I kinda think Sonic is being kicked back and not jumping. If you swap 7 and 8 you can see it as Sonic being kicked almost straight up then the mob standing idle for awhile after kicking. As a side note the cloud is behind Sonic(look at the tiny cloud) but in front of the Palm tree. Dunno what's up with that.
The motion of the cloud is the biggest indicator as to what the correct order is - based on the whole set of images, it seems like the clouds auto-scroll right-to-left, similar to Green Hill's clouds in the final REV01 version of the game. The cloud in image 8 (where the enemy is jumping/kicking) has scrolled further to the left compared to image 7 (where the enemy is standing still) - this would indicate that the current order (7 then 8, making it appear that Sonic is jumping upwards and to the right) is the correct one.
i wasn't inclined to think of the blue structures in the background of this as buildings, but i just noticed the 'land of nightmares' art..... has some blue skyscrapers in the back right. (https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sonic_Gems_300.jpg) combined with the palm trees on the left, i think we could reasonably call this art a depiction of this original incarnation of green hill/nevergreen(?).
Nevergreen/Green Hill is embedded in Sonic DNA, it even predates Dr. Robotnik. We shall have Green Hill in all future titles Tbh. I would love an IDW comic to explore an alternative world based on early Sonic. Fighting that Nightmare King (or whatever he's called) and bumblebee Robotnik.
It's not exactly like REV01 - given the clouds seemingly draw on top of everything, and I think there's two moving at different rates, so I'd put money on them being sprites, along with the foreground trees and rocks. The mountains (and city structures?) are one background layer, while the floor Sonic walks on is the second. So it's parallax in the sense that different elements are scrolling at different speeds, but they're not using as much fancy line horizontal line background trickery as the final game. I assume the rocks move at a slightly different speed to the trees to get to "seven layers" but it's really hard to tell from these shots. From what I can see it's "cloud 1, cloud 2, mountains, city, floor, foreground trees... and maybe rocks?". One day we'll see it in motion I'm sure.
I really hope so - I know it's only short and likely an autodemo, but I'd love to see this rediscovered some day. It'd great just to see the first ever demo of the game with my own eyes - plus, who knows if more things not used in the demo itself could be buried beneath the surface...? Funny to think that if Naka had got his way, we'd have already had this for nearly two decades and the magazine scans would be more of a curio than anything. Such a shame the demo went AWOL and scuppered his plans...
Sorry to double-post - just checked Bi-Weekly Famicom Tsushin #106 as it's now been uploaded, and there don't appear to be any further screenshots from the demo in there. So looks like #105 was the only issue to feature it. Makes me wonder though - since EGM clearly ripped off one of Famitsu's shots of the game re: the one with the famed sign, do you think there's a chance the other one (showing Sonic standing still) could also have been stolen from another Japanese magazine? It'd be interesting if that shot also exists in higher quality out there somewhere...
I feel the bigger picture may have been missed here. A photographer (probably several) took these pictures. It could be that EGM paid the photographer, the same one who delivered for the Japanese magazine, rather than them taking it from that magazine. I doubt the photographer got credited for their work though, so it would be difficult to track down. But if magazines do have higher-quality copies than what was printed, that would be interesting to get hold of.
It's difficult to know how the images were captured, but it looks as if the Japanese mags had a direct feed from... somewhere. The pixels are pretty prestine. Whereas that other EGM shot... ...is less so. My gut feeling is this is from a camera pointed at a monitor - there's a slight curve, the cloud is less clear (motion blur?) and there's more contrast. All the other screenshots have similar issues. But we could still get lucky and find a similar screenshot from the same place in-game.
Maybe these screenshots came from a video tape of the game being played (e.g. if what Naka says is true about the game being playable, then maybe the game was played by one of Sega's programmers for demo purposes to record on video). Could the magazines could take a still frame shot of a video tape recording and print it on the pages?
When the day comes for the original prototype of Sonic 1 to be released I will attempt to build a time machine to go back and share the prototype to the internet.
I wonder if Famitsu or any other magazines of the time actually had a cartridge of it, and if so, if they or anyone who worked for them held onto it. Here’s to hoping that someday, somehow, we finally get it dumped and released.
Of course I can't be 100% sure, but at the time from what I've read, Japanese magazines got screenshots by photographing the screen. The screenshots look so good because they had really good setups. Within the office, they typically had an RGB monitor with a camera permanently set up in front of it dedicated to screenshots. I've come across photos of these setups before but can't recall where right now. At a trade show, they had to take cameras with them and set up on the spot, so variations in printed screenshots likely reflect that some of the photographers just didn't get set up as well as others. Of course, there were also instances where publishers sent promotional photos if a playable prototype wasn't available yet. In 1990, I'm not sure if there was any technology readily available to magazine publishers to get screenshots other than photographing the screen. And it might not have been necessary since photographing, if done well, could produce good results.
I don't see it mentioned here but I like the idea that the text behind Sonic on the sign says "NEVER SEEN" over the "NEVERGREEN" idea. As if the sign was to welcome you to the never before seen game.
