Ha! The lights coming through the ceiling in LLZ plus the rolling ball?? Sonic 4 really did go all out with Sonic 1 references
I don't feel like sonic was going to ride the balls they were just obsticles that moved, most likely scrapped near the end when collision was still not working in their favor. Who knows at this point though. I'm more interested in a build between this proto and final then I am of an earlier build because I want to see how some of these planned things were before being scrapped.
I'm the reverse: I wanna find a build, if it exists, with these dudes: 1: I wanna see what enemy types they landed on before going "Eggman and his robot army" (aside from the ones in that one concept art, of course). 2: Having technological enemies meant every enemy would die by explosion. How would Sonic dispatch organic enemies?
I can't imagine it being too different. Given that they're nebulous alien type things, it might not have seemed out of the ordinary that they just explode. Whether that was a puff of smoke or a red explosion, who knows? Come to think of it, doesn't this prototype have unused puff of smoke gfx? Remnants from alien dude? In any case, given the complexity of the ball/slope momentum engine compared to a regular platform engine, how bugs were still being worked out as of the recent proto, and given that the TTS demo has Sonic and an enemy, it would be likely that the general Mario style "jump on an enemy to defeat it" action was one of the earliest things programmed. Thus, it is entirely possible that the smoke puff gfx remnant was from the TTS build.
I just thought of this. Sonic was highly altered from the original lore, with the band, Madonna, and I previously mentioned how I thought aliens were the original antagonists of Sonic The Hedgehog, before Eggman was given a more important role and robots were chosen. Now a reason for this change eluded me as i’m making a video on the subject, but I think I figured it out and it’s not just because of aesthetically that alien is pretty... ugly. Remember how the US branch of sega always brags about fixing Sonic from a fanged freak in a rock band? Well think about how violent Sonic spinning into a organic creature is? he’s basically been compared to a saw blade, so I think SOA may have begged to have them change the organic creatures to robots, and Sonic Team basically went “oh yeah, it was OUR idea to make them robots”
I think it's moreso that they asked Sonic Team to make something different (probably for the reason you stated), Sonic Team gave them robots, and then then they took the credit for it, not the other way around. I'm absolutely not taking a couple of 15-minutes-of-fame business and marketing folks' words as seriously as the actual designers of the character and game. Especially since other aspects (like the band) were still in the story after the switch to Eggman and the badniks. Not even to mention them acting like they invented the main villain when they had to get a localizer to rename him. I've just never been keen on the spin Tom Kalinske and Madeline Schroeder went with in that old Gametap "History of Sonic" video, and various other media they've been interviewed in. Just seems like them trying to feel like they made a bigger difference than they really did. Which granted, they did make a difference! Just prob not as much as they think.
Do you think it's possible that there was a contingency plan for Labyrinth zone to simply be a cave level without water? I know the concept art shows it with water, but maybe they might have been worried about trying to figure out how to code the water in time, and Plan B might have been to design the level without water and use the prototype cave background? The term "Labyrinth" doesn't necessarily imply water is required.
I mean it's possible that Sonic's sprite had moose antlers at one point, but since there's no evidence for it and plenty of evidence against it, it's probably not worth bringing up.
Aha. I don’t think that there’s any point in speculating further at this stage because we have no specific evidence of this but it’s certainly interesting to think about. I think it would have been highly unlikely they would have gotten so far into development without having some sort of process to implement water, be it palette changes, dithering, etc. Considering this was to be the flagship SEGA game and the project green lit as such, water stages would have to have been guaranteed. What we’re seeing with the end product is a restricted version of the original vision of the water stages, where the team had to compromise because they couldn’t do certain things they wanted, such as air pockets, goggles, and whatnot. Ultimately what we got is very likely the worst case scenario for the team. As Sonic was inspired by elements of other games such as Super Mario Bros which did have water stages on an 8bit system, I’d have thought the team would have been insistent on as much variation of gameplay and more impressive water play to beat out Mario as the dominant platformer, therefore it was a given.
yeah. and they also claimed they invented the red shoes...which they didn't, because that magazine scan predates Kalinske even being at Sega. so, they're either misremembering at best or liars at worst, and regardless they shouldn't be used to try to construct a Sonic development timeline.
Yep. I'm still not sure why so many people give credence to the idea that Sega originally had fangs. We have the original/early concept art, there are no fangs anywhere. Kalinske is not a reliable witness - he wasn't at Sega at the time and has made misleading statements taking credit for the red shoes. I assume the fangs and 'goth Sonic' are simply inaccurate references to the rough look of the early Sonic concept art. He was certainly smoothed out in later versions, likely with feedback from Madeline Schroeder. But overall, there is little indication that SOA had much say in the design of Sonic. The two things Yuji Naka has talked about - Madonna and the band - he claims were not changed due to SOA. Madonna was only ever a place filler, and the band was scratched due to not having enough memory left on the ROM or time to implement it.
https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=File:MegaDriveFan_JP_19910701_f.pdf&page=11 That's Sonic the Hedgehog Story Comic talking*. And bits of that got into Japanese marketing. But it's not so much "Sonic originally had fangs" as "Sonic had fangs in some promotional material". Which isn't dissimilar to "Mega Man was once a disfigured old man with a gun". *psst why haven't we got full scans yet Retro
But that comic (released shortly before the game was released) doesn't jive with the spirit of what Kalinske/Schroeder are claiming. Specifically, they are saying that the early concept art of Sonic depicted a rough, spiky, goth with fangs, a band, and a human girlfriend. It's a coincidence that there is a promotional comic done by an artist that included manga fangs on Sonic. Nothing else about that comic agrees with SOA's account.
So the game was set to be much more, but got trimmed down to simplicity by release time. The franchise got plagued from Day 1, poor lad...
You know when I first read up on Sonic's history all those years ago, I'm sure it was just "we don't like Madonna". My suspicion (unless there's genuinely concept art we haven't seen) is that they've invented things in the intervening years as more content has appeared in the public domain. I can see Sega of America looking at this and saying "make him less spikey"... but I'm thinking they might have already got to that stage: I might have to do some digging.
I haven't seen it mentioned so I'm going to ask and apologies if it has been brought up before, but are the graphics for the goggles/goggles monitor in this? I'd assume it is a safe bet they are and if so, surely not functioning. How far has this build been looked into for scrapped content aside from unused graphics? I'm no hacker, so if this sounds dumb, just ignore. But, is there any chance unused code is still lurking in this thing? Code for actions/processes not currently known. Or, has this thing been 100% dissected at this point?
The Cutting Room Floor is currently documenting a lot of unused content found. Check it out HERE. And more seems to be added to every so often.