[Dioxaz]

Note that this is originally a French commercial (even the "Sega c'est plus fort que toi" has been translated litterally at the end). And I bet it would be exactly the same (but noone ever knows). Unfortunately, that French version can't be found anywhere.

[Elusive]

Deathbyteacup, on Dec 17 2005, 11:09 PM, said:

I've been analizing the frames. The ball looked sort of pasted on top to me, so I checked out the frames where the ball starts to go behind the left platform. If you look at this picture;



as the ball goes behind the left platform, a part of the platform goes missing, and the ball becomes slightly mishaped. If I had to have a theory, I would put forward the idea that in this version of the game, for whatever reason, the ball is not visable, and so this rather fancy ball was put on during editing (but rather sloppy, if I am right).

Pure speculation but hey, it does look too good for the Genesis to me.

I can equally see both. +1 vote for video quality. Play it in fullscreen and in Slow mode in WMP to see its fuzziness.

Also, how hard would it be to get a white sprite to move across the ball, to simulate the white reflection?

It almost looks like a ruby crystal smashing thing, not a great huge clod of earth XD

This post has been edited by Elusive: 17 December 2005 - 06:14 PM

[LocalH]

Elusive, on Dec 17 2005, 03:09 PM, said:

Something else I noticed: the ball does no damage to Sonic. He starts off in the middle of it :/

No, he doesn't. He's close, but he misses it just barely.

It's hard to tell, with this shitty video quality. If we somehow had a full resolution capture at 720x576, even from a shitty format like VHS, we might have a bit more luck at being able to tell. I think it's possible to do something sort of similar to that on the Genesis, but the absolute shit quality of the video severely hampers my ability to make any sort of determination at all about this particular effect.

[Spindash54]

For those that want to figure out timeline wise when this is, I'd say after the H.A.G. video. I loaded up the game and the BG is in the same position, where as in the H.A.G. commercial, the BG for GHZ wasn't yet lined up with the final BG location.

Also, I blame the "missing platform" on video quality. The right corner is rounded compared to the left, and is a little darker than the left, so crappy footage would make a disapearance seem likley.

This post has been edited by Spindash54: 17 December 2005 - 09:54 PM

[McAleeCh]

See those little bits of the tops of the cliff that stick up behind the top of the platform? The ball goes in front of the background, but behind those little bits that are close to the platform. =P That combined with the going-through-the-platform effect leads me to believe it's not just video quality, as those bits of cliff shouldn't show in front of the ball no matter what.

[LOst]

Whoa!
WTF yet another discovery of Sonic 1 OMGness. Seriously I bet this is the same version that has the planets left in MZ.

The ball has rotation animation which takes up crazy ROM space. And I mean it. I had to remove the Sega sound and all the animated flowers in GHZ to make the the planets fit into the ROM and get it under 512 MB.

The ball only update the white diamond thingy. The rest of the ball is just a static sprite. But still it would take a lot of ROM space. And yet another mystery to be solved. Thanks to the people who got the video, I am now a bigger fan of Sonic 1 Beta than Sonic 2 Beta.


EDIT: I can swear the HUD of that Sonic 1 version is different. Look at the RINGS counter, having one more white space between the text and the counter itself.

EDIT: No. It's still RINGSx999 format.


EDIT: I can tell this is a PAL version of Sonic 1 (big backdrop borders). H. A. G. was not PAL was it?

This post has been edited by LOst: 17 December 2005 - 11:11 PM

[Spindash54]

Alright, I checked the later portion of the video (with the fish badniks) and I can be assure you that this footage was taken post-H.A.G. The fish scene is from Act 1 (where the BG is out of allignment in H.A.G.) and the BG IS alligned with the final.

EDIT: I've got something NEW!!: Robotnik's lights are flashing blue on both sides (top of the chain). In the final it's red on the right. Any other shots of the boss show what color the lights are?

And LOst, you are right about this being PAL. The borders are extra long, but the BG and HUD are still in the same spots at the boss fight.

This post has been edited by Spindash54: 17 December 2005 - 11:11 PM

[Shade]

Holy crap, this is some weird shit :blink:

That looked to be moving way too smoothly for a Megadrive game, and such an early one at that. It didnt look like a shiny spot as much as it did as just a little diamond that is there for design. Still...This seems too advanced for the system. Perhaps it was edited in there, but the question remains: Why? And if this is somehow in-game, then why have we never seen a screenshot before?

Interesting stuff. I'm looking forward to any possible developments.

