Yes, but it looks to be exactly the same level layout (although the sandbar is not present). Also interesting: that picture at the end of what must be AIZ2 isn't scorched up. Even more interesting: picture below that seems to suggest that Knuckles' SSZ area was where Sonic was initially going to fight Knuckles. Huh!
Wow those pictures just make me wish we had a Sonic 3 prototype even more. I like the red Sonic fighting Sonic instead of Knuckles vs. Mecha Sonic.
I wonder if that's what it is. But the life counter is blue making me suspect that the blue Sonic is the one being played as rather than a placeholder for the metal sonic.
I hardly think these are screenshots from anything playable. Reading the thread there, they've already pointed out the inconsistent sprite sizes, and might I add the HUD is all jacked up in the Desert Palace screenshot. It's pretty plain to see that at least 2 of the 3 of these screenshots are mock-ups. The jury's out on the AIZ shot, though.
Even so, if they're genuine, from-the-time mockups, it's still pretty exciting to me - and quite surprising to see such a well developed Sky Sanctuary so early, particularly with pretty much the final island sitting in the background there. The HUD numbers don't seem to have the shading they have in some of the other beta pics. The quality makes it hard to tell if the HUD letters are shaded - it looks as if they are in SSZ but not AIZ. The bad shadow colour on the AIZ HUD is already there. Tails in Sky Sanctuary appears to have his Sonic 3 flying sprite already too.
I use a Korg Triton LE model, which has all of those sounds as well (generally with the same bank numbers too, I believe). So it's certainly something from the Triton family. One or two Event jingles from Heroes outright steal make shocking heavy use of built-in sequencer patterns from said Triton. If there's enough pestering/interest, I'd be glad to get off my lazy ass and make a recording to demonstrate. Just had no real motivation on my own. :P
Or Sonic 2, it's too blurry to tell. But the whole game had Sonic 2 sprites at one point. The unused surfing animation even matches the Sonic 2 style. (I'd link to examples, but the wiki is not loading for me.)
That narrower eye does make it look like the S1 version though. I suppose if they were going to use "Red Sonic" placeholder sprites, they could've opted for a different base set, but it would seem an odd decision.
I was about to whip up Paint.NET to check myself but then I noticed something fairly obvious the gloves are yellow... shouldn't that make the eyes yellow too? Also if the back of the shoe is green, Sonic's muzzle should also have a green tint. Otherwise they've edited the sprites, which seems sort-of pointless if they're placeholders. It's a bad "scan" but I'm not convinced. Why would Sonic's gloves be yellow when everything else that's meant to be white is.. white
A good chunk of Sonic 2 research and discoveries came from the same kind of mockups. These are a-ok with me.
Man, that one came from many verifiable sources and this is just the worst hoax ever. I suggest splitting the posts about it into its own topic until somebody can theoretically prove it's real. EDIT: Hahaha, he even got caught making a fake account.
Yeah, I agree that making a dummy account was really stupid on his part. But so far, apart from that, I don't see much reason to doubt the validity of this. If it is just some asshole messing with us, we have plenty of people who will be able to figure it out for us soon enough.
I've already noted down enough proof to shoot it down as fake, which I'll gladly point out over PM. I just don't want to post it publicly and help that guy improve his hoaxes.
Yeah, I'm convinced it's a hoax now, too. Just look harder at the art and compare the thumbnails with the main image.
Hmm... Somebody that has an account there please ask him in which area of Portugal he lives in. If he lives close by, I could help with the scans. (I just blazed through the topic, I think people are asking about better scans now?)
But he won't make better scans because it's a hoax he has a bad scanner, as he's said. Somebody please split the related posts from here, before they cause more damage...
