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Breaking News: New Sonic 1 Prototype Stuff Unveiled

Even more than two decades after being cancelled, Nick Arcade is still giving us more alpha/beta stuff. The earliest version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that we’ve seen in action was first seen on the show, and now that the unaired pilot from 1991 has popped up online we now have the best footage yet of a Sonic the Hedgehog prototype.Sadly we don’t see that much of it because the challenge had to be completed in less than 25 seconds. The most notable differences shown are the rolling ball, which kinda looks like something that’s meant to be used to experiment with the rolling physics, and the different ring placement. Thanks to forum member ashthedragon for uploading a video of just the prototype footage. The full pilot can be seen here.
And on the subject of Sonic development stuff, this book by Read-Only Memory has lots of never-before-seen visual material from Mega Drive games and the console itself. This of course includes stuff related to Sonic as well. Forum member 87th has been kind enough to post a photo of the design documents for Sonic 1 showing some storyboards of the original ending. If you want to see more of it, you can buy the book here.
Also, yes we know that all of this news is old. We’re playing catch-up. :V

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6 Comments

  • Reply

    Kotaku nowadays is more about posting stupid shit not relevant to videogames, like otaku culture

  • Reply

    Weird, that ball seemed to not deal damage. You would think….
    Actually I bet that’s what the kid thought. But the ball was a solid object like the marble zone bricks. That could have been a nice gameplay element if it wasn’t beta…
    Also thank you bro for not sucking like the sonic 2 beta kid.

  • Reply

    Awesomesause

  • Reply

    “Super MAREio Brothers 3”

  • Reply

    My theory is that the ball was meant to show off the rolling physics and also show the player that they could do that as well, but because it might kill the player when it rolls into them, or glitch the game if it came down on top of them and clipped them into the wall, it was cut.

  • Reply

    Wish the proto was avalible.

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