The Sonic game you NEVER got to play
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- čas přidán 26. 09. 2023
- An early version of Sonic the Hedgehog for Mega Drive / Genesis was shown off a year earlier by SEGA at the 1990 Tokyo Toy Show. This version features significant differences from the ultimate retail release. Today we cover the lost demo and the fan project re-creating it.
Project Tokyo Debut 1990 on CZcams: @Project_HI-TECH
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#SEGA #Sonic #retrogaming #Gaming #sonicthehedgehog #segagenesis - Hry
Hack creator here. I want to show my appreciation again for you making this video, it’s surreal to see my recreation showcased here. I find it neat that despite the simplicity of what’s there, you still managed to pull all the content out you could and make a video on it.
this is the holy grail of lost media for me, thank you for re-creating it!
Are you going to recreate the sonic sprite from the toy show? I noticed the video here has the newer sprite not the one shown at the toy show
@@Hectik17what sprite… the one on the title screen?
@@TheClassicSonicYTThank you
tho why the collision messy
In fact, from what I discovered, Sonic's prototype was also presented at a smaller event. For me, this is the key to one day finding this lost game.
I understand back then it wasnt deemed necessary to keep tabs on this, but seeing what it eventually became, i really wish someone would've held onto this cart.
i wish that too since the community wouldn’t had existed
To be fair, it does make sense that it wasn’t really cared about back then. It likely wasn’t even seen as a game - moreso just a tech demo (which it is), showcasing the power the megadrive is capable of, displaying all those sprites onscreen at once.
I am a part of the duo that originally started the Tokyo Toy Show demo hype back in 2019! It was extremely underappreciated before that. I'm happy to see people are getting more and more invested in it and try their own skills to remake the prototype as accurately as possible.
though fuck the community
No one knows who you are, sorry
@@tk2598 I don't really care, I'm telling you how this TTS hype came to be.
@@PilaCiu Seems like you’re trying to take credit for something without really doing anything
@@tk2598 No, not really. I were the one to spam TTS everywhere until people started to care about this version. I have multiple witnesses as well.
Clouds move because this is how the clouds work in the demo you can see the first screenshot the clouds are blurred, the enemy is lacking one sprite because it only shows one walking frame and the jump frame
I think Sega was going to put this prototype in sonic mega collection as a bonus, but they couldn’t because they could not find the prototype anywhere in their archives so it’s probably lost forever and will never know what the prototype was truly like
Yep, that sounds like how the story goes. I said this before but a somewhat popular theory is that the eprom it was on got overwritten with other data. As unfortunate as that would be, that is exactly why I tried so hard to get this project to be as close as I can to the original.
The reason why project tokyo debut 1990 has the debut approaching stuck to the screen, its because if you look at the ss of the og demo the debut approaching sign isnt blurred
I still hold out hope that the actual prototype will be found one day. It took us years to find the mythical Sonic 1 and 3 prototypes, who's to say that the Tokyo Toy Show demo won't be found either. If it does, I'm gonna go crazy
I think it’s highly unlikely that would ever happen, as the eprom it was on was more than likely overwritten with other data, or was simply tossed. My goal with this project was basically to satisfy the need to have the original, though.
@@Laffy_Taffy Yeah I know, that's simply bound to happen with something so old and niche of a thing compared to at the time when Sonic 1 finally released. It's just something that feels super impossible, but I feel like is so important that the search must continue. Although I must say the rom hack you've made looks really impressive and it's awesome you took the time to make something like that
pokemon gs spaceworld got leaked, anything is always possible @@Laffy_Taffy
i actually figured out some information on how the parallax planes worked, and i think taff ran with some of it to complete this demo. this recreation has some inaccuracies but is the best so far from what i've seen.
i've never seen anyone cover the various eras of sonic 1's development extensively, as there's multiple different generations of prototypes and theorized plots, some of which i've actually personally discovered remnants of in the released prototype.
perhaps a video on these eras could be interesting? granted it takes some research to get things right but it could be new ground to tread on
Maybe you could talk with H4G about it?
