If I remember correctly, the Archie comics used and 'Uekawa-fied' them in recent issues as Mina's band. Given Mina herself is now 'retired' it's likely we won't see much of them again. The band members interest me, but I can see why they were dumped. They seemed pretty superfluous to the game, unless it was meant to have a more coherent story originally. Perhaps if they had gotten in, we would have gotten one as the next playable character over Tails and Knuckles. Somehow Underground seems to have a closer link to the games now. :P
It looks nothing like him, so I don't think so. Chirps Sharps might have been omitted from the ending just because there were too many characters in the same scanline already, but not removed from the Sonic universe till SoA stepped in. Didn't he still appear in those old wallpapers with the monkey (which was colored blue, probably so it would use Sonic's palette)?
According to the Naoto Oshima interview in Collected Works (page 329), "The band was comprised of Sonic as the lead singer, Vector the Crocodile on the keyboard, Mach the Rabbit on drums, Max the Monkey on bass and Sharps the Parakeet on guitar."
Parakeet? Hold on, what? Huh. Maybe they changed it from a Chicken when they realised they wanted him to fly in the end.
Right, here's a higher quality photo I just took of part of the ending which shows that it's the band, and that's definitely Sharps The Parakeet and the rest of the band. All agreed? EDIT: I may have misread the previous posts, but I got the feeling people were confused about Chirps. He's this fella:
I'd say that's right! Would have really been interesting to see these characters realized (Vector excluded of course).
Well y'know, Vector looked pretty different too, so maybe if they had been in there earlier, his design may not have had time to be refined further for the 32X. Current Vector is definitely a product of his time.
And even then he got a noticeable redesign in Heroes, even going back a bit to his bulkier form. Sharps looks slightly taller in that promo piece, but in some of those storyboards he looks huge, with grand wings rather than just slinky hands.
There's been other pieces of the opening, final boss, ending cutscene, etc shown on SSMB already. I know we were talking about preserving the content for the sake of not spoiling everything the book has to offer, but since it was someone else posting it up is it cool if I throw it in here? I'm sure you guys will want to see it if you haven't migrated to SSMB to take a peek yet. EDIT: Ech, thought I was editing this post instead of making a new one below it. Delete this one, I guess.
Well, I guess I'll go ahead and share all of these, since they're out there and there's basically no way I could let Sonic Retro go without seeing this. (Spoilered for size.) Intro and title screen: Spoiler This whole thing is so dang charming. Also, the original title screen idea with the stars coming into place is beyond awesome. I'd love to see a recreation of that. Original continue / game over screens, end of stage bonus, wrecking ball boss / animal capsule concepts, and stage clear scenarios: Spoiler Looks like they either intended the 'game over' thing to either be a lot shorter than it ended up being, or it was different altogether and brought you to a shot of GHZ. Also, some interesting stuff about Sonic obtaining a key! And that boss.. man, seeing that Sonic's band-mate friends were supposed to be trapped with the little animals for some reason makes a bit more sense out of things. Final boss and ending scenarios: Spoiler The final boss is really similar to Sky Base from S1GG/MS, and the ending is overall a lot more cinematic. Seems like they vibed the idea of how they originally planned the ending so much that they turned around and used the same type of ending for Sonic 2. I've always loved Sonic 1 but at the same time always found that it had this sort of "empty" quality I couldn't properly describe. Like there was something missing despite it feeling like a complete game. It really becomes apparent when you compare how solid 2, 3K and CD are compared to the first title, but I always assumed it was because they were sequels and generally just did a better job. Now that we're seeing all these shots of the band being a part of the original game, its coming together like pieces to a long lost puzzle. Its hard to imagine what Sonic would've been like if this is how it would've been, though. Would it even have been as successful? Would the sequels even have turned out the way they did, if at all? Looking at this is like looking at some alternate reality where Sonic became a similar, yet completely different thing. Can't wait to see some transcripts of Naka, Oshima and Yasuhara's interviews. This stuff is so dang good.
Wow, these concept sketches are amazing. It looks like the game's intent was for Sonic to save his band members from Robotnik, maybe through 5 levels (1 for each of the 4 members, then a 5th for Robotnik's factory). Each band member trapped in a containment, then released when the boss is defeated. These concepts definitely reflect well towards Sonic 8-Bit's design. But, why was there a change of direction for the 16-Bit game? And was there little time for the 8-Bit version to follow its 16-Bit counterpart?
My guess is time constraints. Same reason that Hidden Palace was removed from Sonic 2. These concepts are great, but the more grand your concept is, the more time it takes to implement. The team probably recognized that they would be behind schedule if they used everything in their sketches, so they simplified everything. I'd love to see these ideas in a ROM hack. :P Or perhaps Sonic Overture.
A lot of S1 concept art has Sonic jumping, but not curled jnto a ball. I wonder if there was just a normal jump at some point.
I was just gonna mention Sonic Overture. To be honest, I love all of these scrapped Sonic 1 concepts. I kinda wish Sonic 1 would be remade so they can be used, but I guess that's what Sonic Overture is for. I have to agree with Azukara. Sonic 1 feels empty compared to the Sonic we would eventually get with the introduction of Tails, the Death Egg, Knuckles, Metal Sonic, Amy, Little Planet, Angel Island, and everything else Sega of Japan introduced to Sonic "lore" during the classic era. That's not to mention Sega of America's concepts such as Mobius and the Freedom Fighters. The more I see these scrapped Sonic 1 concepts, the more I'm convinced the "blank slate" quality Sonic 1 had wasn't deliberate. It's obvious Ohshima had a distinct vision for the series that had to be compromised either due to time constraints or Sega of America's own vision for the series which resulted in things such as SatAM.
Just wanted to point out again how crazy similar the game gear/master system ending is to this story board ending. Even the boss is very similar.
The more of this is out on the open the more I get the sense that the major struggle of ownership and design between multiple entities predated even the first game.
Honestly, I feel that had Sega established Sonic's band as the cast of characters, there wouldn't be all of these separate continuities with different characters. AoSTH, SatAM, the Archie comics, the Fleetway comics, Underground, Boom, they probably wouldn't even exist. Even the Japanese continuity feels disconnected between the classic games, the Adventure era games, and the "Orbot era" (Unleashed to Lost World) games. That's not to mention the OVA and the various mangas.
