Holy shit, this is amazing. Yet another proto I thought we'd never see, now accounted for - and it's the first ever Sonic 3A proto discovered, too! Legendary stuff, and truly one of the most major finds ever in this community. Even the surface-level stuff in this one is really interesting - who'd have thought the music exclusive to Sonic & Knuckles Collection was actually a buncha proto tracks? Can't wait to see what else folks can dig up from inside this one. Major kudos for this find and all the others, @drx - you're truly a living legend. = )
Who's idea was the drop dash in Mania? Could it have been a shared design note from Sega like "Oh, hey... Christian-- we had this idea of a move we were going to implement in a previous Sonic game, but couldn't, we think it'd work well in the new game..." Given that Mania shares some beta elements that weren't in the final games (mostly in forms of animation), it's possible that older design ideas were shared but were probably never discussed that they were even made and tested in the past? To me, it seems like a natural progression from the original spin dash from Sonic 2, so it's possible they always had the idea floating around somewhere.
This build strengthens my opinion that these builds we are finding are likely showing work from certain teams - I wouldn't be surprised if this build comes from the 2p development team as this section appears the most complete. As they probably were working from an earlier stable build that doesn't affect their work. My original writing about this is https://forums.sonicretro.org/index...going-to-be-used-for.38565/page-5#post-941976 Basically, the build has a date that is close to release, doesn't mean this is the be all end all of what was actually complete at this time. Likely a fork of the code for the 2p team before being merged with later other team development. (Which imo is great for us to see earlier stuff) Edit: explains why the 2p sprites are from final
Like I said, I have serious doubts about Christian's claim that it was a mere coincidence. Can't fault him for respecting a legally binding document such as an NDA, but let's take his denial with a giant grain of salt.
To be fair, it could just be a coincidence. It's not impossible to imagine that the team thought up the Drop Dash on their own. What does he gain from lying about it when he could just not say anything at all?
Hey let's just think along the lines of if mania used sonic 3 ideas it shows sega were on the ball in the 1990's with sonic, good enough to bring those ideas back.
1: That may be covered by NDA. 2: If he doesn't say something, he'll be hounded with questions for weeks.
If you're refering to track 26, it's the same credits music used in the S&KC version of S3. Every "new" track from S&KC is present in the proto.
What benefits would they gain from getting prototype builds? I'd also feel sort of betrayed if fans themselves would hold back information like that. I'd somehow tell you guys.
I don't think it's this incredible claim to say that he's telling the truth and the team thought it up on their own. That's the issue.
What a fantastic find. There's so much to go through here that I'm honestly feeling a little overwhelmed lol. What zones would those be? Like the entire S3&K set? This sounds like it's pretty major.
Popping in here to say -- this is one hell of a unicorn to find and I can't wait to find out what other secrets lie in this. Can't remember feeling this excited about a prototype in a long time. Properly surreal to see (or rather hear) that the PC music was the original music all along though -- proper mind bending stuff.
Amazing release, it was truly the best way of ending the Sonic Month. Thanks to all involved, once again!
Thanks for bringing this up. It's silly to think that because we get a build at a certain date, that it represents all work that had been completed at that point. Everything isn't going to be merged into every single build that is used for a magazine preview. On the NDA stuff: It is totally plausible that Taxman and co were shown prototypes or concepts from earlier Sonic games and were required to sign a very general NDA stating that they could not disclose anything they saw. I don't think anybody thinks they were given an NDA that explicitly and only said "Don't tell anyone that the drop-dash came from a Sonic 3 beta".
He's under an NDA, he should be left alone. He's under legal obligation not to reveal any form of secrets. Anyhow, I think what we should be focusing on next is the Knux exclusive layouts in the S3 zones here. There's already loads of differences on the Sonic/Tails side of things, let's take a look at what Knux may have had to deal with too. I understand the sentiment, but as someone under an NDA myself, it's not our liberty to reveal what we've been entrusted to (I have no NDA with Sega, I'm just speaking generally). Can't blame the guy, he doesn't want to get sued.
That's fine. I personally don't buy it, but I don't think it's worth pressing the issue. In the part of the stream where the remains of the S&K levels were restored, both acts of Death Egg played act 2's music. But act 1's music is in the rom. I assume it's a pointer error. And echoing everyone's sentiment, it's nice to hear the actual Genesis versions of the PC tracks instead of the godawful MIDIs. I still like the final tracks from 94 better, but these are really good. Hoping @Eukaryot adds them as options in AIR.
My question here is did this really exist back in 1993? It was nothing like game development is today, a whole game in the 90's was created by a dozen people (sometimes less!) There was really no such thing as separate "teams" working on different features of a game. If you check the game credits, strip out all of the upper management, marketing, and the myriad music contributors, you get around 14 game developers. Total. If there was a separation for who was working on Competition Mode, it would have been like two people maximum. The same goes for forks and code merging. While that's very important for modern game development, was it really something being used back in 1993? Sonic 3 had three programmers, which was probably considered a lot for the era. I guess I'm not really sure how it would've worked to have three people working on the same code without forks and merging, but I'm skeptical.
Of course there was no real source management, forks, etc., back then, but a "team" could still have been a single programmer. There's no way they could have all been working on the same build at all times, so surely there was some "merging" that went on. At least that's what makes sense to me.
