Just to clarify some things, I've got my aprooval in less than an afternoon even though Im somewhat useless by now (I hope to change that). I think there's nothing to complain about staff's response.
Haven't been here in quite awhile. getting to the point of this, it's sweet how more scans of the alpha were found and the quality is great too. I recently also noticed something and showed it on ssrg and I figured that I should also show it on here to. pretty sure no one had really noticed this at all but looking at this comparison image I did... and coincidentally enough, I was actually playing a sonic 1 hack at the time when I noticed this. the point of this is basically to show that this frame as well the other jumping frames that's in the final build may possibly be leftovers that were used in the TTS Build at the time.
Wow that's a really interesting find - looks as if they might have still changed a few things though. ...although having said that we still don't know for sure that rolling was even in that demo.
It may be evidence towards spinning/rolling/jumping being implemented before Sonic's sprite was changed - perhaps they just didn't bother to change Sonic's spin sprites as you don't really notice them.
- Flight 209'er, clear for vector 324. - We got clearance, Clarence. - Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor? - Tower radioed clearance, over. - That's Clarence Oveur, over.
I was just playing Space Harrier II, and felt like I recognized the style of a certain zone - Fors Yard: The checkered floor, complete with mountains and totem poles makes one think of Green Hill Zone quite a bit. I wonder if the Sonic 1 team had this in mind whilst creating the game. Space Harrier was one of SEGA's best known properties before this time, as they relied heavily on their arcade influence to fuel the Mega Drive. Space Harrier II came out in 1988 as a launch title for the Mega Drive in Japan. It would have been one of the first games many people bought for the system.
Something that nobody else has ever mentioned either is that the stripe is on his shoes in the beta. I believe the stripe was always on his shoes, and that the missing stripes on some of his final sprites are really just simply spriting errors.
Adding to this, one of the rolling frames has a different shape for the last two spines, which they either forgot to polish from an earlier version or was actually modified when the shine was added (which would hint towards it not being present in the earlier version):
Somewhat related: I went on a trip to Tokyo in December 2014 and I looked for magazines with Sonic previews/reviews. At Mandarake, I found this September 1991 issue of Hippon Super which reviewed a final Sonic 1. It was sealed in the store so I had to buy it on the title page alone, which mentioned Sonic the Hedgehog. I scanned the title page, the Sonic 1 review, a Sonic 1 ad and some extras. I think the proto pics in the ad might be new?
This is about as accurate of a recreation as I can manage: I do believe this was Sonic's original blue palette. It shows up in three places that I know of whenever the Sonic 1 sprites are used outside of gameplay in other games: Eraser, CD (time travel sequence) and Crackers. It's also a bit brighter (as described by the developers), and I don't think they ever wanted Sonic to be robin-egg blue, but that was the natural consequence of tweaking the colors to be slightly (but not significantly) darker when working in the very limited 9-bit RGB colorspace and they considered the saturation level acceptable enough. That it reoccurs in stuff written from scratch while sourcing S1's art seems to suggest that these blues are the ones in his "digitizer" source files and that the darker, less saturated palette set is sort of "tacked on" program-side.
Looks great! Mark Cerny (who wasn't really involved in the development of Sonic 1) said this about the color: "the character's color was changed just prior to release. Sonic had been a lighter blue, but he was very hard to see against the ocean backgrounds, so his color was darkened at the last moment." http://www.sega-16.com/2006/12/interview-mark-cerny/
Excellent recreation! Also, drx, thanks for those high quality scans. I'm always interested in early Sonic 1 material.
Sonic's palette blending in with the water in Green Hill Zone was an issue at one stage. But they fixed it: not by changing Sonic, but by changing the water. I'm not sure Sonic's palette changed all that much - certainly not as radically as some seem to believe. And in Sonic 2 shots, Sonic's palette comes off as far more... "blue" than anything I've seen of Sonic 1.
I can't remember if I ever knew that, but if I had, I'd forgotten. It's not something I ever really notice but it's a great titbit of info. Has anyone actually ever hacked Sonic 1 to change the palette of the water back and seen if it actually affects visibility?
