Based on this picture, I tried my hand at recreating it using Sonic's final sprite as a base Looks like they were going by the same approach as the title screen artwork EDIT 2: NEVER MIND, I'm BLIND APPARENTLY Spoiler EDIT: Ok, the foreground rock seems to move while the foreground trees seem stationary, does that mean that the rock was ment to be part of the background layer but set to scroll at a higher speed?
I did a super fast translation of the article. It's a bit sloppy, seeing that I haven't even had a cup of coffee this morning yet, and I left a little translation jargon in there. Upper left blue text: Definitive Comical Action Product (Pink) Sonic the Hedgehog (Temporary name) (Yellow) Release date undecided (publisher) Sega Price Undecided 4M (Megabit? 40,000 Yen? (I doubt that.)) Screen Shots are underdevelopment Main body: Introducing the rampaging comical character action game! The main character Sonic who appears to be ripped straight out of an American comic is incredibly cute. That (his?) movement also looks entirely like a scene from an anime. The graphics also make heavy use of primary colors and of course, two varieties of scrolling. As the screen scrolls faster, Sonic's legs also begin to move at super-fast speeds. Even the enemy characters appear to be nothing but a fun bunch that are impossible to hate. The day the Sonic whirlwind sweeps over doesn't seem to be too far off. Orange box text: Calling on the comical character. Big Screenshot (Robot jumping over Sonic): The map also looks incredibly busy somehow with the mountains and the valleys. (We're) already in deep gratitude to Sonic for fighting as hard as he can. Let's do our best. Close up of sonic walking: Naturally he is our idol Sonic. The big-head shape is good isn't it? (I'm not sure what constitutes as chibi, but the `????kanji implies the head and body are the same general size, so I went with big-head.) Title Screenshot: The beginning of the beginning of Sonic's journey. Screenshot with Sonic jumping next to the tree: Sonic's gallant figure as he soars high in the air. Not sure if that helps anything in any way, but it felt like a nice little exercise.
I think that the foreground trees were scrooling amongside the yellow rocks. Check the distance between palmtree's trunk and the rock, it is 6 couples of light-dark brown tiles in both of them. PS: your Thomas music will haunt me forever.
Whoops, must have miscounted when checking the amount of stripes on the grass, never mind That gets me thinking, how did they get 3 separate layers to scroll like that?
Yes I love it how these finds pop out of nowhere! Just got back from the local pub & loving these new screens, that gurnface enemy is really interesting after a few pints of cider Sonic's more rounded look is great, reminds me of the Sonic 3 era 3D renders.
Maybe the yellow rocks and the palmtrees were in the same sprite plane than Sonic and all other sprites but with th epriority flag set on. As we can see in the images, there are no HUD on there, so they could get removed because of interference with it.
Your recreation reminds me of Sonic's "mohawk spikes" used in SatAM and AoStH. I used this pic to show what I mean. The roundness of Sonic's head seems to indicate he may have had a single row of spikes. Perhaps Sonic Team also tried giving Sonic a CG look? It was said Sonic Team tried to achieve a CG look but by hand. Maybe they tried this with Sonic in the Alpha?
This is really great to see this in such clarity. I'm going to Japan in August so I'm going to look for gaming mags when I'm there. I doubt I'll find anything but it doesn't hurt to keep an eye out
Is it me or the palmtrees look completely different from those first-seen proto pictures? Also, that monster guy looks kinda different too.
Excellent translation! It's kind of ironic: SOA didn't like Sonic as they thought it wouldn't appeal to the US market, yet Sonic Team primary goal was to create an American-style character! It's also interesting that the name wasn't finalised at that point.
Wow, amazing scans there! Can't believe the clarity of those screenshots. When I think back to the one or two blurry screenshots we had back in the day, it's absolutely incredible that such clear material exists. Is this scan the first that suggests that the old screenshot of a title screen with a black background, which has been floating around for donkey's years, could be from this build? The screenshot in this article has all of the same differences (ring extends down further, "SONIC" text is smaller), though has obviously been taken a second or two earlier than the old screenshot. Really wish Mr. Naka had been able to include this in Mega Collection as he'd originally wanted - such a shame SEGA no longer had a copy. Saw someone mention drx might have a lead on this currently - if that information is accurate, then I'll be keeping my fingers crossed!
From what I heard from my brother, there's plenty of shops that sell tons of magazines going back to years ago. He was a Dreams Come True fanatic at the time and found magazines with interviews with them dating back to the early nineties. So it's not too far fetched you could find some old magazines over there.
A little research so far hasn't brought up any leads to purchase the actual magazine itself, but there were several other covers with Sonic on MegaDrive Fan, including one of him driving the Ferrari from OutRun, circa 1991.
I would love to know if there was a build that included these Marble Zone graphics, I wonder what surprises are hidden beyond Green Hill Zone?
We need to arrange for a new Sonic 1 hoax every month or so, considering every time one crops up on here we end up finding new legit information. If we stuck to that time table, we should have our hands on a proto by the end of the year :P
Part of me feels this was more of a mock up similar to Dust Hill. Mind you, I've no empirical evidence to back that up, so it's just conjecture.
Don't hold your breath. Ever since the Megaupload incident, drx has been paranoid about hosting downloads on his site. If he does find it, someone else would have to host it now because of his paranoia. No disrespect, but I think he's overreacting. Though that's just my thought on the matter. I suppose it could be argued that even prototype ROM images that are over a decade old have rights despite never being intended for public release. But whatever, we'll get to this issue when and if it actually happens.
