As a self identifying Sonic 4 Ep. II fan, I take offense to that. (Just joking, you're entitled to your own opinion.) I thought I was the only one on the forum that thought that.
Another example Seen a lot of buggy collision in this proto. Makes sense as the actual base engine was being developed still. Not sure if it's an issue with Sonic or the level tiles themselves, but it's in a lot of places.
If someone else posted something similar like this, please trash this. Here are the prototype songs (all in .bin files) that I've included in a .zip file. Before you attempt to drag and drop the files, please convert the songs to Sonic 1. The reason is because Kurk told me that the prototype uses a modified Golden Axe 2 driver thus playing it unconverted in Sonic 1 will act strange. Please use SMPSConv to port the songs to Sonic 1 if you want to use it. I'll be also doing the DACs, PSGs and the sound drivers very soon so be on the lookout for these.
This is a yes. Most of the core staff on Sonic Mania were regulars around these parts for years, they put in several references to cut concepts in Mania.
Ah, the unused tiles from Green Hill Zone are here on chuck 2A. Also, chuck 3A looks like a mirrored version of this without trees. Maybe it was a leftover from the previous prototype and not Tokyo Toy Show? Like this tile with the trees exist before reaching the boss area in GHZ act 3: I don't think it would be from TTS because the brown area in the ground has no indents. So it could leave chuck 3B as part of TTS, but I don't believe so either because the flat ground in the TTS images have no dips in it. EDIT: Also, chunk 3A has a weird light shading, compared to the rest of GHZ where the light shines from north-west (whereas this implies the light shines from north-east of the screen). Was it exported backwards?
Huh... That looks like... the gamegear version of Green Hill. I mean the little rail type thing. Maybe the gamegear version of Green Hill was based on the beta Yes. Just for clarification for everyone, I mean that Sonic 1 was originally going to have an end Sonic pose, but for debug it was mapped to jumping on the proto, which was reworked into the end Sonic pose for Mania. Sonic jumping would have only jumped once, unlike the proto we have. I assume you understand this, but I just want to be clear, just in case.
Some of the similarities of what's in the Sonic 1 prototype we've acquired (including other various builds) and the finalized version of Sonic 1 for the Master System/Game Gear is astounding. It starts to make sense why some of the levels and how they were designed in Sonic 1 for the Game Gear/Master System was different yet similar to the ones for the Mega Drive in the end. Shoutouts to Buckaroo, drx and the rest of the team for making this possible. You've all done an amazing job and I can't thank you enough for it~
I think it's fair to say that if you're reasonably familiar with the original game, you'd probably find something that felt off - the Sega sound at the beginning is iconic enough that its absence might clue people in, and for Buckaroo I know it was the GHZ ball object. Even then, it still took him a fair bit of research before he realised what he had.
I can't recall where I read it, but I remember reading about how Ristars development team for the game gear version were basically handed concept art/ideas and told to run with it. I wouldn't be shocked if they did the same to the team that did the Sonic Master System version. It explains a ton actually, and why the title screen is black (concept art doesn't show a background at all) and how they would have misinterpreted Star Light Zone as maybe a Sky Base type of level (or they just rolled with it because it looked better as a sky base and they ran out of time). It's all super interesting.
If it were to make the game harder, then maybe it was a good thing. Supposedly from this excerpt of the British magazine Advanced Computer Entertainment (that I was typing up for a compilation of Sonic 2 magazine article transcripts), the letter writer from Scotland says they completed the game between one to two weeks, and the editor responds by saying the game was too easy, due to letters the magazine received stating that.
https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(16-bit)/Development#Promotional_screenshots I've attempted to split up the builds. No idea whether it's worth keeping all those blurry magazine clippings of a build we now have. There were at least two newer builds distributed to the press, and three older ones (not counting the Tokyo Toy Show demo): build 1 (Winter CES 1991) build 2 (old MZ lava, no pillars) https://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File:VideoGames_DE_1991-02.pdf&page=86 build 3 (pillars, no MZ torch) build 4 (our prototype) build 5 (extra springs) https://retrocdn.net/index.php?title=File:GPSG_US_0203.pdf&page=26 build 6 (RINGS HUD, Spikes in Marble Zone) It's that second one that's the most curious - it's clearly an older build, but there are Rollers in Sparkling Zone.
Just a quick note - interesting that the Ball Hog badnik seems to be the version seen in the CES B-roll footage, rather than the one from the leaked Digitiser artwork provided by Tom Payne. The one in the proto and CES video hops from foot-to-foot - the one in the leaked artwork looks like it would have jumped in place instead, similar to the one seen in the final game but still facing the screen. Perhaps this change was an interim step between this one and the one seen in the final version? Interestingly, a sketch exists in the JP manual of a front-facing Ball Hog tossing two bombs out to either side, similar to how Crabmeat throws its projectiles. Until this proto was discovered, I'd presumed this must have been the behaviour of the ones seen in the CES B-roll footage, but this proto shows that that version just drops the ball straight downwards... Perhaps as well as the artwork being updated, the badnik's functionality was altered too, before being scrapped in favour of the sideways-facing Ball Hog seen in the final game? Unless we find another later build (or footage of one) someday, we'll never know for certain - just thought it was an interesting observation...!
Might have got some of my earlier post wrong: https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:SegaVisions_US_04.pdf&page=16 https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:Joystick_FR_015.pdf&page=88 There's the two earlier builds we don't have. Unless Sega Visions used two prototypes here. It's a bit confusing. Fun fact: This is one of the more famous Sonic 1 prototype shots... and this layout does not exist in our version. Current working theory - the original plan is set out by that scan above. The team decided it didn't work, tried to give life to the horizontal crusher by moving it somewhere else... and then scrapped the thing entirely because it sucked.
You know, despite all the evidence and screenshots of UFOs in Marble zone, I never really believed that they were real. They just felt too surreal. I can't live in denial any longer. And it feels amazing. Thanks to everyone involved.
I'm still having a bit of trouble comprehending the fact we actually finally have a prototype of this game. It's going to take a while for it to really sink in that it's ours now.
I find it weird that from this build to final they never added that stripe to sonic's shoe for the spring animation, or was that intentinally left out. It's interesting for sure, makes you wonder what their plans were for them and the flat orange panels before those changed, Makes me think of 8bit sonic 2's sky high zone with the cloud walking, sort of.