New Tom Payne interview

You know, it would look really nice is Needlemouse was handdrawn, like that Wii Wario sidescroller. Give me some animated cutscenes too. Sonic just works best as a 'cartoon'.

 

hahahahaha what

 

I'm talking about Wario Land: Shake It!, whose name had escaped me yesterday afternoon. Wario and the bosses look reeeaaally nice and are animated quite well. I was saying a Sonic game like this would look pretty appealing.

 

Wario land shake it is a great looking game, more like that need to be made.

 

General Enemy Concepts 10 : Going back to this Cactus enemy concept; though it might have ended up being something like that of the Bomb enemy from S1, I can't help but ponder on how it might have evolved into the Asteron enemy from S2.
General Enemy Concepts 13 : The spider looking robot looks like a concept to Grabber; and that fish looking robot looks like a concept to Chop Chop.
General Enemy Concepts 15 & 18: Some of the enemy concepts around the top area of both pictures look vaguely similar to Banper. Some of the other enemy concepts look like they fallow up to the Penguin enemy concept (or vise versa). Check out the very bottom of page 18, looks like there might have been a Stegosaurus concept after all. Amazing how so many spring like enemies were developed; eventually we do get a spring like enemy in the Sonic Chaos.
General Enemy Concepts 16 : Those vulture concepts looks like they eventually become Balkiry. Adding to that, they fallow up to the other vulture concepts shown on General Enemy Concepts 1 and 6. That chomping like fish look likes another concept to Chop Chop.
General Enemy Concepts 17 : More proof that there might have been a potential Stegosaurus concept it seems. That bug like creature on the bottom-right looks like a concept to Whisp.

The first thing that came to mind when I initially saw page 5 was it being Star Light Zone concept art because it looked like there was all sorts of stars until I realized it looked more like a snow level with snow flakes and northern lights. Interesting how the idea of there being a snow level had been recycled a couple of times before appearing on S3.

Interesting how the Frog Enemy Concept got really far. I would have loved to have seen this as an actual sprite. Great stuff all in all.

 

Hey, that lobster is in Sonic 2 SMS.

 

That was animated? I swear that if it weren't for the occasionally jerky movement, it'd look just like a really polished cel-shaded model.

I suppose hand-drawn sprites on a 2D plane could look nice, but it's all up to how it looks in the end. Ugly art is ugly art is ugly art.

 

These scans are all pretty awesome, but I find the Sonic 1 concept art the most interesting so far. One of the zones looks South American, another like Japan, and of course one is in a polar region (you can't really see an aurora elsewhere, so it has to be).

I find this interesting because, in the western canon, Sonic lives in a green happy land, and Robotnik is an invader. However, in the original Japanese, Sonic is itinerant, traveling to exotic locales the way Tintin or Indiana Jones does. Robotnik is after a hidden power on South Island, and Sonic has to travel there to stop him.

The finished Sonic 1 supposedly takes place entirely on South Island, but if the roll of the cosmic dice had been different and some of those other zone concepts had been the ones to make it into Sonic 1, the Japanese intent for a world-famous, world-traveling hedgehog would have been clearer.

It seems "Sonic World Adventure" (what they call Sonic Unleashed in Japan) as a concept has been kicking around for a long time.

I would so dearly love to see those concepts as finished Mega Drive art by Kodama and Ishiwatari, and to hear the themes Nakamura would have written for them...

 

Was just reading about the "bee" badnik and it totally makes sence about that old lost burning log sprite found quite a while ago, totally fits.

 

Still pretty busy, but here's some preliminary text. Some of the handwriting is pretty hard to read, mostly because of the scan quality (or more likely, the copy quality from the original document). Characters with ? are kanji I can't quite make out with 100% certainty. Sorry for how rough it sounds, but it's hard to get a good translation without ALL of the kanji, plus these were intended just as notes anyway.

s1concept1.jpg
1.????????????…?????????????
??????????????????????
Metallic kind of stage... The background is styled like south-east asia, golden country, (...) (are) gold colored plating.

s1concept2.jpg
2.?C.G.??????…?????????????????
??????????C.G.?????
CG styled stage... Blue skies and green(ery) are the basis, nothing till now, CG styled background

s1concept3.jpg
3.??? ????????…??????????????????
?????????????????????
???????????????????????????
???????????????????
Rocky mountain and underwater stage... Japanese styled rocky mountain stage, with underwater scene. In the map, spin (jump) and you can cross the water, but various techniques make it possible to (...) the course.

s1concept4.jpg
4.???????????…??????????????
???????????????????????????
???????????????????????????
?
Stage where the land shakes... The underground has an amoeba shape and the ground shakes. The amoeba shaped terrain (...) with canals. Can also dive into the ground.

 

So they were aiming for a whole CG themed level. That finally explains the polygon-like palmtrees.

Thanks for the translations, Ryoga.

 

Some of these concepts are better than the concepts actually found in the game. The 1st picture is great.

 

Newest batch:

Collision Array Concepts - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Digitizer Printout
General Enemy Concepts - 19, 20
Mother Bubbler Concept
Ball Concept
Snail Concept
Obstacle Concepts - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Gear Concept Art - 1, 2
Banper Concept
Task List
List of Obstacles
List of Sprites
Metropolis Chunk Concepts
Pillbug Concept + Sonic
Genocide/Cyber City Concepts
List of Enemies and Target Levels

 

The Pillbug, is the Alligator badnik?

 

I like the "not feasible" written on the page. It wasn't a good idea to begin with.

 

In that last one, look at the top of the list of zones, and you'll notice "ice".

I guess that's what we should name it for now instead of Winter Zone?

 

Weren't Dust Hill and the Winter zone just supposed to be a pallet switch? And Hill top is a pallet switch of Green Hill isn't it? It looks like maybe they were planning that with Oil Ocean and Hidden Palace. They seem to be connected somehow.

And well:
http://xkeeper.sonicretro.org/payne/gczconcepts.JPG
If there were still any nay sayers that GCZ and Cyber City were the same that should end that right there.