[LOst]

Shade, on Dec 18 2005, 07:10 AM, said:

Holy crap, this is some weird shit :blink:

That looked to be moving way too smoothly for a Megadrive game, and such an early one at that. It didnt look like a shiny spot as much as it did as just a little diamond that is there for design. Still...This seems too advanced for the system. Perhaps it was edited in there, but the question remains: Why? And if this is somehow in-game, then why have we never seen a screenshot before?

Interesting stuff. I'm looking forward to any possible developments.

Actually that is possible for a Genesis game. Thanks to the diamond being so small, it can be drawn in all rotating states. I think they removed it because it either took too much ROM space, or it looked bad. Since they had no 3D rendering software, the perspective of that diamond may have looked bad at some point.

Remember that Sonic 1 Beta had a lot of animated patterns.

[Spindash54]

Ok, now I'm really confused, this video shows Robotnik's lights being blue on both sides, the ball being red, the HUD saying RINGS, and the BG in proper alignment, yet this picture has RING, an out of allignment BG, Blue and Red lights, and the final ball:

http://www.sonic-cul...c1protoboss.gif

When the hell was this video in development?

EDIT: More proto pictures of Robotnik:

http://www.sonic-cul...gebin/gpe05.jpg
http://www.sonic-cul...gebin/gpe08.jpg
http://www.sonic-cul...gebin/right.jpg

This post has been edited by Spindash54: 17 December 2005 - 11:27 PM

[Tweaker]

You know, they may have changed it from RINGS to RING, then back to RINGS. They could have had something in development at the time that would require the usage of the different HUD, but scrapped it later and changed the HUD back.

Just a harmless theory though. It was probably all pasted together.

[Heran Bago]

Spindash54, on Dec 17 2005, 11:15 PM, said:

Ok, now I'm really confused, this video shows Robotnik's lights being blue on both sides, the ball being red, the HUD saying RINGS, and the BG in proper alignment, yet this picture has RING, an out of allignment BG, Blue and Red lights, and the final ball:

http://www.sonic-cul...c1protoboss.gif

When the hell was this video in development?

Naka: "You fool! Your english is terrible! Why did it say 'RINGS' in that last video?"
Slave: "Sorry I'll change it to 'RING'."

way later....

SOA: "Good job... But why does it say 'RING' rather than 'RINGS' in this video?"
Naka: "Umm.. Slight problem on our end. Lemme just go kill an underling."

[Shade]

I think we can be safe in believing this wasn't the beggining of development (maybe near it) because Green Hill is set at daytime. Unless the nightime GHZ shots were mock-ups, in which case it is news to me. LOst brings up a good suggestion though, as I am sure that thing would take up a good amount of memory. Just like the Marble Zone UFOs. Perhaps why both were scrapped. Memory combined with unsatisfaction in aesthetics.

Again, theory. Food for thought.

But damn this thing is weird. im suprised this is the first we've heard of it. You'd think it would've been in some other form of media, which only adds to its credibility as an in-game object, although it sure appears to be one.

The mind boggles.

[LOst]

Heran_Bago, on Dec 18 2005, 07:27 AM, said:

Spindash54, on Dec 17 2005, 11:15 PM, said:

Ok, now I'm really confused, this video shows Robotnik's lights being blue on both sides, the ball being red, the HUD saying RINGS, and the BG in proper alignment, yet this picture has RING, an out of allignment BG, Blue and Red lights, and the final ball:

http://www.sonic-cul...c1protoboss.gif

When the hell was this video in development?

Naka: "You fool! Your english is terrible! Why did it say 'RINGS' in that last video?"
Slave: "Sorry I'll change it to 'RING'."

way later....

SOA: "Good job... But why does it say 'RING' rather than 'RINGS' in this video?"
Naka: "Umm.. Slight problem on our end. Lemme just go kill an underling."

ROFLMAO.


You people must realize that source code can be removed by macro defines. If I have a wild guess, I would say the planets and the spinning ball have been part of the source code all the time. Naka just sets a flag to compile it using the heavy animations when it was time to make some commercials. A special build for a commercial.



EDIT: We now have 3 things we know for sure stayed in Sonic 1 until the very last minute:
1. MZ Planets.
2. Spinning ball.
3. Sound Test breakdancing.

This post has been edited by LOst: 17 December 2005 - 11:54 PM

[Spindash54]

I'm just a little wracked on where/when the blinking lights were implemented.

I can understand the UFO's and ball being macro enabled, but why should the blue/red&blue lights be a part of this. They're not anything special gained by a macro define.