Absolutely astonishing find. Well done to all concerned. Still watching the video. I knew this otherwise shitty week would have to provide some gold.
I was going to suggest they might be a too spaced out for less experienced players - there are a lot of bubble spawners in Labyrinth Zone. But the goggles monitor graphics exist in this version too. Perhaps they were intended to be used in conjunction... somehow. Sonic 1 on the Game Gear has underwater sections of Green Hill Zone, which is achieved by layering a checkerboard pattern on top. Maybe they planned to do something similar here at one stage.
Just wanted to point out some stuff about the Clock Work Zone act 1 setup that I found interesting. The area with/above the ceiling fans. I found it interesting that the left portion gave a more 3D look, versus the rest of the zone where everything was tiled and flat. And then those areas in the tube. Maybe it was meant to be cutting blades that go up and down, but was quickly dropped in favor of what's in the final.
Though I had to use external memory editing to achieve this (that is, hooking something like Cheat Engine into the emulator I used), I was able to find that if you are out of the special stage maze, and fall for a short time, you won't end up in the garbled mess (memory being interpreted as stage/object data? Or am I way off base on that) like in the final version, but instead, will cause the game to crash. Wonder if this has anything to do with why you can't turn into an object/move freely in the special stage.
Unbelievable! Never thought we'd get this - 20-years-ago me is definitely shedding a tear right now. Thanks drx/Buckaroo/everyone involved in making this seemingly impossible dream a reality!
Another question... can anyone confirm if the uppermost section of Clock Work Zone 1 is accessible? I don't see anyway up there unless there is a way via debug mode. Seems that the gap just before the second diagonal conveyor belt is just too wide to clear.
Only through falling in a pit through vertical scrolling by landing on the top most conveyor belt by falling from the lowest conveyor belt. Maybe there were supposed to be platforms added in the air for Sonic to jump on and reach that part of the level. Also, what are these?
Sorry if this is already known but the 10 minute time limit in the prototype has not been implemented yet. Once it hits 9:59 it goes back to 9.:00
Here’s a video of the Sonic 1 proto on Nick Arcade that I found: I mean it’s only 30 seconds but it looks like it matches our proto (idk if that’s been confirmed yet or not) Does anyone know when the game was featured on Nick Arcade?
Just a reminder for those who may have forgotten; Sonic's prototype palette was confirmed a year ago during research on the floppy disks given by Tom Payne. https://forums.sonicretro.org/index...ites-by-sonic-2-artist-tom-payne.38559/page-8 Also, the Ball Hog sprites in the prototype are slightly different! There's some missing pixels on the feet and shoulders.
You know what's brilliant about this? We were wondering at the time why the music started mid-way. Well, pausing the game does not pause the music. They simply paused the game after the fading in, then presumably the kid had to unpause to resume playing, but the music was constantly playing, so that explains that mystery I think~ ;P
Or maybe water was originally going to change the palettes for the whole screen. Entering water would have changed to the green tint, exiting it or entering an air pocket would have restored the default colors. But then they came up with the idea to swap the palettes mid-screen to coincide with the water surface, and air pockets became no longer feasible. Mockup:
I disagree, I have to side with Fred on this one... For a start, the H-blank subroutine has a DMA transfer for a palette, granted it's not addressed to an exclusive water palette but regardless. Secondly and more curiously, those bricks in that cove section are using colours which are almost exclusive (except for a few minor elements of the background), so I would argue they would still swap the palette mid-screen, but the brick colours would always be swapped with the exact same colour (or not at all), giving the illusion it is not underwater. Thirdly, H-blank swap tricks were not new in 89/90, and were done on older machines prior, so it's not like they wouldn't have known.
I am late to the party but this is completely amazing. Wild because I've been around those early 2000s. Remember when Hidden Palace was founded. We were all fantasizing over discovering a Sonic 1 Beta. Way back in the day. I read the article and drx is right. Bit rot is now a big deal and if they hadn't discovered the beta now, who knows how long the community would have had before the cart would completely degrade? This is utterly amazing. Glad a lot of us are still here to witness such a historic moment.
Mad to think we nearly got dedicated air rooms (possibly, if correct. I beleive it) rather than the frustrating bubble objects. This is the sort of key gameplay changing development stuff I always wanted to see in a S1 proto!
i think air rooms would have been way worse than air bubbles, glad they made that change. If they were air rooms of course.
Yes I was watching the stream on Hidden Palace’s YouTube page and I wondered why the music was continuously playing while the game was paused.. well now we know.. do we have enough info to officially call this the Sonic 1 Nick Arcade prototype?
I don't think we can come to a strict conclusion based on such a small slice of GHZ. However, given what we know about GHZ going through a lot of layout/object changes earlier in development, and how close this small slice matches, I think it's reasonable to say that our build is at least very close to the one used in that Nick Arcade pilot.
