Whole bunch of new Sonic 1 prototype footage found

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

This was actually found a while back, but has been private till now:

Whole lot of neat stuff in here, including the rolling balls from GHZ, footage of Sonic's end of level animation, and a very sped up Robotnik boss music, UFOs in marble zone, spinning spikes in Spring Yard Zone, no drowning music, entirely different special stage layouts, etc.

Lots of other early Sega prototype footage, too, like Streets of Rage.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

Note how the GHZ background is slightly different. Also note how they call Sonic "Sky blue" which he originally was, despite being cobalt by this build.

Windrunner · May 10, 2020

My heart skipped a beat when I read that thread title, I thought the lost protos had finally been found and dumped for a second there!

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

The streets of Rage changes, holy crap! Axel was called Hawk, Adam was called Wolf. Pine Pot was called Time Out!

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

The lamp post in GHZ is missing, maybe they didn't exist yet?

Deleted member 4247 · May 10, 2020

I thought this would be like some early crazy prototype, but that just looks like Sonic 1 to me.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

The shield atop the first loop in Sonic is an invincibility monitor

Tizoc · May 10, 2020

I need a hack that re-injects sonic's victory animation while jumping at the end of acts.
Why was this removed in the final build?

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

Tizoc said:
I need a hack that re-injects sonic's victory animation while jumping at the end of acts.
Why was this removed in the final build?

several hacks like that exist, you can get them very easily on Steam using Steam Workshop with the version of Sonic 1 on Steam.

It looks like the sideways spikes in marble zone after pushing the block are missing.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

The flashing lights in spring yard zone before the moving blocks are different

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

there also appears to be a part in spring yard zone after the rotating spikes where there are 3 bumpers overlapping each other, don't think I ever saw that in the final version.

The shield in Labyrinth Zone is replaced by a ring monitor.

GaseousSnake · May 10, 2020

I miss the welcome to green hill sign

retroman · May 10, 2020

Whoa, nice find!

Those "Y. Signal"-type enemies look completely different in the prototype version of SOR.

Also, I love how they just slapped an arranged version of Golden Axe's "Wilderness" on SOR's opening crawl for this promo. I suppose Yuzo's track wasn't ready yet.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

retroman said:
Whoa, nice find!

Those "Y. Signal"-type enemies look completely different in the prototype version of SOR.

Also, I love how they just slapped an arranged version of Golden Axe's "Wilderness" on SOR's opening crawl for this promo. I suppose Yuzo's track wasn't ready yet.

That's from the SST band's live performance

retroman · May 10, 2020

I actually bought Wrestle War because Mean Machines magazine gave it a pretty positive review. Talk about buyer's remorse!

Alex3190 · May 10, 2020

This is pretty cool, thanks for sharing Krejlooc.

Saikyo · May 10, 2020

Beta Signal on BK1 and you can see that they need to fix some stuff like blaze changing sides or the camera with two players.

retroman · May 10, 2020

Krejlooc said:
That's from the SST band's live performance

Yeah, the SST Band was pretty damn awesome. I have most of their albums.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

More:

Not sonic, but other games. First glance, the Game Gear Monster World II title screen is different.

InspectaDekka · May 10, 2020

Hearing the SST perform After Burner at the start just makes me want another After Burner

retroman · May 10, 2020

InspectaDekka said:
Hearing the SST perform After Burner at the start just makes me want another After Burner

That reminds me that I still need to play G-LOC! I bought that game the day it was released on the eShop, but I haven't been able to drag myself away from SOR4 yet.

InspectaDekka · May 10, 2020

retroman said:
That reminds me that I still need to play G-LOC! I bought that game the day it was released on the eShop, but I haven't been able to drag myself away from SOR4 yet.

Wait...GLOC'S ON E SHOP?

lazygecko · May 10, 2020

Krejlooc said:
and a very sped up Robotnik boss music

I think this is just the tempo being increased globally from speed shoes since all the music, including Green Hill and the stage clear jingle in Act 3 are also faster. Maybe they hadn't yet implemented tempo being restored after the speed effect wears off.

Also interesting how the snare sample is pitched lower. Now you can actually hear the native pitch of the drum machine it was sourced from (Roland TR-626). Maybe the sample was sped up in the final game after an optimization pass to conserve space.

retroman · May 10, 2020

InspectaDekka said:
Wait...GLOC'S ON E SHOP?

