I really liked this video, you guys should watch it, it's a great talk about how different sonic is across everything.
It's alright, but it doesn't really say anything revolutionary, different people like different nuances in how Sonic is portrayed, ranging from cheerful to badass and everything inbetween. It's a relatively short video, though, so it's definitely watchable. Myself, I like his classic aesthetics, and I prefer his joyful side. So what the video says is indeed true, you can create your own unique ideal version of Sonic in your mind.
Bringing this back up again - based on the stand seen in the previous post, I know some folks were still skeptical that the designers for the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Happy Meal promotion may have been given early concept art for the Zones as reference when creating their designs. However, I've found another piece of evidence to support this: specifically, the artwork on the Happy Meal bags themselves. The artwork on the front of the bag depicts Angel Island Zone - and, just like the stand, again we see a large body of water, surrounding the same large rock island with a waterfall emerging from a cave mouth seen on the promotional stand, resembling the one seen in Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Tropical Sun coloured concept art. The presence of this same background both here and in the promotional stand lends further credence to the possibility that this concept art was modified and reused for Angel Island Zone during production of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Meanwhile, the artwork on the back of the bag depicts Marble Garden Zone by showing an area with ruins and a small waterfall leading into a pool of water. Obviously no water appears in the Zone itself - however, a pool with a waterfall does appear in two pieces of the Zone's concept art; the coloured Zone concept art (a modified piece Sonic the Hedgehog 2 concept art for "Emerald Isle"), and the Zone's rough layout sketch, where it seems to have been part of the originally-intended transition from Hydrocity Zone. It also represents Flying Battery Zone using two giant cogs. Once again, nothing like this appears in the Zone itself, but as above, the Zone's coloured concept art was a modified piece from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - specifically the one for Metropolis Zone, which prominently features two such giant cogs in the scene. Between the promotional stand and the Happy Meal bags, the appearance of all these specific details - all of which appear in the coloured Zone concept art but not in the final game's equivalent stages - does make it seem increasingly likely that the artist(s) were supplied with copies of said concept art when creating their designs. It makes me wonder if the odd contraption seen in the Carnival Night Zone illustration also has its origins in concept art for that Zone, though without seeing the coloured concept art for the stage there's no way of telling for sure. (Incidentally, the ebay listing for the promotional stand which resembled the Tropical Sun concept art has now disappeared - I did save all the images in question, is there a logical place where I could upload them on the wiki?)
So I bought a 3rd copy of Origins on an impulse, the Xbox version. And I decided to put on the reversible cover when I noticed that the screenshot for the gallery was taken on a Playstation Sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
We all know about the beta areas in the night stages of Sonic Unleashed (360/ps3) by now, but someone made a video that goes fully into depth about all the areas. This includes comparing the layouts from the October prototype, and out of bounds of missions acts to the final DLC levels, plus some other miscellaneous details. I actually helped them find new information about the areas and found out some secrets: (It's a long video, but has timestamps in the description) A "brief" summary of each area: Dragon Road: The beta area was almost complete back in the August prototype, and also had a complete layout in the October one. 2 missions take place in this area in the final, Check Up time has you play through the first half, and Energy boost has you playing backwards through the second half. This area cannot be accessed in the final act 1 in anyway, as an invisible wall over a bottomless pit prevents any exploration (that we know of) This area was eventually used for the DLC act 1-2, which is weird as all the other beta area DLC stages were given a new act number A ledge halfway through went through a lot of changes, for example in the October prototype it has tons of buzz saws and flamethrowers, and had an object at the end, but in the DLC act it was covered up entirely. Skyscraper Scamper Probably the least well known, the beta area is off to the side of the act, instead of being behind the goal area. This area is devoid of any objects in the main act 1, in both the final and the October prototype. 