I've noticed that they were different, but never noticed in what way before this comparison just now. (It especially stands out since the Sonic 3 2P mode uses a different sprite, taken from his waiting animation)
I made a FLAC/MP3 album using the SMPS rip Valley Bell made. Some tracks have a little tweaks, like the one below. Enjoy!
After looking at hidden palaces info on the proto, they list the lost data at the end of the ROM that has stuff related to the 2p levels. Is there anything there that suggests the 2p levels we're posssibly full zones? I've been going over it for a couple of days in my head. Why prioritize 2p mode?
A lot of people are going with the “2p build” hypothesis, but let me offer an alternative. Why is LRZ not in the level select? One possible reason is that the 2p levels replaced it. The 2p levels also occupy the last few internal level ids. One other oddity is that Endless Mine seems to be missing in one of the leftover palette sets. What this suggests to me is that work on 2p mode only started in full swing after the decision to cut LRZ. So a much simpler explanation for 2p mode being more similar to the final (it’s not necessarily more “complete”, we have no idea if they planned to do more work on it) is because that’s the last thing most of the team worked on. As for the sprite being final, they probably had a code setting for enabling/disabling the final sprites in 1p. Which is maybe why the act ending puts Sonic in the wrong animation. I’m not saying either this or the 2p build is true, just trying to offer an alternative so that people don’t just run off with this as the truth.
2-player mode was a really important feature of Sonic 2. We played a lot of that back in the day, moreso than the single player, so I'd hazard a guess a mode for Sonic 3 was always on the cards. As for why it doesn't fit on the level select properly... well the level select is a leftover from Sonic 2, and proudly points out they scrapped Hidden Palace Zone. I can't imagine it was part of the original plan to keep it hanging around in that form, but in the end they never really needed to replace it (they just made it stupidly difficult to access instead). Sonic 2 sprites are likely in use because the Sonic 3 ones aren't ready. I mean sure, obviously, but while they might have had the basics done (i.e. enough for 2-player), you can't have Sonic radically changing his look between animations if you're sending this build to the press. It needs to be "complete". That or they hadn't got around to implementing them yet.
Interestingly, although it's not the case in this prototype it does seem like 2-player mode may have had Sonic 2 style sprites at an earlier point in development - in both this and the final game, Sonic's 2-player rolling sprites are scaled-down versions of the Sonic 2 ones, not the ones from the final Sonic 3. Tails' flying sprites look like they may also be based on the Sonic 2 version as the head matches that more than the Sonic 3 equivalent, though it may just be a side-effect of shrinking and redrawing it. If it is based on the Sonic 2 version, though, they've at least taken the care to remove the deep red shading the proto and Sonic 2 use on his sprites to match it in with the rest of the set. Incidentally, the unfinished version of the AIZ plane intro found buried within this proto features graphics for Tails piloting the Tornado which match the final game, i.e. with no deep red shading - yet another indicator that the final character sprites were at least in-progress (or possibly complete and just not implemented yet) by the time this build was made.
Another possibility for the level select thing: they made it originally with all the single player levels, then sometime after the split said, "Well, Sonic 3A won't need anything from the right column, let's throw the 2P levels on their place to have something useful there."
Sonic 3 level select was always a dev feature, not listing everything there makes sense because it would have changed over development to give testers shortcuts.
After not having posted for a decade (mostly due to growing up and realizing I acted like a moron back then and was too embarrased to return until this proto surfaced and greatly intrigued me) and have also decided to take my own crack at the S2 style Knuckles sprites. I made my own standing frame: and I made my own (still slightly rough) fixed running animation: Due to the way I went about making it, the head animation is actually reversed though, but I feel with the movement of his arms it makes a bit more sense. It is a tad rough in spots, so I need to tweak it some more. I want to incorporate the shading from the final one on the shoes here as well. Also, the big head makes sense since Sonic's head in S1 and S2 was massive in proportion to his body, though his sprite also had tiny hands in those games, whereas Knuckles here has absolutely massive ones. I'm tempted to also use the smaller final hands.
Ooh that edit is very smooth, nice work. The standing sprite is good too but maybe a tad short? And Knuckles is supposed to have massive hands, I think the ones he has here are fine. What I never understood though was why is his chest emblem tan, and this goes for the final too.
I know they're bigger than Sonic's but since Sonic's 1 and 2 hands were so tiny, I figured these should be a bit smaller too, but if everyone feels their size is fine, then I'll leave it.
An if anyone is gonna tell me to wind my neck in, I'm glad it's you! Good to ask questions and come up with ideas as to why they did stuff. I always wondered how popular 2p mode was. I was always single player all the time, and at the time just took 2p to be a nice wee extra. Now a part of me is thinking that 2p was started around the same time as the rest of the game - it looks to be the most complete thing in the game bar touchups. Also noticed on tcrf (damn fine site) they have a lot of the maps ripped, and knuckles route seems to be in the same incomplete state as sonics- but it's there! So, put knuckles into part 2 cause it's not as fleshed out? It always felt like a big demo to me when played on it's own (if you know what I mean). Big ol' Knucklehead look class!
I'm also so very very curious if tails had revamped graphics that were incomplete at one time or another.
I've actually wondered if Robotnik was meant to have a complete overhaul too. He's got longer legs in his standing sprites (and as a result, is depicted as being bandy-legged) but the running sprites are pretty much identical to Sonic 2's. On top of that, his sprite seen in the bad ending is very off-model compared to everything else.
So carpathia808 did a deconstruction of this build's Carnival Night Zone Act 1 music, and I think that it really emphasises just how much the MIDI variants did not do any of the themes proper justice. In particular, I love the bass in its 16-bit form. Bass and percussion solo starts around the 3:00 mark.
So hey, I'm seeing image not found errors for the pictures in this post. Could you re-upload them please?
I have no idea what you're talking about. Okay, let me try that again. I've got some additional GIFs to go along with it. Tails has several sprites in the final game where the graphical style doesn't match his S2 look. It's most immediately notable in his flying sprites: From left to right: S2 sprites, S2 sprites with S3K palette, S3K sprites. Look at his head. Whereas the S2-style sprites are more lineated like a standard cartoon, the S3K sprites have more depth to them. Much more fitting next to Sonic's S3K sprites. You can make the same observation with his spinning-in-air sprites. The animation is extended in S3K, the main focus here is the art style. Don't mind the not-fully-accurate animation timings: Left to right is the same here (S2, S2 adjusted for palette and shoe bottoms to match S3K, and S3K) It's also seen in various animations unique to S3K. Here's his animations for swimming, riding on a rotating cylinder, and spinning off a rappel rope in SOZ: Even his end-of-act celebration sprite is in this different style! The main differences are with his head, particularly his ears, whiskers, and narrower eyes. He also has that distinctive shine pixel that Sonic and Knuckles have. The rest of him has a subtle style change, too. To me this suggests that the artists were working on an overhaul for Tails similar to what Sonic got. They just never finished the job, and what we're left with is some remains of that effort alongside a comparably-sloppy reimplementation of recolored S2 sprites.
Awesome, thank you! I remember noticing that Tails' head was redrawn between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, but on looking at the sprites side-by-side I can see a few other small details. For instance, the shoe bottoms you mentioned and his arms are different in his flying animation.
Based on Fred's analysis, I'm starting to think they didn't intentionally make it harder to access, but that it was a natural side effect of installing the massive title screen animation (I mean, some of those frames take stupidly long to decompress, overshooting vertical blank). Whether they intentionally left it that way because it was difficult to access, may be.
It was probably unintentional. They fixed it in S3K, except they disabled the whole function by prepending it with an rts.