These both have SCORE in the top part of the HUD (similar to the Simon Wai build), and Tails' life icon says "Sonic" on both; but one has Tails and the other has Sonic...
If this happened 13 years ago when I joined this forum, we'd be at 20something pages by now. Love all of your work though Drx. Always have. Keep fighting the fight for preservation rather than hoarding. Curious to see what all of the differences are between this and the other betas, although at face level it doesn't seem to be much.
The layouts (Stage and object) from Emerald Hill to Metropolis Zone seem to be identical to Beta 4 (Minus the Chemical Plant Zone loops, of course). Sky Chase Zone has a minor change; after the Wing Fortress flyby, there's two string of four rings each followed by another string of four rings before reaching the stack of Nebulas (Nebulae?) which were all removed before Beta 4.Wing Fortress Zone has a bunch of changes mentioned on the Hidden Palace Zone article, and Death Egg is identical but for graphical glitches.
I'd have to disassemble that ROM and nab it. I have most of the watermark screen disassembled, and I'm not seeing anything that looks like that. I guess I could disassemble it from the Lethal Enforcers and keep track of their splash screens. just for fun. Also interesting to note, the Splash Screen isn't it's own screen mode, the splash screen is actually in the initializing table at the beginning of the ROM that defines game crashes. So, that's neat.
Don't be too down on it, I think part of it is being mid-week and it being so close to Beta 4. Still a fascinating piece of S2s timeline.
Apparently, the right slanted corners on the loops can kill you if you run down them in this prototype. I can't seem to replicate this in the Simon Wai prototype.
The collision is very fucky in this prototype in general. I wonder if they couldn't iron out all the collision bugs so they scrapped the slanted corners? There's a bunch of code changes in this one compared to Beta 4 that I didn't look at yet.
This is really fascinating. Thanks for discovering this drx! It's amazing that this was hidden in an early 90s scene release archive.
The oil slides in Oil Ocean make the noise Robotnik's machine makes in Casino Night. I also heard the star post noise in Hill Top which seemed to have replaced a sound effect. Also the Casino Night roulette didn't make any noises. Small things but I haven't played Sonic 2 in forever.
Oops. You're correct. I was in a hurried rush to get somewhere and only compared to the TCRF article, which states that the new sun had been there since Beta 4.
The ring requirements in Special stages are different than other protos and the final game. Stage 1 requirements are 20, 50, and 70. Stage 2 is 35, 75, and 130, Stage 3 is 40, 85, 150, Stage 4 is 45, but that's all I know since I can't make it past the first ring requirement in stage 4. :v: