuckles' Chaotix (Japan, USA)
for the Sega 32X, SHA-1 0c2fff7bc79ed26507c08ac47464c3af19f7ced7, which the
setup screen verifies before installing it.

The front end

The menu is up as soon as the program starts: the game's own title art framed
on the left, the list beside it — START GAME, TIME ATTACK, OPTIONS, CONTROLS,
AWARDS, QUIT — over the same picture enlarged and dimmed. The art is the game
drawing its own title screen, from your ROM, so nothing is extracted or
shipped here.

START GAME hands the game over exactly as pressing Start on the console would,
so nothing the original offers is out of reach. Escape (or the pad's menu
button) then brings up a pause menu, which adds BACK TO TITLE — the game has
no way back to its own title screen, so the front end keeps one.

TIME ATTACK

Knuckles' Chaotix carries a complete stage-select screen that the shipped game
never reaches: game mode 0x30, with PLACE, LEVEL, AT-TIME, PLAYER, COMBI and
PLAYERS. That is the whole of a time attack, so the page offers what it
offers, and starting a run uses the game's own route into a level.

Field	What it chooses
PLACE	Botanic Base, Speed Slider, Amazing Arena, Techno Tower, Marina Madness, Training, Introduction
LEVEL	which of that place's levels — the attractions have 1-5, Training 0-4
AT-TIME	Morning, Day, Sunset, Night
PLAYER	Mighty, Knuckles, Charmy Bee, Vector, Bomb, Heavy or Espio
COMBI	the partner on the other end of the tether, from the same seven
PLAYERS	1 PLAYER, or 2 PLAYERS to give the partner to the second controller

The names, the levels each place has, and the two-player switch are all read
out of the game's own tables rather than invented here. Two players really
is two players: with it set, the partner reads the second controller, which
is worth knowing about a game that was sold as one-player.

START goes straight there in about a second — none of the game's own screens
are passed through — and BEST TIME shows the record for whatever is selected.
When a run ends the game would send you to its lobby; the front end takes the
time and brings you back to the page instead.

The clock stops where the game stops its own: at the goal, not at the end of
the twenty-odd seconds of tally afterwards. A record therefore reads the same
as the time you watched when you finished. That took three attempts to get
right, and the third one only worked because the program now records each run
and can replay it exactly.

Controls

Each player gets its own device — AUTO, the keyboard alone, one gamepad by
name, or nothing — and its own bindings, keyboard and gamepad kept separately,
so two people can share one keyboard or two controllers can be laid out
differently. Each row also says what that button does in this game: C jumps,
B holds your partner still, A pulls the partner in for ten rings, Start
pauses. X, Y, Z and Mode say NOT USED BY THIS GAME, because they are — this is
a three-button game, and pressing them changes neither the picture nor the
game's state, anywhere it was tried.

MENU BUTTON is Escape's counterpart on a controller, chosen from the buttons
the emulated 6-button pad leaves alone.

Achievements

Twenty-two now, 270 points: rings, each of the seven attractions, how far in
you get, one for each of the seven characters, and one for playing with a
second player on the partner. The character ones want TIME ATTACK, which is
how you reach a character the game would otherwise have chosen for you. Each
was checked by driving the game to it.

Notes

• The Android build is debug-signed. Release signing needs a keystore that
  belongs to whoever publishes it, so there is not one here.
• Linux and macOS are built in CI but have never been run on hardware, so
  there are no downloads for them.

Read LEGAL.md in the download before redistributing it. In short: the binary
holds a translation of Sega's code, it is inert without your own ROM, and the
legal standing of shipping it is not settled. This follows what other static
recompilation projects do — Unleashed
Recompiled and Zelda 64:
Recompiled ship the same kind
of build.