I used to do VHS digitization as a service in the before times. For game footage like this you'd just want to do the rip in 720x480i @ 30Hz, double the fields in post, then keep both of these as your raws for postprocessing. Capturing in S-Video won't make much difference as the source is still composite, so you're just shifting the Y/C separation from the card to your deck. Usually higher end capture cards will yield better results than higher end decks, but it's always good to try both.
Hah! Told ya it wasn't blank >=3 But seriously, that's fantastic~ If only the person playing the special stage weren't so simple-minded and incapable of navigating the stage below that purple area, because looking at the new gold area, it looks as though we almost have a complete stage mapped out!
Interesting also to note is that the boss screenshot on that page has more than two platforms, but they’re also in debug mode so I’m assuming they’re playing around with it and that Sonic is actually the third platform that hasn’t yet been placed.
It has to be, since the camera is centered on that height and Sonic does not appear. The camera would be actually centered on that platform, if it wasn't for the screen lock in place.
Play Phantasy Star II and get ready to see the Sonic 1 special stage screen transition a lot, because it's used for starting every random encounter in the game.
This is an awesome find. I had no idea the Sonic 1 beta victory pose was originally just mapped to the jump button. It looks so out of place to see him jumping around with that sprite.
To be fair, the majority of screenshots are of that initial section with the bumpers - this footage is the furthest I've ever seen anyone go (in that build at least). You might be watching the best playthrough outside of Sega
MarkeyJester just explained to me how the blocks cycle in the game, so we think it was animated like this: The green part is the blind area of which we didn't find screenshots.
Me and Master Emerald have been discussing the beta special stage and have decided to try and reconstruct it in a ROM (because we thought it'd be awesome for people to actually play it d=): Download What's interesting, is the rotation direction is in reverse, but there are no "R" blocks to reverse the stage, so we can only assume it starts off in reverse. What makes this weird is that starting the rotation off as negative will force it to rotate away from straight walls, so the starting image is impossible. I can only assume the rotation speed is still positive, but the engine handles the rotation in reverse such that it doesn't shift. I've done a dirty hack in the ROM by forcing the initial rotation position to 4, so the first rotation subtracts it down to 0 just like the screenshot. Another aspect we noticed was that the video and screenshots are showing the blue cycling golds through it, in the final, it cycles greens and not golds. Interestingly the video only shows a few green blocks in the entire stage, and it doesn't cycle (donno if that's significant). The cycling pattern is also different, here is the final: Code (Text): dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|GREEN dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|GREEN dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|GREEN dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|GREEN ...here is the beta: Code (Text): dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|GOLD dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|GOLD dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|GOLD dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|BLUE dc.w WALL|GOLD We're analysing the video at the moment, going to attempt to make an auto-demo, this might shed some light into whether the physics may or may not be different. If we cannot recreate the movement then this might prove the physics were changed at some point. Unless of course someone with TAS experience can come up with something before we do?
Wiki thumbnails are dead but https://info.sonicretro.org/index.php?title=File:Megadrive_Fan_1991-05.pdf&page=132 This coverage (of an earlier prototype) seems to imply a clockwise rotation. Honestly? I think it might have been mapped to a button. Lest we forget, this is prototype and they're clearly testing the stage - I'd have a reverse button if it were me.
...that's very strange, well spotted though. A button might be plausible, but I'm really not sure. Why would the player in that video press it only once and then never again throughout the remainder of play? It's not out of the realms of possibilities, but it seems unlikely to me. Don't forget, it's not just the direction that's changed, it's also the speed, and the speed of the rotation in the video is not achievable in the final game, not even with the "UP"/"DOWN" blocks, leading me to believe the initial rotation speed/direction was changed frequently on various builds. Given the layout of the stage, I suspect in the build on that magazine scan where the rotation was clockwise, perhaps people had trouble navigating to the next section of the layout, and might be why they changed the direction by the time of the build in the video. The final obviously has a different layout altogether and it's more beneficial for the stage direction to be changed back again. I was debating on whether or not the "UP"/"DOWN" blocks in this build were responsible for the direction change, but that wouldn't explain why the initial missing 3 rings were collected in that order. Maybe the screenshot of the starting position is a build where the rotation is still clockwise and the video is a build after it where the direction was changed, which explains why that particular shot is showing perfectly straight on start, after all, we never actually see the beginning of the stage in the video so the build in the video probably didn't start straight. Unless there's something more obvious we're not seeing here?
This is the kind of technical discussion I've come to expect from Retro, and have kinda missed in the recent years. Good work on the special stage so far guys.
This is an awesome find! Anything proto-Sonic 1 immediately peaks my interest. I will need to watch the clip again with a more watchful eye and see what little surprises may be hiding.
I put the screenshots in order. We're talking at least four or five different publications struggling to make it past the first section. In MarkeyJester's ROM above, you don't even need to touch the controls to be led out. Replicating this one if the screen turns anticlockwise - you'd have to be very (un)lucky not to collect any rings. Unless the physics are wonky as hell.
It's not they were struggling. The rest of the layout has no bumpers or 'up' 'down' blocks. I bet most editors wanted to have the most 'action filled' scenes on their mags and didn't really bother to check that every other magazine did the same. Anyway, could you add the scan I used for the goal area? It's not on our wiki and I don't have access to my wiki account anymore :P
I don't know if it's just me, but I've noticed that here we get a rather crisp look at the GHZ Background and it DEFINITELY looks different from the final version! The mountains are a little smaller
Concerning the victory animation: years and years ago, after first seeing the victory pose sprite on the internet, I somehow got the impression it was controlled by the jump button. I don't know how I got that idea (whether that actually got mentioned sometime in the distant past somewhere—speculation or otherwise—or if I just imagined it myself), but it is cool to see in-game in any case.