Yes!

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

This pattern in the final version of Sonic 1 is not found in this beta footage:

and the opposite:

This pattern of titles in the beta is never seen in the final.

Masterspeed · May 10, 2020

Krejlooc said:
The lamp post in GHZ is missing, maybe they didn't exist yet?

No checkpoints would of made that game hell

lazygecko · May 10, 2020

Krejlooc said:
This pattern in the final version of Sonic 1 is not found in this beta footage:

and the opposite:

This pattern of titles in the beta is never seen in the final.

The final version has a lot more obvious tiling seams in them. That makes it pretty easy to deduce that it was a late effort to cut down on the amount of unique tiles used. There's also those much earlier (earlier than this footage) screens of Marble Zone where you can see that the lava artwork is a lot more elaborate with edge graphics that match the layout patterns. It's pretty obvious that would have needed many more unique tiles than the more simplified style you see in the final game.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

lazygecko said:
The final version has a lot more obvious tiling seams in them. That makes it pretty easy to deduce that it was a late effort to cut down on the amount of unique tiles used.

They're actually the same patterns, I can spot every tile in the footage, just arranged differently. The entire background is rearranged, waterfalls where there weren't prior and such. The title screen in particular exhibits lots of changes because of this. The part I circled in the beta is just the same couple of tiles mirrored back to back, and you can see them in the same screenshot of the final footage I showed above on the far left, it's just that you never see them mirrored in that pattern in the final.

It was known for a long time that they had continously tweaked the background pattern table in GHZ, though.

There's also those much earlier (earlier than this footage) screens of Marble Zone where you can see that the lava artwork is a lot more elaborate with edge graphics that match the layout patterns. It's pretty obvious that would have needed many more unique tiles than the more simplified style you see in the final game.

This is almost certainly a mock up and was probably never part of the actual game.

Bjones · May 10, 2020

That looks pretty far along to be prototypes.

Wireframe · May 10, 2020

Thought this was the lost proto. Nearly had a heart attack.

JustinH · May 10, 2020

Haven't watched the whole video in OP yet, but this is really cool!

It's so weird to me to see Sonic jump that way after the stage ends, lol. It's weird how you "switch sides" after a grab in Streets of Rage, too. It seems like you don't just like... "fulcrum" over them (I'm not sure if I'm using that word right, lol). Seems like Blaze is just cartwheeling behind them. Not sure which I think is cooler...

Throws are a lot shorter too. Doesn't look like you can "recover" from those like you can in the final game with UP+Jump.

DrFunk · May 10, 2020

This is awesome - I remember seeing 'Time Out' from Sega Visions back in the day

lazygecko · May 10, 2020

Arkeband · May 10, 2020

The Toejam and Earl build from the second video looks pretty final, I couldn't notice any differences off the top of my head.

Sacul64 · May 10, 2020

So was the rolling ball originally meant to be a subtle teaching moment like the first Mario Goomba to teach you ball physics on slopes? Possibly removed since people jumped over it in testing or something? Also it was not just the boss music that was speed up it was the victory theme as well and boss music did not cut on defeat maybe just a glitch in the build?

ShinUltramanJ · May 10, 2020

Not to derail, but that video reminded me that Wrestle War never appeared in the U.S.

Was it ever released elsewhere? And if so why the hell has it never been put on the billion Genesis Collections that have been released?!

Deleted member 17210 · May 10, 2020

ShinUltramanJ said:
Not to derail, but that video reminded me that Wrestle War never appeared in the U.S.

Was it ever released elsewhere? And if so why the hell has it never been put on the billion Genesis Collections that have been released?!

Aside from Japan, it had a PAL release on MD, and showed up later in the DC Sega Smash Pack compilation.

apathetic · May 10, 2020

Krejlooc said:
The flashing lights in spring yard zone before the moving blocks are different

Watched it to see if "cope" was still there, and yup. Think it has better positioning too, right behind rotating spike balls.

Virtua King · May 10, 2020

Came for Sonic, but stayed for the Streets of Rage footage. It's really cool seeing how different the enemy types could have been.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

lazygecko said:
Also interesting how the snare sample is pitched lower. Now you can actually hear the native pitch of the drum machine it was sourced from (Roland TR-626). Maybe the sample was sped up in the final game after an optimization pass to conserve space.

