I grabbed the episodes of Nick Arcade that had Sonic 2 off of P+ and compiled them into one video. Highest quality source we now have afaik.
I had no idea that Nick Arcade was on Paramount+, but it was on Nickelodeon forever ago so I should have expected that. Great find!
I'm a little surprised that Paramount+ would include this show in their roster given its age. I guess they really are intent on putting everything on the platform. They wouldn't happen to have the test episode on there, do they? I seem to recall a Sonic 1 prototype was included in it.
It always bothered me how anyone could struggle to get 25 rings. It’s sooooo easy. How was this so hard for people? *Jackie Chan meme* lol. Anyway I loved this show. I always remember this one part. The players were shown a series of flashing images and were told to name 3 office supplies. Obviously there were other pictures thrown in. When the first player answered they said...cheeseburgers, which were part of the loop. Clearly they didn’t hear Phil say office supplies. I found this hysterical. That cheeseburgers would be an office supply. It just really struck me. I pictured a desk drawer full of cheeseburgers. It still makes me laugh. Always wanted a revival with modern games but Nick’s gameshows don’t last long anymore. It has nothing to do with the pandemic either. Family Guts. It was terrible though. Double Dare with Liza Koshy and Marc Summers. Tournaments were Season 2. Figure it Out revival. I barely noticed it was on. Keep it Spotless. This was a fun idea. Based on a UK show I see. Crystal Maze. Just noticing it’s also based on a British show. Season 2 is happening. Tooned In. Still on I guess. I would have loved it as a kid. Seems it was pitched in the 90s.
Fascinating to see this in decent quality. 20 years too late, but no squinting to see that shorter building in Chemical Plant Zone.
Amazing to see in good quality after all these years - even though we now have playable prototype matching this, it's still fascinating to see as a historical document. If we'd had this footage available in this quality back in the day, there would never have been any debate on whether Chemical Plant really had purple buildings in early builds or whether it was just severe colour-bleed due to the poor quality footage, haha! Obviously the discovery of the proto already answered this question definitively beforehand, but it's nice to see that it would have been clearly visible on original broadcast.
One thing I really like about this clip at the end is it demonstrates how unintuitive the spindash is. Melissa (funny coincidence) tries to go up the slope but can't manage it because she doesn't have enough momentum. But because she doesn't know to use the spindash she does what I often did in Sonic 1 as a kid, run back and forth to get up the slope like an idiot. It would have been nice for the game to teach you how to use it.
Not many people tend to read a game's manual, I guess? I think my brother and I also failed to do so a few times ^^" But on that case, they really had no manual to get a clue. So it's understandable that one might mess up in the game.
This makes me wish things could go full circle by having Melissa Joan Hart play some role in the Sonic 2 movie... not likely, but still. Either way, this makes sense to put on Paramount+; Disney+ has its share of old content added for completeness. Must be Sega and Paramount having a long history going back.
Its kinda weird seeing someone nearly break out into tears after their first time playing Sonic, but I guess that is what happens when you aren't given time to run and experiment. tbh those ramps are kind of there to teach you momentum tricks. Grabbing so many rings in 30 seconds your very first time playing is kind of an unreasonable ask.
I imagine there's some link somewhere to that video, but I'm not going to point to any full-length videos that aren't authorized. However, you can find the Sonic 1 prototype gameplay footage on YouTube: It looks a lot like the build that was dumped on New Year's Day.