New Sonic 1 Alpha Screens Discovered

Sonic does match the slope in both 1 & 2, though I find it's more sensitive in Sonic 1. In Sonic 2 he needs to be on a steeper slope before he rotates. I think it's because there's one more step of rotation in Sonic 1's sprite.

 

I apparently confused the slope behavior in Retro Engine Sonic with the original. It's touchy in Sonic 1 but definitely possible.

 

Hi, I rescanned the shots from that other magazine and did some semi-professional cleanup.







This was from the archive at the Brian Sutton Library at the Strong Museum of Play. I can tell you that there are no more shots from this particular build in their archive of Japanese game magazines, though there's a bunch of shots from non-final builds (that may or may not be online already).

 

Those look very nice!

I'm curious as to what other Japanese magazines they have...

 

Sonic just angles differently in S2 because his angle is sometimes offset by -1. You can see it under SAnim_WalkRun. Porting it gives you pretty 1:1 Sonic 2 behaviour. I always found S1's behaviour to be too sensitive, to the point of facing into the floor in the start of SYZ3. Even in that old image, he looks to be leaning too much.

 

Your friendly neighbourhood DaGuAr did this sprite recreations of the badnick and those beta screen ( why is him trapped in pending member limbo yet?)



A more natural looking pallete:

And a spritesheet. He says you can use it for everything you want, but only if you give him credit

 

On that note, Mistergambit seems to be up to something as well.

 

If a real version of this is ever found, it'll be interesting to see how close you guys get.

All these screenshots heighten the contrast - I wouldn't be surprised if the palette wasn't that much different from the final Sonic 1.

 

Awesome stuff guys, do you reckon there's any more to discover from these scans?

 

Does anyone have a clue as to what his name was/is? Or are these few shots and that one ol' concept drawing all we have and know of this fanged, blueberry boss dude?

 

It was probably their idea of a 'Goomba' character for the game. That's all I'd assume it was.

I really prefer S1's background mountains for GHZ over the final version's, if there's anything I can really say about the alpha shots of Sonic 1. Other than that, while I really like the trees and rocks in the foreground, I can see why they may have been taken out. They're much more intrusive on seeing where you're going than the tower-poles in say, Star Light Zone.

 

Who knows, we have got tons of potential good members who did the right thing and followed all the rules and yet still are trapped with no way of getting out other then to wait.

 

Because to get out of pending member limbo you're dependent on a mod taking you out, and things often fall through the cracks

anyways, VEDJ-F from SSMB, who's been doing some interesting speculative research on characters in Sonic, PM'd me this regarding the names of Sonic's band members;

EDIT: Additional

 

That's very speculative It's important to think about Sonic's origins and what those names mean in Japanese, too.

"Sonic" the character has a strong connection with flight. A fake origin story that Sonic Team sometimes told was that the first test pilot to break the sound barrier (before Chuck Yeager) crashed and died immediately after the record was broken, and on his flight jacket that was recovered and given to his widow was the character of Sonic the Hedgehog. The term "super sonic" is common in Japanese to refer to traveling faster than the speed of sound.

Mach is, to the common person, first and foremost a number used to measure the speed of an aircraft.

Vector is also common in aviation, used in terms such as thrust vector, lift vector, and intercept vector.

Max, of course, could refer to anything.

Which leaves Sharps. In Japanese, ??????(shaapusu) does not really mean anything. Sharp, however, can mean, in order of commonness: 1) sharpness (of a knife), 2) sharpness (of a picture), 3) cunning, 4) abbreviation of sharp pencil (a.k.a. a mechanical pencil), and 5) musical notation. There is a famous jazz band in Japan called Sharps and Flats. It's hard to find any direct flight connection here, unless I'm missing the reference.

So I think that VEDJ-F is right in the sense that these words are sound-related, but I think that connection with sound comes first from their use in aviation (aside from Sharps).

As others have said, Sonic Team probably didn't put this much thought into it so we are over-analyzing

Edit: I did see those dates for Madonna in Collected Works, but it's hard to know if they are based on something or just the author's guess.

 

Vector is playing a synthesizer in the band pic, so being named after Vector Synthesis would make the most sense to me.

Maybe Sega had an idea similar to Damon Albarn's cartoon band 'Gorillaz', where Sonic & Co where a band who wrote all the in game music. That sure would explain the sound test a bit better.

 

The speculative research mention I made is more because she's been researching character creation credits for a while now :P

 

The "vector" in Vector Synthesis is written "bekutoru" in Japanese, which does not match how the character is named.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%99%E3%82%AF%E3%83%88%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B7%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BB%E3%82%B7%E3%82%B9

The character is named?"bekutaa" as in the flight-related terms.

 

Just wanna say. This is a great find and thanks for adding some of this stuff to the wiki.

 

Those who usually do the validation approvals are usually bogged down by real life responsibilities. Best people can do is poke around in the IRC.