New Sonic 1 Alpha Screens Discovered

Satakore edition (1.008) does have symbols. Also, apologies... JP retail does have symbols, too. Mostly the same as Satakore. See my new symbol dumping thread in Reverse Engineering for full details on the symbols in all versions.

 

Bumping this as even more new screens have surfaced thanks to VGDensetsu on Twitter, including an idle frame for the weird goblin enemy and a readable version of the famed "WELCOME" sign...!



(Note that the image here is just the Twitter preview - full uncompressed scans of the whole magazine can be found via a link in the source tweet)
https://mobile.xcancel.com/VGDensetsu/status/1421763197984464897/photo/1

 

Very interesting!
NEVE***EN

 

The TCRF Page has been updated already, but I had a minute and swapped around the progression of some of the new images based on the level layout/background details and Sonic's position in relation to other shots. As this seems to have been a rolling demo, these additional shots help give us an even clearer picture of how things played out. In particular, one of the new shots helps confirm that Sonic is indeed jumping over one of the hopping blue goblin things seen in previous shots when he appears to be walking through the air, suggesting he had no specific jump animation at this point.

Yes, if you look at the sizing of the characters it looks like there's three letters obscured, though one of those may be a blank space between words. Current best guess seems to be "NEVER SEEN" - presumably referring to Sonic himself, though I suppose it could also be some weird portmanteau word like "NEVERGREEN" or something. Short of uncovering another shot with slightly different timing - or the fabled ROM itself - we're still only able to speculate on the full message.

...And on that note - edited the TCRF article further to remove speculation as to what the sign might say behind Sonic's head. It's important to stick to the facts, so we should only transcribe what's actually visible until we find conclusive proof of what it actually says.

 

This magazine really suggest (even more) Sonic does not turn into a ball when he jumps.

 

Thats pretty cool.

 

Ran out of free time to do so, otherwise that would have been my next job! I'll try to remember to take a look next time I get a moment free, assuming nobody else has managed to beforehand.

 

Nice find. I knew the clouds were on a layer above the "デビュー接近" text at the end of the demo sequence, but didn't realize (or forgot) they were also on top of the middle palm tree layer. Looking back, it's visible in older screenshots too, but more obvious now.

 

The text reveals some interesting info about the gameplay mechanics. It says Sonic kicks and punches through the stages to take care of enemies.

The bottom right shot with the new still enemy frame seems to imply Sonic had a dash move that rammed into enemies to get rid of them. This gives me the impression Sonic's in the air because he just ran into that enemy, rather than jumping. That makes this other shot of the enemy in this sideways pose make a bit more sense if he was just hit.



The still pose in the new scan might be because it takes more than one hit to defeat it or something.

The bottom left shot says that Sonic's dash can hurt him if he runs into a building. I can't even imagine what they're talking about since all the buildings clearly look like a background element and not something he'd run into.

Weird thinking how different the gameplay they originally had in mind would have changed the series.

 

https://ia601401.us.archive.org/vie...- No. 105 July 20th 1990.cbz&file=img0185.jpg
Full resolution.

Looks like EGM stole one of the images from Famitsu (which wasn't unusual).

https://archive.org/details/@hubz
Might want to see if the next issue is uploaded, just in case.

 

It was probably implemented differently, but that dash move sounds an awful lot like the Boost.

 

This gives me hope, that some day we will uncover the Rom of this prototype as well. Great find!

 

If it wasn't for the size of that uncompressed scan of the whole magazine, we would have it on Retro CDN by now (even with the recent "laziness" of our server ) ... but 1.1 G exceeds our limit...

 

Just realised that although I said three obscured characters here, all my examples of what the full message might read used four characters to fill in the blanks. Pretty sure I was mentally counting the partially visible character as an "R", even though there isn't enough of it visible to confirm that, and had mentally subtracted it from my numbering. I meant four obscured characters, which looking at the character widths I still believe to be correct - apologies for the error and any confusion caused...!

EDIT: Finally had a chance to check properly - unless there's variable-width characters involved and one's a thin one like an "I", it's almost certainly three characters after all. Mental note to self - wait until you can check before posting...!

 

Amazing find.

I think “nevergreen” would be clever and a possibility. A game about nature vs technology and a hip smart hedgehog with attitude? I could definitely imagine that on the sign, and there seems to be enough room for it.

 

The "Nevergreen" does sound a bit like an early name for Green Hill Zone. It's purely speculation on my part of course, but is this any different to "Genocide City"? A Japanese Person hearing some cool words in English, and mashing them together?

Time will tell, maybe it's a similar mystery to Sonic Crackers - "clackers", and the answer is right under our noses.

 

I'm probably not the first to bring this up, but I'm curious so screw it, why not?

What are the chances that Sonic occasionally doing an air-walk jump in Sonic 1 is carried over from the prototype when he didn't curl up while jumping?

 

Wow, another demo image! And other ones in a clearer shot. And now we know which magazine it came from!

I'd guess the text was meant to say "Evergreen", but hearing it sounds like 'Never'green to a Japanese person?

Or maybe the "Ev..." sound isn't something that a Japanese person can enunciate? So they place an "N" to make it sound similar?

 

In boost games you're not hurt, but you're smashed and fall almost literally flat, losing a bit too much time and of course all your momentum. I suppose they refer to any kind of solid wall.