New Sonic 1 Alpha Screens Discovered

Going to another topic, but has there been a statement or something if these structures are supposed to be city buildings?




They even seem to be featured in the post-Twin Stars artwork.

 

Did the same for this lil part it missed

 

Oh wow, I've never noticed this! I've always assumed that they were meant to be mountains because of this piece of concept art.



Then again, aside from the foreground palm tree and Sonic's pose, it looks a lot more like the final Green Hill.

 

...That's concept art? Where the hell is that from?

 

I found that picture. I didn't make a big deal out of it, but it was interesting.

 

It's not concept art. It's art made by the S.P.E.C magazine. If you look at the artstyle and the signatures, it's clear that they're not Oshima's drawings.

 

Then the wiki needs to be corrected. The page for Sonic 1's development correctly attributes it to SPEC, but incorrectly claims it to be concept art.

 

I say the wiki page needs to be completely rewritten. A lot of it is inaccurate and out of order.

 

Wow, for the past decade, I've been under the impression it was some kind of concept art (albeit different artist, obviously).

 

Great to see that sign clearly. I remember the Nevergreen speculations.

So, are we sure that it's actually game related? Maybe it's there to promote the Toy Show or something related instead? Maybe it's a sign for the player?

There's also a new, interesting mystery arising, how much Twin Star concepts were still considered at the time of this demo production? We have Sonic and the nightmarish enemy. Was it a leftover? Was Sonic sprite implemented over existing TwinStar ones? What's the "real" history of Eggman the Bublebeeman?

I want answers damn it!

 

I have feeling only Green Hill exists on this build.

With lucky, maybe Marble Zone is hidden on it somehow.

 

While I agree with that ^ obtaining a ROM might prove to show hidden stuff within once it's dissassembled and auto-play (which I also agree with being in this ROM) is disabled. Kinda like the S2 auto-demo we had, so keep your chin up

 

The question is, is this magazine reporting on a demo shown at a fair, or were they given a copy of said demo to preview in the mag itself? If it's the latter, maybe recovery of this is possible after all.

 

I know nothing, but I would seriously doubt multiple cartridges were created for such a brief (apparently) demo that isn't ready to really be "reviewed" yet.

But even if a magazine had a copy, they all speak Japanese, and nearly all of us have no connections there. So I am not so hopeful under those circumstances.

I personally believe the best chance is Sega having the ROM internally... *somewhere*. Just because they looked for it and found nothing doesn't mean Sega doesn't still have it. But then again, how would we get that ROM?

So either way, short of Sega in some official capacity releasing it, I think it's unlikely we'll ever recover it anytime soon, if at all.

 

SEGA almost certainly has some beta assets we don't have access to, as the origins music fiasco more or less proved, but I'd also be surprised if they have much more than what we do, and even 'more' surprised if they have this.

Given that this game was developed entirely in Japan, and this specific demo was never shown OUTSIDE Japan, the chances of obtaining it are very low. Especially since even Naka tried to find it, but failed.

Impossible? No. But as with many things, it could either be in the hands of specific employees who won't give it up right now (maybe Naoto has it and Naka was not in contact with him at that time, though this is very, very unlikely), or it's simply in storage somewhere within a SEGA building, and the chances of us uncovering that are next to zilch as long as Sega is in business at that same location.

Nearly all of our leaks have come from press shows or carts that circulated in publications, especially western ones. Uncovering the Sonic 1 beta was a damned miracle far beyond any other. Finding this would be far harder.

Turns out we were more likely to discover actual Sand Shower tiles than this one. At least so far.

Personally, I think the best route to finding more of this demo aside from magazine scans is to some day uncover video footage of the demo at TGS1990, but that too would be very, very difficult.

 

I'm in favor of existing TGS1990 footage only having a small visible area (think the Sonic news dev video Naka shared).

 

Do people from Japan make communities focused on preserving things, like the westerners do?

 

Technically, they do... but because the copyright law is a nightmare over there, most people who collect or preserve media in Japan don't actually publish them online, they just share them in-person. Only non-Japanese users can freely share them online.

 

There are a select few people who dump games over there, I've worked with one before myself when I got Cooly Skunk for SFC dumped. They keep themselves scarce when it comes to the actual release of ROMs though, which is smart because as said above, copyright is taken more seriously in Japan.

There's no real communities that exist like in the western world, but there does seem to be a niche of prototype collectors who are aware of one another. As Chimes said, I've seen they do sometimes exchange things, there's even a Youtuber who got someone to give them an unreleased Saturn game (Monica's Castle) on the grounds they only play it and return it afterward.

 

Thank you for providing that information. So there's hope we'll see some videos, new scans, or maybe even the prototype itself some day.