So I think the only different between the music is the ending theme. The notes around 0:11 to 0:14 are different than the final's. PROTO FINAL Of course, it was also brought up that the drum set is different.
Oh whoops. Never mind then. These are just differently colored legs. I need to refresh my memory of Sonic 1.
Holy shit -- that is exactly what they were thinking I bet! They probably removed them when they realized they weren't able to get the palettes to change properly/water became colored. If water was clear at one point (I mean palette wise), you could pull off "rooms" of air. If/when they decided they could pull off a full palette change, they wouldn't be able to do it anymore. Nice.
Well then, I never thought when I was a kid that I'd be in 30s when I'd finally see those prototype screenshots in motion. Mental Great work to all those involved!
Maybe they were originally used to block the player coming out a certain direction where the only way out is the exit tiles?
I saw some people discussing the demo playback earlier on, and I decided to have a play around with how it behaves in certain situations. While doing so, I noticed a couple of things and I ended up recording it. Link below: Firstly, I noticed that both GHZ and MZ appear to have the same demo routine? This seems to be particularly obvious while watching the demo run with debug enabled, as you can see the recording switch into object placement mode and the same ring pattern is placed. However, SZ does not enter object placement mode so it would seem it's a different demo recording. Would this imply that either GHZ or MZ just have a "copy-pasted" demo routine just to make it run, as I would presume that making the demo to run on a zone with no routine in place would cause it to either lockup or at the very least look odd with Sonic just doing nothing at all for that demo? Not a very scientific analysis of course, and if I'm wrong on anything here please let me know! Also, I made the demos play with invincibility enabled to allow them to playback without Sonic dying almost immediately, as I believe someone earlier on wanted to see how the demo would play out in full? Lastly, the bug that causes the demo playback routine to break when holding A+B+C is already present in this ROM. Looks like it REALLY wasn't a high priority to have fixed throughout much of the game's development. EDIT: Also, if I'm late to the party on anything here, I apologize!
This is an idea I've been tossing around for a while over on the HP discord: Yesterday I posted a mockup, but it quickly got buried. I refrained from posting it here to avoid drawing attention away from stuff actually in the ROM, but now people are discussing it anyway, so here you go:
The TCRF article says that Chaos Emerald graphics exist in the ROM. I don't fully understand how these things work, but do they have colours assigned to them? I ask because in both the 8-bit Sonic 1 and SegaSonic Bros. all six Chaos Emeralds are blue.
Kinda sucks that there's nothing we haven't seen yet (basically just the UFO's + the old BG's for SYZ and LZ) but cool find nonetheless. I guess now we have all of the historically important Sonic prototypes.
IDK about that - IIRC there is still at least one proto between the 1990 Tokyo Toy Show build and this (plus I am not quite sold on whether we should even call that 1990 Tokyo Toy Show proto truly lost yet or not), and at least one between this build and final, and this is just Sonic 1. Internal builds could also be another thing that are worth searching for too (whether for Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic 1, etc, and give us information about the development of these games that might not be gleaned from just focusing on the builds given to the press.
Is it just me, or does the camera feel a lot more responsive when it comes to ducking or looking up? Or rather, am I the only one who REALLY likes how quickly it feels like it moves up/down compared to the final (and subsequent titles)?
I feel like the cut features in sonic 1 were due to them not playing nice or taking more effort to get right, so things like teleporting after a giant ring, cd style, and these air pockets were all cut back to simplify the game before release. *edit* also! thinking back to the goggles monitor and how sonic at some point had that run animation with his arms extended out, we all knew that was most likely used for water walking but it makes sense thinking about combining it with this sprite and the air pockets. I could be completely wrong but that's how it feels to me, same with the marble changes and removal of the side spike arm and stuff. The large row of rings in ghz1 on the pipe section was also used in act 2 near the breakable wall at the start but the game slows down so much because of the sprite count, so I can see why that set of rings was cut back a lot, plus sonic never grabbed them all in the pipe area anyway.
An earlier build of S1 if possible would still be amazing to have, some sort of build when the game was still experimental in how it should play would be the real mvp, it might be out there who knows at this point.
I bet there is still a lot out there (not just Sonic 1, but 2, 3, etc, and yes, I say this in spite of the prototype releases from 2019) that could give us a much more complete picture of how these games evolved during development - like internal builds, for instance.
This is pretty cool and I agree on this theory! Someone said that there were many discoveries layed down in the HP Discord. I'm becoming worried that they get lost, is someone documenting them? I don't usually use discord as messages can easily get lost in popular rooms.
I can't believe that it's finally here, after having magazine scans for years of 'Clock ork Zone' and the UFO's in Marble Zone for years. Amazing job everyone. Rooms in 'Labyrinth Zone' just to grab air is an amazing shout. The more I think about this, the more I think there's something to it. It makes a lot of sense.
That is awesome to see in motion. Yeah, when I first saw the background in motion in this proto, one of the first things I thought of is how it looks like it could easily be “scrollable” like that.