2 Missions take place in this area, A Rising star uses a large portion of it, while A Dead end uses a smaller area The most interesting part is the Mission Play it Cool; this mission takes place in a small area of the main act, but has an entire unused layout out of bounds, that can be accessed pretty easily: · This layout contains an interesting unused object; an incomplete throwable javelin, this javelin is also accompanied by a target on the wall, and judging by the placement you would’ve used the javelin to create a pole to swing across, but it has not been programmed to do so. · The layout also extends into the beta area, giving us an idea of how that area was going to be accessed, instead of accessing it from the building the act 1 goal is, instead it is accessed from the building where the pullable block it in the final. · At the end of the beta area in the mission is a goal ring, possibley where the end of the act was going to be, and in the prototype a waterfall sound plays in the area, indicating that maybe there was a fountain once placed there. · Most of the layout is also present in Sonic Presents, but as the mission uses the area where the javelin would be it is not present there · Also note that the javelin is not present on the PS3 version (I checked the set file) and there are invisible walls preventing you from getting to the area I also was able to load the path file in SGLvl, and this is what I found: (This isn’t in the video) You can see the path file does indeed go to where the act 1 goal is, but then backtracks to the previous building before detouring to the beta area, and ending where the beta goal ring is located in the missions. The DLC act 2 would fully use this area, with a layout that somewhat follows the unused layout seen in Play it Cool, and ends where the beta ring is located. it did not use the javelin mechanic, leaving it unused. Arid Sands One of the two well-known areas (alongside Jungle Joyride) This area is devoid of any objects in the final, asides from 2 collapsible pillars that are blocking what actually would’ve been a shortcut into the area In the October prototype this area is fully used, but is very unfair, it has so many fire wizards and many enemies (more than usual), it even contains those collapsible pillars in a few places The route with the pillars in the final act is actually a shortcut, and is accessed by climbing a breakable pole, the pillars were added in the final to cover the grabbable ledge (since ledges are handled differently from objects) The DLC act 2 layout is very different from what was in the prototype, much more far, but didn’t include the collapsible pillars. · Also that shortcut route was blocked off, making it the only area not used at all in the final game, however using glitches to access it reveals there are some objects in it. Jungle Joyride The other well-known beta area Accessing this area from the mission jungle fright reveals an unused layout and levers that change the water level. It is obviously unfinished as there are no camera triggers and the water is un-textured, it does have a beta goal ring at the end. It also has an unused palmtree object that is not used in any DLC · Although if you have the DLC installed the water will be textured This area is devoid of objects in act 1- or so we thought, it turns out the set file for this area contains all the objects from the jungle fright mission, but the trigger to load the objects has been disabled. · The area contains a lot of camera triggers in act 1, a lot are unfinished, and every switch you approach will snap the camera around, which is very awkward. · Re-enabling the trigger to load objects reveals the layout is mostly the same as the Jungle Fright mission · There seems to be an invisible cylinder around the centre platform that makes traversal impossible (though it doesn’t go all the way down to the ground so you can get under it and head to the first switch), this is not present in the prototype The Missing Jungle Fright also has an early layout for the last area of act 1 out of bounds, which are similar to the final, but has differences with the water falls and poles The DLC act 3 would use the beta area and finish it, the layout is again very similar to the unused one in the mission, but tidied up a bit, and the camera triggers are much better than those in act 1. If you’re interested in these areas I highly suggest watching the video.
Because I don't want you guys to be left out of the thrills and spills of mobile gaming: Remember those old Clickteam Sonic fan games which used the default platform engine? Sonic 2 Dash and Sonic 2 Crash aren't too far away from that, despite being licensed, commercial products. Lower end versions of Sonic Advance are fascinating creatures too. Despite being forced to axe almost everything (including slopes), they still manage to have reasonably authentic layouts.
The high end versions of Sonic 2 are also surprisingly accurate to the Genesis, far more than any of the infamous Sonic 1 ports.
From what I understand, the (good) Sonic 2 mobile ports were designed for Japan, then brought over to the West in two parts; "Dash" and "Crash" by British developer Rockpool Games. But someone's policy seems to have been "support older devices". And without access to Japanese versions for those phones, Rockpool made its own versions running on their own special engine. I would guess most people didn't spot this, because the press tend to review the best versions available, but these second-tier versions of Dash and Crash are... quite bad. Not so much in the context of other mobile games from that period, but... whoo. There are some versions for very simple devices, so obviously it would be unwise to expect perfect ports of Sonic 2 on those, but what I've just shown is supposedly optimised for the Samsung GT-S8000 from 2009 (supposedly mid-range for the period). As a quick rundown of things it doesn't have (bearing in mind this is the second half, starting at Mystic Cave): - Tails - Backgrounds - Quite a lot of the foreground - Sound effects (though that's not unusual) - Half of Sonic's animations - Half of the in-game objects - Special stages - Oil Ocean Zone - Sky Chase Zone - Wing Fortress Zone - Stage bosses - The Mecha Sonic boss fight - Also some of the graphics like shields, springs and spikes are from Sonic 1 Because the only boss is the final one, and there's no chase bits, I don't think Eggman is seen in the game either. I've played a couple of the Sonic 1 ports, and these can be a bit wonky too (you know there's a problems when they don't have loops), but I think it's a better showing overall.
