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The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by McGuirk, Jan 10, 2007.

  1. Ravenfreak

    Ravenfreak

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    O'Fallon Mo
    Sonic 1 Game Gear Disassembly
    He's been really killing it with all this new content! He recently posted a video showcasing of all his works, and at some point he mentioned "Toxic Pools" being one of the levels he did art for in Spinball. He had no clue that was the final name for the SMS/GG level when I mentioned it in the Facebook group. So I bet that was the prototype name of the zone in the Mega Drive version, but was changed at the last minute and the team who worked on the 8-bit version probably had no clue they changed it to Toxic Caves and stuck with the Toxic Pools name.
     
  2. Pengi

    Pengi

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    There's concept art showing 5 rounds: https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sonic_Spinball_game_rounds_concept_art.jpg

    1. Underground Caves
    2. Toxic Pools
    3. Lava Powerhouse
    4. The Machine
    5. Eruption

    EDIT: Craig Stitt responded about this change in level line-up:

     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2020
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  3. CrematorWii

    CrematorWii

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  4. Pengi

    Pengi

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  5. Pengi

    Pengi

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    More Segapede / Astropede stuff from Craig Stitt.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Reply to a comment about:
    No idea how to download the flip book animation.

    EDIT: Some more replies to one of the pictures:

     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2020
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  6. Linkabel

    Linkabel

    Member
    So here's something interesting that relates to an early build of Sonic 1.

    I follow a lot of Japanese Sonic fans on Instagram and one of them posted these pics yesterday:
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Now, on my Twitter I posted on how cool it was that the little tagline seems to be about the concert that happens in the Sonic 1 manga.

    But someone else noticed that the pic behind Sonic in the first pic is actually Sparkling Zone.

    Have we seen that particular screenshot before? I have actually seen this item before so not sure if that's where I saw the screenshot or if I saw it somewhere else.
     
  7. Pengi

    Pengi

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    A few pieces of Sonic stationery had little story snippets. I think they were all made by Sanrio? Another phrase was "And thus began the battle of Sonic and Dr. Eggman.".

    There's a notepad that has the same phrase, but it also has another paragraph set apart from it

    So they'd piece together as.

    I wonder if there are any missing parts? The "And thus began" line could fit in the middle, but then there'd surely need to be another line to give it a bit of a conclusion.

    What's interesting is that there are also traces of the Story Comic in STI's Sonic documents. For the most part the STI document adapts the text from the Japanese Sonic 1 manual, though erroneously refers to Westside Island rather than South Island. The big differences is that the manual only speaks of one attack, with Eggman revealing that he's turned the island's animals into robots, whereas in the STI documents there are two attacks - the initial one when Eggman and his robots are searching for Chaos Emeralds and is promptly defeated by Sonic, and the second one where he's turned the animals into robots. This is how it plays out in the Story Comic, where Vol 1 has generic construction robots searching for Chaos Emeralds and disrupting Sonic's concert and it isn't until Vol 2 that we see the video game robots, which Sonic is shocked to find his animal friends are trapped inside. STI's documents omit the concert and the missile attack, but Sonic's band is briefly mentioned in his character profile.

    I'm guessing that the manual story, the Story Comic, the Sanrio story snippets and the Sonic 1 portion of the STI document are all derived from one internal Sonic 1 story document.

    On a related note, the Green Hill Zone wrecking ball boss began life as a construction robot mid-boss, which would tie into the premise of Eggman constructing a base and digging for Chaos Emeralds.
     
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  8. minichapman

    minichapman

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    Staying sane.
    Interesting little tidbit from Craig Stitt about his first experiences with Sonic.

    From the Sega Retro Gamers Facebook page:
    https://www.facebook.com/groups/segaretrogamers/permalink/2967113380059677/
     
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  9. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    The way he describes rings in that story sounds VERY similar to how they work in the 8-bit version of Sonic 1... interesting...
     
