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Sonic the Hedgehog (Prototype)

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by drx, Jan 1, 2021.

  1. Yoritoshi

    Yoritoshi

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    I just got Barrel of Doom'ed by the crusher in the beginning of Marble 2 that requires you to jump on it over and over...:argh:
    Feels great to see even more details we didn't know from ads and magazines!
     
  2. camcommunicates

    camcommunicates

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    Amazing, I actually thought this would never come to be.

    What a way to start the year, on the year of Sonic’s 30th no less!
     
  3. drx

    drx

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    :rolleyes:
    And might I add how lucky we are that you were there. Super helpful and professional. And thanks for reaching out to me in the first place, means a lot :) We indeed get a lot of hoaxes for Sonic 1 for some reason, but this one was real fortunately!
     
  4. Techokami

    Techokami

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    I'm super amazed that we finally landed the white whale after nearly 2 DECADES of searching. Thank you everyone! Now to figure out an easier way to sift through the ROM for compressed graphics...
     
  5. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    This should hopefully mean that the hoaxes will stop.

    Or an increase of Tokyo Toy Show prototypes.
     
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  6. Techokami

    Techokami

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    Took a stab at the spring object assembly, I think it'd look like this:
    [​IMG]
     
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  7. camcommunicates

    camcommunicates

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    Just started playing through it and it is a really weird experience after playing the retail release for most of my life. The biggest things I noticed after playing it for 10 mins are the up down left right level select hasn’t been added yet and going through the loop with speed sneakers is a bit janky (same with the tunnel). That first spring in the tree is not there also! I’m also playing it on 50hz and it seems quicker than the retail release, but I haven’t played the original cartridge in a while.

    Pretty impressed with how much they improved it in the time they had.
     
  8. SSUK

    SSUK

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    I was almost certain the Sonic 1 prototypes were all lost to time at this point. Seeing this puts bed to that, obviously. Amazing work as usual. Never thought I'd see the day.
     
  9. Nik Pi

    Nik Pi

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    Sonic CD's R2 boss origin? lol
     
  10. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    Excuse me for asking... Has anyone ripped the Proto Special Stage map?
    It'd be nice to compare the real thing with the reconstruction attempts.
     
  11. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    I know I already posted in the prototype stream thread, but... yeah, good job.
    This is an historic moment right there.
     
  12. Lapper

    Lapper

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    The stream was amazing. I'm thankful that this prototype is one of the ones we always wanted to see, there's a lot answered now!

    Great end to 2020. Released perfectly on new years, like clock ork.
     
  13. nineko

    nineko

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    Getting the data is the easy part, but it looks like they changed the block IDs, unless I'm doing it wrong:[​IMG]
    The yellow 3×3 and 2×2 things at the top should be rings, for example, and the purple blocks are wrong as well. So yeah, we need to match the new IDs.
     
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  14. Lurker

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  15. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Brilliant work, and also brilliant how close we were with a lot of our guesses.

    Now to wikify!
     
  16. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    Reconstruction faithful & nearly complete.
    Awesome job, this community is amazing.
    Keep the passion for Sonic burning bright.
    Also, anyone eager to finish the TCRF gif?
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2021
  17. I feel like flooding the topic, but thanks button is not enough for me to express how happy I am to see this happening! It's a real good surprise to finish a very tough year with a "dead" proto, the most interesting one IMO, the Holy Grail. I have not enough words to express how thankful I am. I didn't even read much about it, but I can't refrain from writing. Thanks to all involved, you are true heroes and wonderful persons. How did you make this huge work absolutely silent? Wow, can't wait to read and play it! Happy new year!
     
  18. MarkeyJester

    MarkeyJester

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    Glad I wasn't the only one concerned about the amount of sudden hacks/hoaxes popping up of beta Sonic 1. I always felt it would make it harder to acquire the beta. Remember when that Tokyo Toy Show hoax was around, and Yuji Naka thought it was legit?

