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Sonic Month 2019: Sonic CD

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by drx, Oct 26, 2019.

  1. rata

    rata

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    You mean, like those weird Knuckles Chaotix trippy bonus stages?
     
  2. Jenuall

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    Yeah that would be similar to the Chaotix vertical bonus stages, interesting.
     
  3. cornholio857

    cornholio857

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    The spinning object reminds me of this Sonic 1 sketch:
    [​IMG]
     
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  4. Black Squirrel

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    I'm genuinely not sure. I mean, mockups are usually made to paint an early version of the game in a good light, but that 3D stage with the balloon looks astonishingly basic. The sort of thing you wouldn't go out of your way to show (but then again Sega have shown unfinished cack in the past so who knows).

    (p.s. I think that shot came from this book alongside some others. We need better scans)

    There are two known mockups of Sonic CD:

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    I think these debuted around January 1993 but don't quote me on that.

    Western media didn't really pick up on Sonic CD being a thing until later in the year. I think it's a mixture of confusion between Sonic 2 (and the rumoured CD version of that game), difficulty getting information from Japan, and the fact the Mega-CD hadn't been released in half the world at the time.
     
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  5. OKei

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    I am not a translator by any means, but for the article where this screenshot came from (https://info.sonicretro.org/Talk:Game_Preview_-_Sonic_the_Hedgehog_CD_(Sega_Summer_Catalogue,_1992)), I went ahead and used Google Translate for what I hope is a marginally competent translation. I did it just to get the ambiguity of it being properly untranslated out of the way. The "translated story" section seems like BS to me, because it seems to reference Sonic 2 with the Death Egg bit and all. Hopefully, it paves way for a better translation, even if the written material isn't groundbreaking.
     
  6. Black Squirrel

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    Today's discovery(?)

    In the 510 prototype every stage post-Tidal Tempest is missing tons of objects. As you would expect, there's more in the 0.51 prototype.

    [​IMG]

    ...including more blue ring monitors. I thought this was just a fluke in Metallic Madness, but I found some in Quartz Quadrant too, so they're probably everywhere. No time or S monitors, but a fair number of blue ring ones. In this prototype (and 712) they basically act as another shield, that can be stacked on top of the normal one (although it's not always obvious that's what they do).


    0.51 is in the process of culling the wackier ideas. This is one of the few occasions where it adds objects that would later be removed, which suggests they genuinely intended to use blue ring monitors for something.
     
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  7. Blue Spikeball

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    In other words, they helped you retain your rings when hit. Sounds like a predecessor of sorts to the Combine Ring (also represented by a blue ring) from Chaotix, which merged all your rings into one when you dropped them. I would think the most likely explanation is that they were meant to work like in Chaotix, and the "alternate shield" thing was a temporary behavior they gave them before they could fully implement them. Time constraints or technical limitations just prevented the intended implementation from coming into fruition until Chaotix.
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2019
  8. RyogaMasaki

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  9. Jenuall

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  10. 19XX

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    Is there any hint of R2 existing in the ROM at some point? Maybe it never existed.
    The 0.02 might have been just a branched out build made for the press.
     
  11. ICEknight

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    We still have no evidence that it was ever playable.
     
  12. Diablohead

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    This early build to me just feels like they are still converting sonic 1 over more then anything else, most of the design work is still on paper.
     
  13. Rockman Zero

    Rockman Zero

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    Late to the party, but great find, DRX! Hope someday we can find source material for R2!
     
  14. JoseTB

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    I would argue that it's a little later than that. Sonic CD would later go on to differentiate itself further code wise from here, but the fundamental departure from Sonic 1, the skeleton of the new game if you will, was already in place. This isn't a development snapshot of developers hacking away at Sonic 1, but a working demo, a "finished" build insofar as the developers could do with the assets they had at the time. Any levels, music, art or files not strictly necessary to run the demo were omitted. This is in contrast to the Sonic 2 Nick Arcade proto that was pretty shoddily put together and more of a development snapshot than a "finished" demo (we basically got lucky with that one).

    This build was apparently purposely built for the Yuusei show (given the "You say" sign post pun), so it's hard to say how much we can infer about the actual state of the development at the time. It's not out of the question that they had more assets half way, but were intentionally left out for the demo. If the build was more broken ala Nick Arcade we could tell more, but the fact that it has no leftovers suggests that there was intent to show what they wanted to show and nothing else.

    At the end of the day most game prototypes out there are just that, public demos for the press or for events to showcase the game. It's just that some developers made a better or worse job at putting together that demo. In some cases they didn't care at all and shipped whatever code/assets there were at the time, in others they carefully planned what to show, and I think this build (0.02) is the later.
     
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  15. rata

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    Not that late, buddy! He will show more prototypes today! I was going to my dad's house on the afternoon, but screw it. I'll be here for the stream, see you later daddy.
     
  16. Black Squirrel

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    I think they might have tailored what they were doing for Yuusei Sega World, but I'm not entirely convinced there was a "more finished" build out there they were stipping back. Why would they'd bother to change the level select screen, for instance - who's going to see?

    But it is a weird one. I mean, this is a shockingly early build of the game, and yet compared to the Nick Arcade Sonic 2, it's really stable. I'm more inclined to think it's like the Sonic 3D prototypes, where the E3 title screen became part of the top level code for a while.


    My theory is that they actually had the whole game planned out properly before any real development began (unlike Sonic 2), because the animated cutscenes needed forward planning. You couldn't go taking out levels that were represented in the ending because of time restraints OH WAIT
     
  17. Pengi

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    And Amy had already been designed by early 1992. The first installments of the Sonic manga hit store shelves in March 1992.
     
  18. 19XX

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    I think Sonic 2 Nick Arcade was a press demo, a mock up rom built upon Sonic 1 engine for sake of convenience, not a prototype. It just had some early assets ported to it from then-real prototypes that suit our research, that's all.

    Well, I think 0.02 is just the same, a highly modified Sonic 1 to show to the press. At that time there was surely a main branch of development, a concurrent rom we haven't seen yet, that maybe had even R2 inside.
     
  19. drx

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    The CD itself says Yuusei Segaworld
     
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  20. I haven't had time to check all this juicy stuff yet (in fact, I haven't posted here in months, sadly), but there are a couple of things I'd like to mention.

    First and foremost, thank you for your continued efforts in preserving and releasing all of this, drx. I really want to sit down and give this and Sonic Chaos a go.

    I also don't think this has mentioned yet (I haven't read every post here, but I did search for "mountain" and got nothing). Here's the intro as seen in the final version:


    (Skip to 0:56.)

    It always struck me as odd how the Mega CD version of the intro has a different reveal of Little Planet and the Eggman mountain. Namely, the panning is inverted, and you see a shot of the mountain that isn't present in the full FMV from later versions. The reason I bring this up is because the prototype in the stream has no such discrepancy. This seems to suggest it was a late edit of some sort that wasn't carried over to the full FMV. Or maybe the original scene was longer and they reused the mountain from some uncut footage? Hmm...

    (Hope everyone's been doing fine, and see you again soon-ish.)
     

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