Clownacy explains:

Sonic 1's drums are also used in Golden Axe II. In fact, they share the same sound engine - the one we know as 'SMPS 68k Type 1b' (though, Golden Axe II might use Type 1a - I'm not sure). Sega just liked reusing stuff, I guess.

I suppose, while I'm here, I should reiterate why all this prototype footage has lower-pitched drums: as I already said, the sound engine isn't specific to Sonic 1 - it's used by a whole range of Mega Drive/Genesis games, and even some Game Gear, Master System, Mega CD, 32X, Sega Pico, and arcade games.

Sonic 1 features a heavily-modified version of this sound engine, whereas Golden Axe II presumably does not - this is why its drums match Sonic 1's prototypes, which date back to before Sonic Team made the modification that changed their pitch.

What was this change? Well, it was the addition of the 'Say-gaa' chant: to implement it, the part of the engine that handled sample playback was rewritten, and, in the process, they made it faster. By making the code faster, they made the sample playback faster too. Either the devs forgot to adjust each sample's delay value to make them play at their original speed with the newer code, or they figured they just liked the drums better this way.

What's interesting is that this footage, despite showing a very late version of the game, shows that the modification (and thus the addition of the 'Say-gaa' chant) had not been made yet. This supports an old bit of info I heard a while ago that I can't find a source for, which claims that the chant was indeed a last-minute addition to the game, and intended to fill up the unused space on the cartridge that was meant for planned features which ultimately didn't get implemented (I believe what I read was that this cartridge space was originally meant for a fancy sound test menu involving Sonic and his band, but this is all just hearsay so don't quote me on it. Remember to cite your sources, kids!).

That new prototype footage of Sonic 1 going around...

The MUCH shorter drowning time would also go a long way to explaining why Labyrinth has so many air bubble generators in close proximity to each other,...

forums.sonicretro.org

TheUnsungHero26 · May 10, 2020

I always liked the idea of UFOs in Marble Zone. Sonic 1 had such a surreal vibe to it, especially in its beta/early footage.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

Map of the beta special stage has been pieced together using this footage, plus earlier screenshots from magazines:

Example of how this map was pieced together:

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

More videos:

Lots of good stuff here. The Jewel Master footage has lots and lots of small differences, but the star of the show is the footage of the never-released Genesis version of Ninja Gaiden (arcade port). The beta floating around is much, much earlier than the footage shown.

QisTopTier · May 10, 2020

Krejlooc said:
The streets of Rage changes, holy crap! Axel was called Hawk, Adam was called Wolf. Pine Pot was called Time Out!

Hawk Manson

Hawk Manson is one of the 4 main characters from Fighting Force and is the main character in Fighting Force 2. A vigilante now, Hawk Manson was once a freedom fighter for all the social wrongs in the world. Hawk learned the lesson that nice guys finish last. He has ran into Mace several times...

fightingforce.fandom.com

;)

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

QisTopTier said:
Hawk Manson

Hawk Manson is one of the 4 main characters from Fighting Force and is the main character in Fighting Force 2. A vigilante now, Hawk Manson was once a freedom fighter for all the social wrongs in the world. Hawk learned the lesson that nice guys finish last. He has ran into Mace several times...

fightingforce.fandom.com

;)

Hawk is also the protagonist of Riot City, a sega arcade game whose main character looks very, very much like Axel.

Riot City predates Bare Knuckle.

QisTopTier · May 10, 2020

Krejlooc said:
Hawk is also the protagonist of Riot City, a sega arcade game whose main character looks very, very much like Axel.

Yup, it's kinda funny how "not axel" has a history of being named hawk. I wonder what the dudes name in fighting force would have been if they kept it hawk in SoR

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

QisTopTier said:
Yup, it's kinda funny how "not axel" has a history of being named hawk. I wonder what the dudes name in fighting force would have been if they kept it hawk in SoR

Fighting Force was originally streets of rage 4.

QisTopTier · May 10, 2020

Krejlooc said:
Fighting Force was originally streets of rage 4.

Why do you think I winky faced you to begin with :P

His name would have to be changed after it got changed from SoR4 so I was wondering what generic name they would have went with :P

Spinluck · May 10, 2020

This is pretty dope.

Wonder what the idea was before some of the subtle changes.

Deleted member 12790 · May 10, 2020

Volume 11:

Whole bunch of new Sonic 1 prototype footage found

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