Admittedly I did use a bit of research regarding the parallax from you, including the positioning and looping of stuff, etc. and yes it’s unfortunate that it still has inaccuracies but hopefully it will satisfy the craving so many have involving this short experience.
I really like the early concept they had for the title screen, which for the record, is why it only has a black background in TTS and the 8 bit games.
Sonic's band members (which used to exist) would fly past the screen (somewhat similar to the sonic 2 sega logo) in an interleaving pattern leaving trails as they do, creating a striped screen. *Then,* the Sonic logo comes down over top.
Dunno if that ever got implemented, but I kinda doubt it.
Yeah unfortunately, that was not ever something that got implemented. Before this demo, there likely wasn’t even a proper title screen yet, and after this build, it pretty much just evolved directly into the title screen most people are accustomed to.
Now… you really _can_ experience it for yourself!
Project Tokyo Debut is available for all to download, you can find the dedicated channel in the description.
Every bit of early Sonic 1 stuff makes me want Thirteen to be a real villain more and more. Wizeman in NiGHTS is similar but that's about it.
Back in the day "screenshots" of prototype games were sometimes fake mock-ups. They weren't actually screenshots at all, they were created by someone who manually put sprites and backgrounds together. That's why sometimes you would see the character not centered in the screen (in games where you're supposed to be centered). I wonder if that's the case here too. Does Sonic really jump without spinning, or did someone just throw a Sonic sprite into the air to make it look as though he's jumping?
This mockup theory is definitely not the case here. From 1:36-1:45 in this video, you can see it running at the event, in both pictures different points of the level are shown off that aren’t ones we’ve already seen. Not to mention, a video exists of the event, and while you _nearly_ can’t see anything in the sonic booth, you can definitely make out a cloud scrolling across the screen.
IMO, this build is my holy grail of beta builds. The day someone finds it (if someone ever finds it, considering not even SEGA has it anymore), I think I can take a rest on research of beta builds and development of Sonic games and retro games in general.
While yes, I do agree this build is very cool in the right that it’s super primitive and graphics are distinctly different from the final game’s - I will say I agree with Tony’s response, “very niché”, or basic, for lack of better terms.
A fun fact: the final game (and sonic 2) actually uses the original sprite in a form still? The actual spinning jump sprite uses the older design (the cheek fur and ears are identical), suggesting that the old sprites were used for a little bit in development. It was changed by Sonic 3, you can see this very easily just by pausing at the right time in game.
Glad someone else caught this, as I kinda wanted to talk about it, but I’ll keep it short since this is CZcams.
You can see these early design remnants not only in the rolling sprites, but also in the diagonal/angled walking sprites as well
Thanks for making the video! Being a tester for this has been a wild experience a year in the making!
our community is fucking tired of this tts shit isnt it? nobody wants the tts hype anymore if its happened once its gonna keep on being mentioned to death, the release of the hack may just kill the community upon release.
@@MessiKeppfill me in on this
@@onlypuppy7you dont want to
@@MessiKepp Don't like what you see? *Look away.*
@@sleekflash16thanks sleekflash
Hello everyone, this is the channel linked in the description. You can find old footage and screenshots from this project within this channel. You may also ask questions in the replies, although it’s not guaranteed I will be able to answer them all.
I would love to get my hands on a playable beta of Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast my personal favorite Sonic game that and Sonic 3! Keep up the awesome work Tony!
I would like to see the Saturn prototype before its assets were reworked into Jam's Sonic World
This is actually really cool, I was asking myself why no one's remade it until now!
I got insanely excited when I saw that title and short preview, because I thought someone had found it, this is still very awesome, but man that hit
Glad you (hopefully) found it interesting enough! This is quite the basic build when you get down to researching it. However, my goal when recreating it was to scratch that itch so many had, wishing to witness it themselves.
