We didn't start bitching about the characters until we were forced to play as them in Sonic Adventure. Each of them had their own gameplay style and they just weren't as fun as Sonic's. The voice acting and dialogue for the characters didn't help either. The band members, on the other hand, most likely wouldn't have been playable, and any voice acting for them would be prevented by the Mega Drive's sound limitations. Now I'm not arguing in favor of the band members. I can see why Sega felt they were extraneous to the goal of the overall project. They wouldn't have contributed to the gameplay but instead simply serve as plot devices. I just feel the band members wouldn't have had that much of an impact on Sonic's success even if they were included in the game. Sonic 1 would feel a little more alive if Sega had included more characters, but at the same time, maybe they didn't need the band members for that. Perhaps Tails could've been there from the beginning, or Eggman could've had henchmen to serve as Act 1 or Act 2 bosses. As long as they contribute to the gameplay in a positive way, I suppose.
The Monster World, Phantasy Star, and Gunstar Heroes galleries were all made available before on the Sega Ages 2500 releases on playstation2. We even have a full rips of those converted to BMP. The book was good for the interviews and the few design documents and prototype hardware shots (there were like... 6 of each?), as well as finally clearing up why the 32x was such a failure. But other galleries were incomplete and it wasted a shit load of space in useless crap like sprite sheets. It felt like a first volume from a series.
Update: I and TheStoneBanana found 2 more alternate scans of the Marble Zone tile concept art and MathUser uploaded them to the Game Development page. http://info.sonicretro.org/images/9/97/MZ-Tiles2.png http://info.sonicretro.org/images/e/e4/MZ-Tiles3.jpg Both of them are flipped, however.
I too started with Sonic 1 on my megadrive at my dads house. The 'emptiness' or as I would call it 'simplicity' of the game was one of the major things that made me so interested in it. Sonic 1 always seems so perfect as it is/was.
I second this. Sonic The Hedgehog is a timeless classic that stands on it's own as an excellent title. It's actually my personal favourite, and on it's own, far outclasses Super Mario World in graphics, controls, sound and replayability.
At first I was going to say that the music starts before the stage title goes away and the timer starts but the music is too far into a loop for that to be possible with the retail version. hm.
Since it's been brought up in another topic, I think it's a good time to ask this: Does anyone have the book (SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works)? And if so, is there a possibilty we can get scans of the Sonic 1 storyboards / concept art we were discussing in the past few pages of this topic? It's been six or seven years, and I'm shocked it hasn't happened yet.
It's already here: https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(16-bit)/Development#Animated_Sequences
Yeah, I was frankly surprised they hadn't been posted until I asked about them. There's a topic somewhere where I brought it up and we talked about them, but it's been a while.
This special stage screenshot has me wondering: https://info.sonicretro.org/File:S1SpecialStage6.jpg what time frame in production it could have come from. The caption on the Sonic Retro page it's used in states: I don't think the latter possibility, that Sonic left the stage boundaries, could be if this shot is from our proto or earlier, as even if you used memory editing to force Sonic out of the special stage, the game doesn't seem to behave like in retail releases (where Sonic falls into the jumbled mess of blocks (game memory interpreted as object/layout data? IDK)); instead, the game crashes. That, and debug mode in our proto doesn't let you enter object placement mode in the special stage, so you can't get out that way, and the collisions SEEM to be such where you can't push yourself out in our ptoto. I guess what I am wondering is, if there is an earlier proto where blocks were haphazardly placed, or if this shot is from a later proto with this special stage layout, BUT without the crashing behavior I've observed.