There are shader files referencing a terrain editor left inside of Sonic Frontiers' files, probably just a leftover of whatever internal tool ST used to create the open zone heightmaps. Still neat these were leftover regardless though.
Was disassembling Sonic's Gameworld just to learn about the differences between the Genesis and the Pico. And there's seemingly a bit of data left from the assembler, with the original ROM's (Or at least a significant chunk of the ROM's) name... That being poobnk.
It might be A Year at Pooh Corner - that was bundled with consoles and is probably the most common Pico game out there. Or at least most translated - we have nine different versions.
Huh, maybe it served as an SDK of some sort for Pico games. I'll poke around this, maybe a couple of other games too, and post my findings in a separate thread (The Pico is pretty interesting software wise!)
Several things have came out about Sonic Ride over the past few months and years, that I haven't seen reflected anywhere outside of where they've been mentioned just yet. Essentially, the theory that both it and Sonic the Animation were simply inhouse experiments among AM3's numerous early efforts in 3DCG animation on their shiny new Silicon Graphics workstations is still sort of correct - but there was definitely a lot more to Ride than just that aspect, as already suggested by Sonic Jam Official Guide. It being always intended as a motion simulator ride is indeed true, and in fact only half the story here too. In a couple of recent interviews for the Time Extend podcast and the guy who makes Sega Saturn videos longer than Oppenheimer, one-time AM3 developer Kenneth Ibrahim has touched on Ride, as it was his first project there as a new programming hire - just before going on to be the voice of Sega Rally Championship and Manx TT Super Bike. Here's a rough transcription of relevant parts from the podcast, edited for coherence and posterity: But that's not all - by pure coincidence, Beep21 recently did a couple pieces on VR-1 with some of its original developers from AM4, in which the wider topic of Joypolis came up. I had debated on posting this, as B21 of course expressly state to not republish any text or media they use - at least as-is - and I'd like to keep respecting that (especially when their subscriptions cost very little, and can be made outside of Japan, as I managed to earlier this year). But seeing as the relevant part here is only a small part of a bigger image... "Sonic the Quiz ride". The description below says something along the lines of "Experience Sonic's world with quizzes. If you get it right, it's heaven, if you get it wrong, it's hell. The teamwork of eight people will decide your fate! The world's first role-playing quiz ride.". For the sake of context, this is from a bigger piece of concept artwork sketched up in early 1992; the story goes that after seeing Namco's imminent Wonder Eggs theme park, Hayao Nakayama tasked Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Shingo Dote of AM4 with dreaming up a bunch of new attractions to counteract it in a single week (there are a good nine or so more surrounding a very early depiction of a Joypolis facility - with the different codename "LUNAR" - in the complete image, available in low res here). Most of the others did end up making it out in a fairly close capacity to what they were originally designed as, a few slight name changes and appearance tweaks aside. Some pure guesswork here, but I could easily believe that it was cancelled either because there was a school of thought that it wouldn't be as effective for Japanese audiences who knew Sonic less, or due to plain old schedule slippages related to the opening dates of Sega's first Amusement Theme Park locations in 1994. I suppose you could make the case it would've gone down well at SegaWorld London and Sydney... but then that would've required Mizuguchi and co to keep working on it and not make the likes of Sega Rally instead.
The craziest part is we now know who animated that CG short... Could it be possible we might know who directed Sonic the Animation soon? (I ask, because a good chunk of anything TMS has been roped into tons of misinformation... see here)
So in Japan they had a special event for Sonic's birthday and it seems they have concept art. I don't think I've seen that Black Doom artwork before. Can't find other tweets of people taking a better picture of it other than this one but it's only the Shadow stuff that we have.
Black Doom’s head looks more like a bizarre jester mask and the back view has a very Eggman head and mustache. Maybe the original concept had more of a twist to it rather than going all in on the alien plot.
