Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) Prototype uncovered
- Thread starter MondoMega
- Start date
There's a sprite for spindashing. Looks like they thought of the concept before Sonic 2. That or it was an unused rolling animation.
OP
OP
based on all the angles it's probably more likely some kind of fast directional movement thing. Maybe related to the warp tubes in clock ork?Those sprites were still leftover in the final game too.
It's interesting to see how many ideas for the original would make it to the sequel.Those sprites were still leftover in the final game too.
Right now they are testing different Green Hill layouts.
Edit: The ROM will be released to the public in 30 minutes.
I'm going to guess that it's probably some kind of palette bug with the fade transitions and not an actual night mode.
YouTube Upload
technically this is a separate video they made earlier even if it shows much of same stuff, you can tell it's shorter
Personal highlights:
- I did not expect fist pump jump to be player controlled
- Palette of Sparkling was cool, but those flashing effects are awful
That's been the theory for a while (sprites were there in final game, just with less coding or something) - 8-bit Sonic 1 does something similar with its take on Scrap Brain teleporters.
though honestly I'm not sure if you didn't know this already, but someone here probably didn't
I did not. It just made more sense than it being a beta spindash because of the multiple orientations and the fact that they didn't use it for Sonic CD's spindash.
By now, HPZ uploaded the recorded livestream footage as well, though I would probably recommend the previous video unless you want to sift through Twitch chat or see the midnight joke. Still, here it is:
This is fucking HUGE. The first ever discovered prototype of Sonic 1, after nearly 30 years. The folks at hiddenpalace are godsends. Can't wait to watch this.
It's wild seeing those UFOs from the early screenshots in action.
I wonder how many prototypes of major games are still out there, and how many have deteriorated beyond recovery. I remember back in 1994, one day a regular at the game shop I worked at brought in his SNES game copier and a box of floppies of prototypes of games that hadn't been released yet, like DKC and FFIII (VI), as well as some half-done localizations of weird games that I never saw again. I think about that sometimes.
I wonder how many prototypes of major games are still out there, and how many have deteriorated beyond recovery. I remember back in 1994, one day a regular at the game shop I worked at brought in his SNES game copier and a box of floppies of prototypes of games that hadn't been released yet, like DKC and FFIII (VI), as well as some half-done localizations of weird games that I never saw again. I think about that sometimes.
The collector who currently owns a physical copy literally approached drx and co. to do it before selling it off in the future. Some magazine is apparently doing a story on further details.
Further personal highlights:
- Spike Damage Behavior 0: Origins is one of those discoveries that make the previously saner explanation sound wrong. At that point I'm way more willing to believe it was a genuine bug. For those who didn't watch the stream - not sure how obvious it is in precooked version - this proto's version of "spike bug" can literally hurt Sonic with an invisibility monitor, not just when recovering from damage.
- Is the GHZ layout mostly the same thing except with balls? It sure looks like so to my untrained eyes, though mostly is the operative word.
- Marble Zone pillar doing a Barrel of Doom thing is hilarious.
Nah that was a debug tool. The Genesis had rudimentary highlighting and shadowing capabilities in its display processor that could be applied to individual tiles. Sonic Team cleverly used it as a way to visually see if the layering of their graphics was correct. By layering I mean whether a specific tile is drawn under or over the various sprite objects, Sonic included.
Found it here:
Timestamp is 1:58:50 if link doesn't work.
There's some stuff in here that can only be explained by some orthogonal bug or oddity if it's just the well known layering test mode (like red/bloody grass around rocks). I'd need to watch that section again to be sure if it's that at all or not.
Oh yeah I wasn't drawing any definite conclusions about the palette stuff in this prototype, just clarifying that the night mode stuff in S2/3 almost certainly has nothing to do with it.
For a few seconds I thought this was the infamous build with the little goblin enemy thing. Cool either way, but I would love to see that build even though it is almost certainly never going to happen.
This had me curious if any people worked on both games. Looking at Revenge of Shinobi's credits on mobygames, it seems like Gen/MD Sonic 1 has no overlap of staff with it. Almost everyone who worked on Revenge of Shinobi appears on the credits of later Sonic games, though.
never say never. "we'll almost certainly never find it" was previously said about the sonic 2 nick arcade prototype, and the sonic 3 magazine preview build, and now this sonic 1 build being the most legendary of all the found sonic protos so far. all are in our hands now. that one may yet be found, too!
I would usually agree, but didn't Yuji Naka straight up say that build was accidentally destroyed? I thought they said that pretty recently too so they must have looked for it at some point.
I agree it's not impossible, we can dream!
Oh, right, sorry. I misparsed what you said. I'm inclined to agree with them being unrelated, in fact, based on the entire GHZ loop being dark, while shadow-highlight mode would by necessity color one part differently from the other.
By the way, it's such an odd feature for a sprite chip to have; I wonder if VDP designers just threw it together from leftover transistor budget in a hurry. I can't imagine that many games making a good use of it.
It makes sense they were thinking about it back then considering the concept was a ripoff of Back to the Future, which came out in 1985, 1989, and 1990.