LOL, I was thinking of posting this hours ago. But I didn't hoping that the topic would stay on...topic?
Maybe one of the Devs of Segagaga was playing his Sonic 1 beta cart and saw the "Gaga" sign and thought of the title of his newest game.
I think it says "Go Go". You can make out the "G" in one of the close ups and there's a space indicating two separate words. I really like the font style the early prototype had for all the strange signs in Spring Yard / Sparkling Zone and the sign in Green Hill. I liked the more funky and trippy aspect the original was kind of aiming for. What would have been really cool too is if there was a "Welcome" like sign for each zone with a little design on it indicating the level. For example you had Green Hill's Welcome and the palm tree design next to it and if you went to say Marble you would see another sign designed differently with maybe a UFO design next to it since it featured UFO's in its early conception. I don't know I think that would have been a pretty neat idea, also maybe the signs would say different things in different levels? One of those pictures have been on the net before but never in this great of quality. Thank you so much for taking the time to find the pictures and scanning / posting them. The more images of the earlier builds the better.
Wow, this is pretty amazing. I didn't think we were ever likely to get any genuine new information on this early Sonic 1 tech demo! Finding out that there are two brand new screenshots out there, along with another shot of the title screen, is absolutely incredible. = D Really looking forward to seeing these when the BEEP scans are uploaded. = )
Great stuff! 1st pic: filler slope material on Sonic's left - angled ground had not been properly drawn yet and is filled by sand 2nd pic: does anyone read Kanji here? That floating block thing sort of looks like a title card because of the little "1" in it ... then again it could be pasted over as part of the magazine.
It's pasted over text, part of the magazine and not graphics in the game. It says ??????, or "approaching debut." BTW are you sure what looks like sand isn't just the guy's thumb holding the magazine? :P
No...but the way it cuts off with a straight line the moment it touches the checkered grass floor made me think otherwise. Edit: hot dawg, now I see it. Damn the low-res scans.
Do note, I merged both Sonic 1 prototype picture topics into one. We only need one of these in here, and the other one was smaller so this one won out. :P
Well, the guy took digital camera pictures of a early Sonic proto. One picture seems to be new. http://megadrive.me/2012/02/19/early-sonic-screenshots/
Would've preferred scans but I guess there decent enough quality for now until he gets to a scanner and scans it. Still can't quite tell what that thing is behind sonic in the first image, could it be a Roller? "Will it replace Alex?" Lol.
It looks like it could be a Roller. What I'm curious about, is the "Original Sega character action game targetted for spring release." Was Sonic 1 delayed a few months?
The good news is that we will finally have some high quality prototype screen shots, when he gets to a scanner of course.
Words cannot describe how giddy and excited these two new screen shots have made me. I'm so happy we got new photo's of the earliest build. This is the one good thing out of that whole Sonic prototype hoax fiasco. I'm so happy these were found and the person was nice enough to share them. Now I want to see gameplay footage or even more screen shots really badly. Sonic's running animation looks slightly different, and holy crap the monsters from the concept art were the original enemies! It's the purple ghost guy from the concept art but blue, without legs and wearing red gloves instead of yellow. I wonder what other monsters were in this build and level? I wanna know how they behaved and attacked. When Sonic would hit them what would happen? Since they aren't machines? This a really good and incredible find because I have always wondered when they scrapped the monster and Madonna idea for the final which was robots and Eggman. Even in the Tokyo Game Show description of the game the plot line was "A super sonic powered rodent who fights monsters." This is so amazing, I'm all giddy like a kid on Christmas. I wish we could uncover even more screen shots or at least gameplay footage. Now we know though that monsters were in the earliest build before being scrapped.
I believe, boring as it sounds, that weird blue blur is just the camera catching Sonic's balled up jump form for a split second before he landed. Like that other proto pic where his finger is shown in two places at once.
After some analyzing I think this bastard is indeed that purple monster from the concept art. His body is way too obscured, but his eyes are def there. Going by the shades in the magazine scan, I can make up his big mouth as well. He looks a bit different, he could've been redesigned along the way. It happened before (in this case after?) with the badniks. The image is just way too blurry to make out the rest of his body clearly. Also it wouldn't be the first thing sprited from the concept art.
