Proto talk:Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis)

The "Nick Arcade" ROM?

I wanna mention this here since nobody seems to know about it. This prototype could be the same prototype that was shown during the Nick Arcade show back then. Just a heads up in case you guys wanna add those up. -- Trimint123 (talk) 10:54 PM, January 1st 2021 (WIB)

No, you're not the first person to mention this. People have been talking about the Nick Arcade video all day and we keep removing their edits because they're not accurate. There are about 6 prerelease builds of the game, and both CES and Nick Arcade are consistent with both builds 3 and 4 but we do not have enough information to confirm which build each is. The prototype is a match for build 4, which was seen in a wide array of magazines, but the Nick Arcade build could very easily be the earlier build 3, we just do not know. The fact is, it's a lot more useful to compare this prototype to the magazine builds for which we've actually seen quite a lot of rather than a short clip of Green Hill Zone which is consistent with multiple different builds. This has not been proven to be the same build as the Nick Arcade build, so we should avoid referring to it as such; it's misleading. --Hwd45 (talk) 18:05, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

That's a very fair point. Thanks for mention this. -- Trimint123 (talk) 9:56 AM, January 2nd 2021 (WIB)

Funnily enough, I now realize that there's some GHZ background colors which differ slightly in earlier builds which match the final in NA, build 4 and the prototype. In other words it looks very possible that NA is a match for the prototype, after all, now that build 3 seems to be ruled out. That said, we should probably err on the side of not making assumptions about a build we've only seen 30 seconds of, as it certainly could be yet another very similar looking build not seen in any other prerelease materials, but I do think it's highly likely to be the same one now that I'm more confident about it not being build 3. --Hwd45 (talk) 03:03, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I also believe that this build matches build 4 a bit after looking at different prerelease screenshots and seeing what matches up to the prototype, though it's very unlikely that this is the same as build 4 it's still very close to it, well like how Sonic 2 Nick Arcade is close to it's Nick Arcade build. --Turbulation (talk) 03:10, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Turbolation has a point. We did found the build for the Nick Arcade Sonic 2 after all, so it may be possibility that this build may be the same build as the Nick Arcade show. But of course, we can't tell that for sure without finding the rest of the builds for Sonic 1 first, which unlike Sonic 2 where every prototype builds of that games was found and well documented back then, it is unlikely. But we'll see about that as time goes on as we'll find more of it, or even finding the jackpot of them all, the Tokyo Toy Show prototype. -- Trimint123 (talk) 7:14 PM, January 3nd 2021 (WIB)

About "Green Hill Night"

I saw somewhere, I think in an interview, that Green Hill would have cave areas and that was removed, seeing that the color palettes in the Sonic series don't usually change the main palette in each zone, unless it is under water.
I cannot confirm this. --Porcino (talk) 15:26, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

I know we can't prove it, but I honestly think that "nighttime" palette is a remnant from the Tokyo Toy Show demo. apart from Sonic and the enemy sprites, it has a very similar vibe as the surviving TTS '90 screenshots. Zoinknoise (talk) 01:50, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's a similar case to the night mode in Sonic 2. MargaretThatcher (talk) Fuck Argentina -Maggie 02:42, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

The "Unused Level"

Looking at the precise data for the "unused level", I have a theory about the history of what this level may have originally been, and what it ultimately ended up becoming.

• This level likely started out as an early iteration of another stage. Based on the way the chunks are arranged, 00 was likely empty space, 01 was a repeating chunk used for walls, and the remaining chunks made up the "playable" space.
• Later on, when the level was updated and the old layout was no longer needed, it was turned into a test level in which collision and layering for chunks in new stages could be quickly and easily tested. This was accomplished with a simple algorithm that took every chunk that wasn't 00 or 01 in the original layout and overwrote it with the remaining chunks in sequential order, starting with chunk 02. This stage was then moved to slot 06, which could easily be coded to load the art and chunk data for any given stage type and then quickly loaded up in order to test new chunks. Then, when this test stage was no longer needed, it was quickly replaced with the small map used for the ending sequence in the final game.

On a side note, I've compared this layout to all of the ones used by our proto levels. Going on the "00 = empty space, 01 = repeating wall chunk" hypothesis, this level isn't a close match for anything that currently exists in a playable state, indicating that whatever this may have once been had radical changes made to it between the original point of creation and the current build. --MisterVercetti (talk) 13:42, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Marble Zone UFOs

I've heard a lot of theories about why the UFOs in Marble Zone were removed, mostly aesthetic things like "they don't fit the theme of the level" or "they're visually distracting". However, as I was recently playing through Marble Zone on the Taxman remake, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I think I definitively know why they were taken out, and the reason is a lot simpler than any of us thought: parallax scrolling. It would seem that when the UFOs were first put in, not every stage's background was intended to feature parallax scrolling (it certainly wouldn't have fit the background of Sparkling Zone, for example). However, as the visual design of the game progressed, they made the decision that they wanted parallax in as many stages as possible in order to make the backgrounds stand out more. This decision was made fairly late into development, after the Shinsaku Soft build but before the initial retail release. However, they naturally ran into a bit of a snag when it came to Marble Zone - namely, the UFOs. Simply put, if parallax scrolling were to be put into Marble Zone's background, the UFOs had to go, since any kind of layering that would have allowed them to stay would've resulted in the cloud scrolling looking hideous, and any layering that looked decent resulted in the UFOs breaking into pieces. Therefore, they were given the heave-ho by the time REV00, the initial retail build, came along, and I think this is where a lot of the mystery was generated. The UFOs are gone by this point... but yet there's no parallax scrolling to be seen in Marble Zone. However, remember that REV00 was, in essence, a late beta build; there was still a rather sizable "to do" list, but because most of it regarded visual polish and the core game was fully functional and playable by that point, it ended up being rushed out the door and onto store shelves in order to meet western deadlines (incidentally, the only two zones that have parallax in REV00 - Green Hill and Star Light - are also the only two zones that have it in our prototype, which goes to show just how "eleventh hour" of a decision it was). By REV01 - i.e. the "official, 100% complete" build - Marble Zone had parallax in all its multi-layered glory. So I think the mystery of "Where did the UFOs go?" can finally be put to bed. They could have had UFOs or parallax scrolling in Marble Zone, but they couldn't have both. Sonic Team simply opted for the latter. --MisterVercetti (talk) 11:26, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Buzz Bomber behavior

This is currently mentioned on the page under the Unused Code section: "An unused routine that makes the Buzz Bomber turn around and loop after flying away."

I was surprised when I saw this line, because I had been checking some of the badnik code previously against the final's and I hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary in the Buzz Bomber code. I reviewed it again just now and from a quick glance it's very similar if not identical to the final game's. Maybe it's possible the unused routine was found isolated somewhere else in the ROM which is why I missed it.

However, what brings some confusion to me is the line seems to describe how the Buzz Bomber already behaves in both the prototype and the final game. The enemy's behavior in both appears exactly the same: it flies out, stops flying, shoots, flies off, and if it has not moved far enough off-screen for the object to be deleted, it will turn around and repeat that same behavior facing the other direction.

I feel like there may need to be more clarification on how the unused behavior is different from the enemy's normal behavior as well as maybe an offset to where this code would be? I can try and keep an eye out for it, but I'm still learning the ropes basically with digging into this game. SpikyStars (talk) 06:01, 17 November 2023 (UTC)