    Speaking of Yuji Naka, maybe it'd be a good time to get an interview with him showing him this ROM, might jog some memories about a few things!

    Fantastic work to the Hidden Palace crew, drx, and to Nik and Buckaroo for acquiring this! Like, it's interesting how many questions this ROM has answered, but does anyone else now feel more questions are raised? Exciting!!

    I don't buy magazines generally, but I will certainly make an exception and put effort into acquiring this one!

    --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

    Just had a quick disassembly peak, was looking at the special stage, not just to see how right or wrong we were about the special stage based on the footage, but also to see about the backgrounds (the final has different background slots unused, no art/mappings, but palettes are present. But I noticed a few things during my travels through the code, might as well share them:

    • H-blank has a DMA transfer for the palette, the final is a manual transfer.
    • The unreferenced $FFFFF629 is now referenced with use of $FFFFF628, the latter was referenced in the final, but only counted up, at least now we know it's a buffered byte for something, but the F629 is not referenced beyond this, so we still don't know what for >=(
    • The control reading subroutine stops and starts the Z80 independently of its own, final puts the call between the stop and start of the DMA transfers.
    • There are only 5 game modes...
    • 00 - SEGA
    • 04 - Title
    • 08 - Level (Demo)
    • 0C - Level
    • 10 - Special Stage (Demo and non-demo)
    • Special stage doesn't clear the H-blank interrupt flag (perhaps because there isn't a request to set it yet), and does not clear the level reset flag (obviously, because it hasn't been called to run during levels yet).
    • Only one layout for the special stage, and by the looks of it, we more or less got it right based on the video some time back! Though the ID's are different as the blocks are shifted around compared to the final as nineko mentioned:
    No, you got it right, the ID's are indeed shifted, different object slots.
    • Layout is loaded to 172E of the layout RAM, but the loading method is different, final is transferred via bytes, proto does them in long-words.
    • Comparing the start positions, the beta's layout starts in layout RAM at 172E, we had it pegged at 1020 but had no references to go on. The start X and Y position is 458 x 4A0, we had it pegged at 308 x 350, but given the layout shift, we were off by 150 on X and Y, so relative to the special stage, we got the start position right!
    • Starting rotation speed is 0040 (we got that right~).
    • The pause game flag is set to -1 in proto instead of +1, there is no check for debug mode flag (controls for "Control Mode" are always enabled), and there's no pause/unpause request for music, otherwise identical.
    • Demo controls subroutine looks more or less the same except for missing credits specific demo controls (the demo recording routine is the same).
    • I was soooo hoping there would be more info on the unused special stage background palette slots, like... unused art or mappings, but no, it's basically identical, not even unreferenced data, the palette slots are still there though.
    • Was right about the fact that the "UP" and "DOWN" blocks functioned differently, and they were in fact responsible for the video footage of the stage going in reverse, but the method was slightly wrong. The "UP" block has the affect of changing speed from low and high. "DOWN" functions as an "R" block, negates the direction. But Master Emerald was right about there being button controls to control the speed of the stage, so I think it was a combination of hitting the "DOWN" block to reverse the stage direction, and the player spamming buttons "A", "B", and finding it not seemingly doing anything before resorting to "C", which likely shifted the rotation speed to the way it was in the video. No wonder we got no results from brute forcing different speeds...
    EDIT: for reference, mine and Master Emerald's original research based on the video footage.

    Can't be bothered searching much more, the lack of more background stuff has hindered my interests now =<
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2021
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  19. Ayu Tsukimiya

    Ayu Tsukimiya

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    Damn, am I dreaming? It feels so weird seeing Sparkling Zone outside of blurry magazine scans.
     
  20. SEGACast

    SEGACast

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    Does anyone know what the build date for this prototype ROM is, if not a guess?
    Green Hill Zone appears to match up with the Nick Arcade footage, although we don't know for sure since we only saw a small portion of it.
    I wonder if the build date might be hidden within the ROM's data?
    I'm also insanely curious to know if there are any unused sprites as well.