The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

Er, I'm confused. I looked up the "mario smash" virtual boy pics, and they appear to be the same Mario Land VB images that have been floating around online for years?

 

That S&K Collection advert looks so amateurish.

 

That "Hershey's Sega Sampler" disc has been floating around the net for a bit - the reason it doesn't have a page on Sega Retro is because... I don't know what to call it.

 

Any disc scans, header data, or box photos? We might whittle it down NEC Retro style

Personally waging on Sega Entertainment Hershey's

https://segaretro.org/Press_release...sumer_Giants_To_Promote_Fall_PC_Games_Line-Up Referred here as "Sonic the Hedgehog PC Sampler"

 

It's buried here in Sega Retro:Todo/Demos


(the wiki's been playing games - I wasn't physically able to get onto that page this morning)

I think I looked into this back in the day and found it being called 3248902304832 different things. There are others on that page too.

In fact most of what's left in TODO are tedious mysteries.

 

Right? I love how it even features a character that isn't in the game.

Then again, back then SoA was trying pass Mecha Sonic off as Metal Sonic (possibly by mistake).

 

I like how, because there's no Sonic Screen Saver art for Metal Sonic, they had to adapt graphics from Sonic CD so everything else ends up clashing with it. (Though to my eye it looks like it might be an example of the attempted 256-color remake a la Ecco that has a handful of reference images left on the disc -- I briefly considered DA garden but I don't think Metal Sonic takes that pose in that mode, only hovering upright. Hm.)

 

Yes, it uses those bonus pics from the original PC Sonic CD port.

 

This might not be considered something "Discovered" over here at 'Retro, and it's quite possible that this has already been compared years ago elsewhere on this forum, but I thought it'd be fitting to share these cool cutscene similarities in this thread anyway. I didn't know about this comparison until just a moment ago thanks to this video...

... That said, I'm not overly familiar with all of Sonic Unleashed's cutscenes, so I'm not surprised that I didn't notice this myself.

 

That seems like just a standard animation/camera trick more than a deliberate callback.
I'm not a big animation development guy, but I'm sure I've seen it outside of Sonic. Maybe someone who knows more can describe it?

 

Over on reddit, someone posted this:

"Someone I know told me that had a sonic poster they wanted to give me but it appears it’s an original proof for making sure the colors were correct! I can only really go off of what’s written on here as there is no other writing on it at all but it does have a lot of markings showing the color correction process and it looks really old and fragile, if anyone knows more about this poster then me please let me know I’d love to know more about it!"
https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHedgehog/comments/1k43z46/comment/mo897n0/?context=3



Notably, this is the cover artwork for a SatAM VHS



But it's also different - Sally has a vest on in their image! Was that ever used anywhere else?

 

That poster looks miles better than the VHS cover art. I wonder why they used a clearly unfinished version there.

 

That VHS only contains season 1 episodes, where Sally didn’t wear a vest, which could explain its removal.

They typically didn’t care about that kind of consistency for these home video releases though, so maybe the artist had a season 2 Sally model sheet and the approver had a season 1 model sheet.

 

I just played through Adventure Island 3 on the NES and noticed that the palm trees looked familiar. I did a google search and someone else noticed as well.
https://www.timeextension.com/news/...omework-with-adventure-island-iiis-palm-trees

But beyond the palm trees, the new 5th dinosaur they added beyond the four offered in Adventure Island 2 is a triceratops that does Sonic's spin attack (3:33)

 

Interesting comparison.

And they originally looked even closer to the AI3 palmtrees:


However, AI3 came out in '92. Would it have used that demo specifically as an inspiration?

Do we know how long it's been in development? AI2 came out before Sonic 1, so it's possible AI3 started development before Sonic 1 was released and they based the palmtrees on mag screens of that demo.

 

Forgot to mention - I uploaded the cover for one of the rarest alternative releases for Sonic - Sonic Compilation!

https://info.sonicretro.org/File:SonicClassics_MD_AU_3in1_cover.jpg

This cover was specifically only released like this in New Zealand. The Australian version was this:



Which would have had a keyring included. Still have no idea what that keyring is.

Both versions have the cart that says Sonic Compilation - though both are B&W prints.

 

Possibly, it's all speculation until someone tracks down someone from Hudson Soft and grills them until they spill the tea.
It was also suggested that maybe both Sonic 1 and Adventure Island 3 were both referencing some other source for the palm tree design (like an art book or something)

 

Sally in a purple vest? Uh oh, it's an imposter built by Robotnik!

Hiroshi Nagai is a name that was quite big in Japan at the time, and also one I often see thrown around when people are discussing Sonic 1's sources of inspiration - and looking at what his paintings depict (a romanticized depiction of contemporary America with tropical vistas and lively metropolises), I definitely see the connection.



Then again, I've never seen artwork of his with palmtrees quite that stylized and geometric.

 

To have the leaves in the same place is more than just coincidence (unless they were both copying from the same thing, in which case, stop being lazy, game developers). The fact Adventure Island is derived from Wonder Boy, and there's connections on that front to Sonic:

makes me believe someone knew what they were doing.

Hudson were obviously quite proud of that palm tree because it's on the title screen of the Japanese version.

 

Monster Lair and Sonic both took inspiration from the 1981 Dr. Slump - Arale-chan anime for their title screens. Which itself was probably an homage to the MGM lion logo.