Not only that! In the same shot, look closely at the cloud on the far left. It overlaps the tree to the left - meaning the clouds in this version of the level were drawn on a higher plane overlapping the level art, similar to the foreground trees and rocks also present in this demo, as opposed to being drawn on a low plane like the final GHZ's clouds as most people probably would've otherwise assumed. The amount of interesting little titbits of information present in these two small images is quite satisfying to see. = )
...Allowing them to make two differently colored versions of the same enemy, just like the turtles in Super Mario Bros. I'm surprised they didn't make the bushes using cloud tiles. =P
http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=27908&view=findpost&p=662069 It doesn't really look like the graphics overlap it. I'd just assume they're graphics form the magazine, though I could be wrong. How long are those scans gonna take
Wouldn't this mean that not only the trees in front were sprites, but also the clouds? No wonder why Naka achieved to make so many "scroll layers" in that demo, they obviously didn't have much stuff going on at that time...
I thought that too at first. Then I looked at it a little closer. Here's a visual aid: That text is definitely part of the ROM being executed.
I'm starting to wonder if this demo was playable or if it was just a pure scrolling demo. It would make sense for that text to appear on the screen during a scrolling demo. Probably not though. I wonder if earlier Beep MD issues had a more detailed cover up of this title?
That's hard to say. We know they've used similar screens in other early builds that were playable (see Sonic CD 510's "COMING SOON"). I guess right now the only ones who know that for sure are the ones involved in the early S1 development. Naka (based on what little he publically said) didn't seem to have any issue with the fact that Sonic was being controlled by a human, and I would think that if that demo was self-running, he'd probably have remembered that and mentioned it. Not rock-solid proof, but fairly logical conjecture.
Alright I must have missed the part of the thread where someone showed that the guy took a photo of the magazine since I didn't know we had it at that quality yet :o
Also he didn't seem to have any issue with the amount of parallax, and while it's true he may have forgotten how to program the console by now, I really doubt he forgot the main hardware limitations since he worked with it for so long. If anything was off in that respect he'd have mentioned it.
Forgive me if it's been posted already, but this magazine article has some stuff on Sparkling Zone. Isn't it theorized that Sparkling Zone became Spring Yard Zone? Because this magazine mentions the two as totally different levels. Maybe they shared assets during development? Also, some pics of the CES beta (probably been discovered already): It looks like Labyrinth Zone had a different background, with water spurting into the level through cracks in the wall. Also, I don't remember any "down" bumpers in the special stage (then again, I haven't played Sonic 1 in a while).
I can't see that the thing had attached arms- although it's hard to say due to the contrast in the screens if this was lost due to the arms having a shadow which got lost in the back drop. I can see that it looks like the gloves may have been like Rayman's hands, but I could be wrong.
Just going to point out that they are from 2 different builds, seeing as the sparkling picture says 'RING' while the spring yard photo says 'RINGS'
As if it wasn't already obvious (and stated as such). But yeah, the magazine was wrong to address Sparkling Zone and Spring Yard zone as different levels. I do wonder if they were going for a more difficult level originally though. Seeing as they did remove that spikeball chain in the final.