Surprised redhotsonic doesn't know about this
Well, considering the last couple of years of giga leaks (discovering that L was indeed real :P) and what not, I'm just holding onto hope that one day, some random schmuck will discover the rom like in a flea market (much like how the Pluto prototype was discovered) or something and dump it on the internet. A woman can dream.
I've always liked the different layers of palm trees.
Probably the most entertaining part of this build is watching the parallax objects go by. It’s almost soothing since Sonic’s so slow here.
this could only be explained by one thing...
the dimensional merge
Oh no....
Its called project tokyo debut 1990 but you can call it tokyo debut also this is the most accurate tts remake. Taff Has a channel dedicated to this recreation he posts certain updates about this demo. My complaint is the slow speed when you control sonic at the start
Thank you for actually calling it by its proper name, most people just shorten it to “Project 1990” which is not what I want it known by. As for Sonic walking slow, that is intentional - note that in all screenshots that show the level, he is walking in every single one _except_ the debut approaching pic.
@@Laffy_Taffywhich makes sense since sonic is only sprinting during the debut approaching sign
@@Laffy_Taffyik the slow speed is for the auto demo but it's kinda bugging me since you can only go slow while controlling sonic
1:55 I wouldn't be surprised if it ran on pre-recorded inputs. I recall some years ago SMS Power! preserved such a demo for one of the 8-bit Sonic games (I think Sonic 2).
Yeah this is quite the likely option to be fair, putting this out there now that collision here is rougher, not to mention all the unfinished things scattered around here and there (no enemy collision, Sonic’s strange physics), allowing someone to play it themselves would expose these issues even further.
I mean sure, Sonic walks slower than Mario but the parallax scrolling is actually even better in this build than the final release.
Love the passion the Sonic community comes up sometimes.
this passion is long dead too late buddy
@@MessiKepp Mania and P06 tell me different.
One belief about the parallax scrolling is that later in development when vertical camera scrolling was introduced around the Computer Chronicles build, it would screw up the fg objects, and they eventually removed them.
(They also appear to take ridiculous amounts of sprite space, causing the limit before stuff begins to flicker to get hit much quicker.)
Also I forgot to add but Sonic seems to be slow here likely due to the collision related stuff (they didn’t want all the broken parts to be too visible) as well as the emphasis mostly being around the foreground parallax elements.
I showed this video to my dad who has been in a coma for 23 years and he woke up and asked for chicken tenders
what
Sega needs to bring back the rad looking blue creature.
The issue with said creature is that A- it fit more along with the conceptual “nightmare plot”, and B- it was not even completed in the demo, being unfinished (with the previously mentioned nonexistent collision and like 2 functions).
Saved for letter; never knew we had such an game. PS hope I can see you guy in 2024 at Louisiana Comic Con here in Lafayette, La.
I remember your knuckles chaotix review from years ago! Hope the 32x gets more love.
So the enemy was the Code Masters mascot? LOL.
Edit: I kind of like the Sonic Look in this version and the parallax foreground elements.
Sonic had much more flat, basic shading providing that more cartoony, 2D-esc look in comparison to the final game. And yeah, I’ve seen a lot of people enjoy the foreground parallax, it was a pretty captivating part of this build.
Great video 📸 ty
"They cannot hurt you" WRONG, they just don't want to, they are nice guys
Stones just wants to give him a high-five :(
It's a SHAME that this demo were ost according to Yuji Naka, but ean always count with the work of the fans to at least recreat this gems...
Good morning sonic
1:14 wow even the developer is wrong, who can we trust😅
Probably doesn’t help that this niche, one level demo was created like 33/34 years ago. I doubt I would remember exactly how it went if I was in their shoes.
Nice
LETS GO
That's not what zeitgeist means... Carry on
Thank you. Finally seen.
:)
How can you play it yourself instead of watching the demo
press the start button 🙃
What demo/early version is in Wayne’s World then? 🤔
.
