New information from Naoto Ohshima regarding the 1990 TTS Demo

Hey again everyone!
About a year and two months ago, I managed to find out from Naoto Ohshima himself that the famous image of Sonic and Madonna with all the strange creatures and "Bee Eggman" was set in a world of Nightmares, and was likely the very first draft for the game's story. That was kind of crazy for me, getting to share that with my really bad video from last year, but I have something new from Ohshima again, and I can verify it anyway you may see fit, as it is from his verified Twitter account, which follows me, this time regarding the 1990 Tokyo Toy Show Prototype.



I linked my video exactly when I talk about it, but in case you don't want to watch, a few months back a new magazine article was found talking about the Tokyo Toy Show demo, and mentioned that Sonic could "Punch and kick enemies" This... didn't sit right with me, and since I got lucky the first time, I went to Ohshima himself about this and he told me this.

"At that time, the game design had not been decided yet"

I think this pretty much settles whether or not the TTS demo was a autodemo or not, and all signs now point to it being a small demo of Sonic running through the early Green Hill Zone, jumping (Sans Spin Jump) over a enemy or two and then running past the infamous sign (Ohshima also told me he didn't remember what the bottom of the sign said, I really wanted to help solve THAT)

I also believe that the Toy Show Demo was infact the demo that was used to pitch Sonic to higher ups. Like it was said before, Sonic mostly won out due to the team having more to show off then the other teams, like plushies and other stuff. I think the demo was reused to quickly give Sega something to show off to prove they had SOMETHING to compete against Super Mario World and the Super Famicom. Heck, this may even show Sonic as a design was chosen before his iconic rolling abilities were considered, changing a bit about what we know about Sonic 1s development. Also possible, the demo was made with the rabbit in mind, and in June 1990 they had only recently started implementing Sonic into the demo.

Either way, I thought I would share this with you all. Choose to not watch my video or not, that's fine, but I think this was important enough to make a post about. If not, a mod can remove it.

 

Thanks for showing me that! That kind of lends to the theory then! Of course "Test map" doesn't necessarily mean "Version of Toy Show" but I do think that Sonic may have JUST been implemented recently!