Actually, that did end up on the retail models. I have two Game Gears, the earlier one (serial # 106780) has that same flat screen.
Weird, I have like 8 of them around my apartment and none of them have that style faceplate. Do you have pics?
Here you go. I also just noticed the "curves" around the D-pad and buttons are more smoothed out on the earlier model.
There's some Sonic 1 prototype footage starting at 7:09 here from a test show of Nick Arcade, just uploaded on YouTube recently by someone. We get to see the rolling Green Hill Zone ball in action.
Wow, I'm rather amazed that it has near Sonic like physics... That curve and hill being there makes a lot of sense now d=
That has got to be the best quality footage of that to date, amazing. Doesn't show much, but you can clearly see the difference in ring placement. Edit: Wonder if there's any chance this will slip into an update for Sonic 1 mobile, now that we know how it actually looked in action?
Very cool. Can kinda see as to why the rolling ball was removed. Since it automatically starts moving when Sonic passes it, I'd guess that it would actually hurt you if it came into contact, and they perhaps didn't want to introduce something like that in the first part of the first level in the first game. Either that or it hurt Sonic at inappropriate times during development, and they didn't have a whole lot of time to fix such a minor mechanic, so they removed it. Who knows. How does footage like this surface just now?
Youtube has a slow mo feature, If you watch carefully, the ball actually pushes Sonic while rolling back up the hill without causing any damage. Sonic can also stand on top ( of course that part is obvious lol ) The idea of the ball hurting Sonic being planned is very possible but was not implemented at this time.
I can see why they got rid of it, it would very much break the level flow even for experienced players, let alone stumbling newbies in 1991 who had never played a game like it before. Still, really cool to see some footage of it in action.
Hey guys, look at the timer and then listen to the music. Notice anything odd? Also, the set where the chequered ball is placed basically makes it the evolution of that certain apple in Castle of Illusion (and I'm guessing it's still possible that it might hurt Sonic when rolling faster, but who knows). It would be interesting to see which slopes were originally designed with that object in mind.
Which reminds me. I remember finding the wrecking ball art in the graphic banks for Marble Zone in the iPod click wheel port. They're in the banks for all three acts of GHZ/MBZ, they aren't in any other stage graphic bank besides those two stages. Makes me wonder if they were planning to put the ball somewhere in that stage as well (the first steep slope that you encounter before you go underground in act 1 seems like a good place to put it). That port included other known unused art as well, including the UFOs that were originally found in the mobile phone port.
Wow, the ball seems to have very, very accurate physics! It almost feels like a physics test object of sorts, as it interacts to the terrain in almost the same way sonic does (with much more momentum behind it, as well). Now, that we have such an accurate video of it, it might be possible for hackers to rebuild the object! I would do it myself, but I'm not very good at editing objects yet...
I know what happened to the wrecking ball- it became Tails :v: Accurate physics and nothing can get in its way.
Also, no one's mentioned this before. The snare drum that plays is a different pitch and sounds almost like the snare featured from the demo tracks on the CD that was released a few years a go. The different snare was pointed out before in the CES 91 video and one of the commercials for the game, but you can clearly hear it in this video. I also did some digging around because I could've sworn I heard a version of the music with the snare at that pitch and I believe I've found it. I mentioned it part of my SEGA Sharp X68000 thread years a go. Listen to this: Ending Credits MDX I don't know who made the MDX versions, but they sound incredibly accurate. The file stamp I have on the files are from 10/18/1996. Weird. I think the files are really from 2004, though. You can grab the MDX files here. I forgot where I grabbed these...
Interesting! At first I thought the ball may be a tad scripted, but I re-watched the video and noticed that it starts to roll down the hill to the left.
The ball and all that is interesting... But to note, when the boy starts playing, it gets later into the song while the time is at 0:00.. That is clearly impossible, unless the pause function didn't pause out music at the time. EDIT: TheStoneBanana checked it out, and he said out that the music is still playing and not coming to a halt, but the audio is mute.