The one in Wayne's World is a much later build. It's a prototype, yes, but it definitely isn't early.
Weird how there are only 45 views and 11 likes right now
Just released it a few moments ago!
Is this a pc thing or a romhack? I'd love to have this running on a loop on a CRT
rom hack unfortunately
@@MessiKeppWith all due respect, how is that unfortunate? That means it can be run on a real Sega Genesis.
I know this was already answered, but yes, it’s a romhack. There are actually a few clips and images of it running on crt already which you can find in the linked channel. Admittedly that’s probably been one of my favorite things about this hack - seeing how different it looks on varying displays.
@@sleekflash16tts is not something extraordinary anymore
I thought you actually found it. x)
Sorry! Just a recreation, but hopefully a good enough one to suffice that burning desire that so many had, which is to finally see this thing in action.
Wasn't the whole point of Sonic to go fast, both to show off the Blast Processing and because of Yuji Naka trying to beat Mario's first two levels as fast as possible? Having him walk as slowly as possible seems so wrong.
You do have to keep in mind - this demo wasn’t made with Sonic’s speed in mind. It was mostly to demonstrate the capability of the megadrive in terms of displaying so much on the screen at one time - technically it could be nearly the same experience if you took Sonic out and just made it an empty level scrolling by, just the scenery. Having Sonic go fast would also demonstrate the collision issues which were present at the time as well.
hmm real
What is the Blue Egg dude's name?
its not known but a popular fan name is “big jaw” or “bigjaw”
@@MessiKepp except it isn't, Stones is more logical since it stems from a document that Yuji Naka held onto from the Twin Stars era, especially with the two leads being swapped out by the time Sonic and Madonna were materialized, same with Eggman.
I dunno if it was ever actually confirmed, but I stand by speems here in that it was probably named “Stones”.
The interesting thing is, if those later levels are slower (except labyrinth's water sections), its probably because you were being bad at the game, since the whole idea was a sort of experiment in replayability and self skill improvement. Sonic 1 was a game specifically designed for the sort of person who doesn't have much entertainment options.
I mean, I was 6. To a child you're either going fast or doing slower platforming
I thought someone shared the lost prototype to you. 😭 LOL.
Unfortunately not. Hopefully, this recreation will scratch that itch though.
@@Laffy_Taffy It's pretty awesome I gotta say.
@@Dragzilla66glad you think so! :)
dá pra jogar a versão remake desse protótipo na internet, e é IGUAL AO ORIGINAL KKKKKKKKKK
Unsure if you’re talking about MDTravis’s interpretation, which yes is publicly available which can help with the wait; it is also quite dated in that it was created 3 years ago and is lacking quite a bit of new info.
@@Laffy_Taffy vc não pode usar o Google translate?
@@bernadexgamer23 Não usei a tradução porque o CZcams tem esse recurso integrado. Porém, posso voltar e reenviar a mensagem anterior já traduzida, se você quiser.
@@Laffy_Taffy sim
@@bernadexgamer23 Permita-me reformular: basicamente, questionei se você estava discutindo o remake de MDTravis, que afirmei que ajuda na espera pelo meu projeto, mas a recriação de Travis é bastante desatualizada e imprecisa neste momento.
ah shit here we go again
Is this a recreation or the actual rom that was found?
It's a recreation.
I don't understand, did they get a rom dump of it somehow or is this an entirely new source code that attempts to approximate what the demo was like?
approximate
This was a romhack created by myself and a small group of a few others to closely recreate what the original experience would’ve been like, no extra gimmicks or features involved as to keep accuracy relatively high.
Honestly, it seems like a total waste of time to recreate that. There is not really anything new to see. The old screenshots are enough.
Sorry you feel that way. However, many people seem to agree that they would like to see what it would’ve looked like in action, and I made my best attempt to deliver.
@@Laffy_Taffy I understand that, and you did a great job with it.
@@Laffy_Taffy I think it's awesome