  10. James Smith

    James Smith

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    I have a feeling both 16 bit and 8 bit versions were worked on at the same time during the mid point of the 16 bit version's development.
     
  11. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    I'm also assuming that the Chaos Emeralds hadn't been implemented yet, as going from an interview from some years back, he was under the impression that they didn't exist before Sonic 2. If the Sonic 1 builds he played had them, he probably wouldn't have made that mistake.
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2020
  12. Pengi

    Pengi

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    I recall Yuji Naka saying how hard it was to make the dropped rings effect work.

    Speaking of Sonic 1, Naoto Ohshima posted a break down of his contributions to the game: https://twitter.com/NaotoOhshima/status/1296149584498929664

    I think this is an important one to get an accurate translation of, if anyone wants to give it a go.
     
  13. Rudie Radio Waves

    Rudie Radio Waves

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    Many a game.
  14. Antheraea

    Antheraea

    Bug Hunter Member
    The ring splash account is fascinating to me because it made me realize not only how integral I find it in the games, but also I'm amazed it was more of a later addition!
     
  15. Pengi

    Pengi

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    Found a couple of mentions of the Ring system in interviews. There's probably more out there.

    http://shmuplations.com/sonic/

    —Why did you focus on “speed” as your development theme?

    Naka: I think Super Mario Bros. is a wonderful game, but if you play it everyday, you always have to start from stage 1-1, right? Once you get good and memorize the levels, you can just hold down the B button and run through the stage. But even then it just takes too long. With Sonic, I wanted to shorten that time if I could. My idea was that you’d progress slowly and carefully through the stages on your first playthroughs as you learned the enemy locations, but after you got used to it, you could really zoom straight through the levels. Unfortunately, everyone who playtested it just went full-speed from the very beginning. (laughs)
    —(laughs)
    Naka: I was like, “You’re doing it wrong!” (laughs) But seeing everyone play that way led me to develop the ring system, where as long as you had even one ring, you could still play recklessly and get through ok.

    https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132163/game_design_psychology_the_full_.php?print=1

    I also heard that originally, when Sonic would get hit, the rings would not come out. Is that true? And then that was later implemented to make it more interesting.

    HY: Well, I think the way rings shot out of you when you got hit was there from the beginning. But the Genesis's power means that you can only show so many rings at once, so we experimented a lot at first with having the rings flash and not overlap with each other and so on.
    After a while, though, we realized that having a ton of rings onscreen would be a selling point -- it'd show how cool the Genesis was, and it was visually interesting. So we tried our hardest to make that happen.
     
  16. Sara

    Sara

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  17. Knucklez

    Knucklez

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    I didn't know where else to post this but Netflix has a new limited series on the history of the games industry called HIGH SCORE. Pretty damn good and informative.

    Long story, short, in episode 4 of 6, they talk about the emergence of Sonic/SEGA and at the 12:31 mark of episode 4, they showed a brief clip of Act 1 Gust Planet from MarkeyJester's 'Sonic The Next Level' in between 2 cuts of Sonic 1 GHZ footage.

    Congratulations Markey, your hack made it into a Netflix documentary. That is all. :oldbie:

    EDIT: At the 32:30 mark, they show about 20 seconds of footage just from Gust Planet Act 2 alone while Chris Tang who won the Alcatraz 1994 SEGA World Championships playing Sonic & Knuckles is talking about the experience. Clearly, whoever worked on this series didn't do the proper research, lol. You even see the 'Jester Stream Technology' sign Markey put as his own touch.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2020
  18. raphael_fc

    raphael_fc

    Overthinking Sonic timelines. Member
    I was just going to comment that. It was very weird that Netflix was talking about Sonic's creation and glory days but the game that appeared the most was Sonic The Next Level.

    I didn't recognized it at first and Gust Planet was shown right after Green Hill. I was like "hey, was this a lost level?"
     
  19. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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