Naoto Ohshima, Twin Star, Wonder Hedgehog, 1990 Tokyo Toy Show, and other goodness

Indeed we did:
https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/new-sonic-1-alpha-screens-discovered.34294/

It's not really speculation, they show the enemy clear as water.

 

One thing that always bugged me about the TTS proto is that people always referred to the purple monster as a standard enemy but in the early concept art he's presented as a character alongside everyone else. Do we have concrete proof that he is a standard enemy? I always thought he was supposed to be a central character.

 

The Sparkling Zone concept art has the six fingered hand enemy just there in the Zone, Sonic rolling past it, which implies it was going to be a standard enemy: https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sonic_1_concept_sparkling.png

It stands to reason that some of the others would have been standard enemies as well.

 

This is really amazing! It's great finding all of this info out

 

Too lazy to find the picture right now, but I believe Thirteen might then be the one at the top of the picture looking down on everything. I recall a long nose.

Very interesting stuff. As always, thanks for finding this stuff!

 

Makes sense. The two designs have obvious similarities. I can see the early Thirteen sketch evolving into that guy:

 

Hoo boy, there's still a lot of uncovered stuff within these games. I love being a part of this fandom.

 

I’ve given it some thought the past few days, and while I plan to make a video talking about this, my basic thoughts are this. This new concept came somewhere between the rabbit and TTS. It’s weird for me to imagine that Ohshima wanted to use a hedgehog, Naka got involved, and then they went to a rabbit and then back to hedgehog after some work. Due to what we can tell from these materials, I say that with the fact that a 2P mode was planned for Sonic 1, the similarity’s with the nightmare world concept, and it seems to involve a hedgehog, I would say that this must have been a very early draft of what would become Sonic’s nightmare draft which itself was also early.

 

Erm... Excuse me the blatantly ignorant question...
Who's that Thirteen? Some opponent from a game?

 

Are u going to wait for the full article to be translated and/or try to confirm this with Ohshima before making another vid?

 

The title "Wonder Dream" is interesting.

Sonic as a character was first unveiled to the public on 7 November 1990, during Dreams Come True's Sega-sponsored tour for their new album, Wonder 3.

Could just be a coincidence though.

 

There's a crap ton actually visible after seeing Grysons post...








If I had more than 15 minutes of time I'd try and clean these up way more.

 

I asked him already, and I’ll give it a few days. But I mean, I can’t expect him to get back to me every single time I have something to ask him. He’s been nice enough to tell me the whole nightmare world concept AND that they didn’t have the mechanics figured out for the Tokyo toy show. I can’t expect him to just give us a accurate timeline for something he did 30 years ago. But I will try to update my audience the best way I can.

 

let me know if you end up doing that, I’d love to include that in my video

 

that interview alone is contradicted by the story of events on the game development page on Sonic 1 here, where when He got there, it was the rabbit game concept and he agreed that it “wasn’t working out” clearly memory 30 years ago is faulty, as there are multiple different interviews with different time lines. All I’m saying is, the rabbit has to predate this two player wonder twins nightmare concept as it makes no sense to me how you’d go from hedgehog 2 player demo, to rabbit throwing objects to hedgehog again. It makes the most sense to me that this version became the Madonna Sonic concept that Ohshima explained to me a year ago by about June 1990 and sometime inbetween June 1990 and January 1991 Eggman and badniks were decided on.

edit: I read that 1997 interview. I don’t believe that this document comes from before Naka’s involvement. Naka straight up claims he came up with the roll maneuver in front of Naka, and when he first got involved, it still involved a rabbit. Ohshima calls this draft the second draft of Sonic; so based on this, I’ll create a timeline of what we know.
Twinkle Star (Rabbit) -> Twinkle Star (Hedgehog) -> Sonic nightmare world with Madonna -> Eggman and Band members -> final game.

 

We should try to keep the names straight.

Ohshima's game idea was called either Twin Star (according to Ohshima) or Twinkle Star (according to Naka). It starred two boys and was set in a dream/nightmare world. One of the ideas was to travel to the past and future. The slate was wiped clean when Naka came onboard.

The proposed game in the design document this thread is about was called Wonder Dream. It's set in a dream/nightmare world and stars a hedgehog who can perform a rolling attack (the attack is called "Wonder Hedgehog").