The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

hey get out of my head, this was exactly my idea <3

I'll reach out and see what I can find.

 

The Monster Hunter page has a screenshot with a texture graphic similar to Toxic Caves. Asset reuse, perhaps? Hard to tell.

More and more, Sonic 3 just looks like Sonic 2: Day 0 - The Cutting Room Floor Edition. Wild!

 

This is exactly why I've previously assumed that the burning forest level was Tropical Sun, as its concept art was later reused for Angel Island.

 

Ah! I hadn't thought about that. I was just thinking of, like, "Forest = Wood Zone" or something but not much beyond that. Good thinking!

 

That first-person POV test is art from the actual Monster Hunter, created by a Futurescape artist (likely Tara Packard?) The aforementioned forest assets appear to be from the Genesis SDK assembled and distributed by Sega of America to third-party developers, and were likely created by an artist within STI. So in this case, the two are very likely separate projects

@Palas first drew comparisons in the art and dithering style to that of Spinball. Others in this thread have made similar comparisons. I think @Jaxer has the right idea. I'll keep y'all posted.

 

The VGHF could also drop their Craig Stitt archives in the near future, so we should be on the lookout for anything similar in them.

 

Sonic 3 is the result of the STI team crunching Sonic 2 into a new title when they were told in June 93 to throw out the work they did on the SVP-enabled Sonic 3D. The only remnants of that project is the Sonic on the title screen.

 

Oh, I know. I'm just amazed at how often each new piece we uncover for one can help explain a piece of the other, and with each new piece it becomes slightly more obvious how "slapdash" the development of Sonic 3 really was. We knew this, obviously, but to see the ways that some things (mostly ideas and concepts I guess) wound up cut from Sonic 2 only to be implemented into Sonic 3 in such a way that we'd never have thought about in the early 1990s, and to be split into two games and still come out as clean and cohesive as it did, it always leaves me a bit more impressed than I was before.

 

On that same kind of subject, I've never known where to post it but there is also weird leftover X/Y flip flags in chunks in the prototype (and likely final). I marked them with the unused GHZ tile to represent blocks that have the X flip set. I'm not saying it was a sign or bushes, but....



There are a handful more of these flags set on seemingly blank tiles in random chunks. Mostly in GHZ and a lot in MZ.



MZ's




EDIT: I was a bit off with this MZ chunk

They could be anything though. Even as simple as copy past error I suppose.

 

Found another. I didn't think to check the unused tile.

 

Definitely seems like a copy paste error or something. We only see the TTS bush on flat ground tiles, and there'd be literally no reason to flip the sign tiles.

 

I thought that too, but even copying and pasting doesn't add up (at least I can't make it yet). I don't think its TTS, but I do think its remnant of something else either experimental or just redoing chunks.

 

I've also noticed similar stuff in the final version, as well as palette line stuff with blank chunks. Maybe that helped with compression?

 

I recently bought (again) Sonic Origins, this time the Plus version – which gave me the chance to play the Game Gear version for the first time.
I grew up with the Master System, so it was interesting to play while noticing the differences in this earlier version created by Yuzo Koshiro.

I decided to dive into the rabbit hole that is the development of the GG / SMS version – unfortunately, there isn’t much information available online about it, although every now and then people discover interesting things, like Marble Zone’s music or the evidence that the GG version contains early concepts from the MD version.

Anyway, I took a close look at the documents Yuzo Koshiro posted on Twitter back in 2016.
With some effort and the help of AI tools, I managed to get what is supposedly a decent translation of those documents – at least of the parts that could be deciphered.

Take it with a grain of salt.

And the last page:

So, what interesting things can we learn from this?
If we trust the translation, what’s intriguing is that Bridge Zone was planned as the second stage from the very beginning, but even more interesting is that the third stage is listed as “Factory Zone” – which brings to mind only Scrap Brain from the final product.
We can also see Jungle concept, that ended as third zone.

I wonder what kind of correlation existed between Ancient and Sonic Team during the development of the SMS version. We know that Labyrinth Zone was originally the second stage in the Mega Drive version, but was pushed later in the game to avoid disrupting the difficulty curve.

Does this mean that Ancient always intended Labyrinth to appear later?
Why is there 8-bit music for Marble and BatBrain sprite, but it was Bridge Zone that ended up as the second stage? Console limitations, perhaps?

Also:

ゾーン構成・演出
Zone Structure / Transitions

I wonder if it means the Island Level Transition, or if there were planned some cutscenes. We know, that Ancient composed some tracks, that weren't used in the final game.


So many questions, and no answers...

 

Seeing a Sonic Cosplay in Today's Rick and Morty episode is the last thing i expected to encounter today -Season 8 Episode 4 for future reference-

 

The image resolution is far too low, and it seems the AI is hallucinating quite a bit here.
As for the document, based on what I've been able to make out, it appears to say something like the following. ( "…" in the text indicates areas where the paper is overlapped and obscures the content.)

Left-side paper

Right-side paper with zone descriptions

The most interesting part of this document is that Button 1 is assigned as "run" button (like in Mario) and that it mentions some kind ability activated by "crouching and pressing Button 2" (unfortunately, the details are obscured by an overlapping sheet of paper).

Also intriguing is the concept of a "pushable spring". This suggests that the game may have originally planned to include more puzzle-like elements involving such mechanics. Taken together with the eventual removal of the run button, it seems that as development progressed, technical improvements allowed the game to move closer to the style of the Mega Drive version, compared to what's described in this early design document.

 

I almost want to say that this was also the original intent of the mega drive version but damn if I can find anything outright saying it. Maybe I'm hallucinating as much as the AI is lol

 

Tails Adventures did go on to have pushable springs as an obstacle. So it's possible that it was a planned idea that got scrapped and reused later. No evidence towards the Mega Drive version using them... Unless you're talking about the Mega Drive version being more puzzle oriented, which I do have 1 piece of evidence towards.
In the prototype of Sonic 1 we have, there's an unused object layout for Sparkling Zone, which seems to have some sort of puzzle involving picking the right switch to open a door, of course it's not exactly that difficult considering the intended switch is flashing red.

Not much, but it's something.

 

thanks for clarification. Unfortunately, unless we get better pictures, or better AI-text enhancing tools, we are stuck with this.

Maybe the pushable object was just a mechanic from MD? If I’m not mistaken, there is like… one object, you can push in Marble Zone.

 

Just for fun...