ALL Sonic CD, 3D Blast & Knuckles Chaotix Unused Content & Prototypes | LOST BITS [TetraBitGaming]

[Music] so just like when I covered the original Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic CD also had a few different releases in addition to the original Sonic CD version for the Sega CD that most people are familiar with in 1996 it was also released for Windows 95 and then more recently in 2011 the game was recoded for modern platforms including iOS Android Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. so naturally let's start with the earliest version and then go chronologically from there so first up let's go over Sonic CD's unused sounds the first unused sound is a Time Warp sound that was used in early prototype versions of the game which we will get to later [Applause] this sound is really kind of peculiar because if you put the Sonic CD game disc into a regular audio CD player you can actually still listen to it as the second track on the disc other noteworthy unused sounds include some strange harmonica sound the sound of a spin dash out of a super peel being jammed the underwater warning sound from other Sonic games the sound of something being shot a high-pitched ding sound which was unused here but later went ought to be used in Sonic Mania as the hyper ring power up and also two unused sound clips of Sonic saying all right and yeah all right [Music] Sonic saying yeah was actually used as the extra life sound in earlier pre-release versions of the game and next up are a number of Sprites and objects that were cut from the game that being said several of these did actually end up being used in the 2011 remake the first unused Sonic Sprite is one of the blue boy getting electrocuted and in typical cartoon fashion this lets us see his skeleton I gotta say the bone structure in Sonic's feet are peculiar but at least it debunks whatever this is next is a Sprite set of Sonic falling similar to an unused Sprite in the original Sonic the Hedgehog apparently Sonic was at one point supposed to sneeze but for whatever reason it was scrapped along with this animation my next unused animation is one of Sonic running but also rotating his arms as if he was swimming It is believed that this animation was supposed to be used in the level title Tempest for it to make Sonic look like he was running through water faster next up is an unused Animation Sprite set for what looks like Sonic hanging from something upside down this would have likely been another death animation or if Sonic was caught up in some stage hazard other unused Sonic Sprites with unknown purposes include one of him grabbing something to slow down Sonic holding on to a horizontal pull and Swinging his feet forward Sonic shrugging and sinking into something like quicksand Sonic hanging as it appears he gets pulled up by something and Sonic with his chest thrusted forward there are also these Sprites which appear to have been meant to be used in a segment where we would play as Sonic or see Sonic from a top-down view it looks like depending if you are pressing down or up Sonic would fall backwards or lean forward respectively there's also an unused Sprite set for Amy with hearts coming out of her eyes run Sonic run now moving along to the unused objects in the game first there is an unused oil slick Hazard that would have been seen in the special stages these slicks were seen in pre-release versions of the game but ultimately they were scrapped from the Final Cuts next is an unused Sprite of a broken switch these switches were likely to have been used in the bad future version of a Zone in which some stage paths would be left inaccessible next is an unused object from the special stages which appears to be a hand its true purpose is still a mystery but some believe that it would probably just stop the timer in a special stage for a few seconds just like in the original Sonic the Hedgehog this game also has a few unused monitors which can again be accessed via debug mode which we will get back to later the first unused monitor is one with a clock when triggered it can stop ring Monitor and rotating pallet animations so it is very likely that its intended purpose was to stop time completely however since it doesn't stop enemies and such it likely doesn't work correctly as intended next up is a blue ring monitor which has no effect in this game in earlier iterations of this game depending on the version it would either function as the also unused s monitor or it would give Sonic an invisible shield this monitor was repurposed in Knuckles chaotix and more recently you'll probably recognize it as the hyper Ring Power Up from Sonic Mania as mentioned the S monitor also goes unused in this game and breaking this monitor grants Sonic's super speed invincibility and the shield simultaneously one of the most famous methods of accessing normally unseen artwork in a game is done in Sonic CD via the game's sound test the sound test can be accessed on the Sega CD by pressing down down left right A the a button will correspond to whatever controller you're using if you're trying it out on another console anyways in the sound test by entering certain codes some secret files can be found first by entering 4204 21 in FM PCM and da respectively you can see some strange looking Sonic and Batman crossover artwork this was actually drawn by the landscape and visual designer for the game takubi Miyake when unlocking this image the Final Boss music will also play in the background Sonic the next secret image unlockable by entering 420301 is another strange one in this one we have what looks like a rap battle between Sonic and Metal Sonic with Dr Robotnik DJing and the metallic Madness song playing in the background there is also text on the image saying the fastest DJ MC Sonic as well as Sonic asking if he can kick it I had to pull out my 90s to English dictionary for that one next by entering 44 1109 we can see some hella Kawaii Sonic artwork and listen to the good future palm tree Panic music when translated the text above Sonic reads you are cool by sunshan Zoo the next secret image has become quite famous for being pretty creepy by entering 46 12 25 you can unlock the tiled background of weirdly faced Sonics seriously why would someone make this the on-screen text translates from Japanese to infinite fun Sega Enterprises signed Majin picture Majin is apparently a reference to the creator of this image masato nishimura's childhood nickname just like a slot machine if you enter a triple seven into the sound test the message welcome to secret special stage will appear after that you will be taken to an unused special stage this unused stage features a more difficult layout as well as a large Robotnik head in the background some fans believe that this stage would have originally been used to obtain another time Stone but it was scrapped and left in the game for snooping players after beating the stage in the game a secret normally unseen credit screen will also appear and the last sound test code 401211 will not only unlock this cool artwork of Tails holding some goggles near a Lotus 7 car while saying see you next game but it actually also unlocks the debug mode for this game but before we get to more about the debug mode Let's Take a look at some unreleased prototype versions of Sonic CD first is the pre-release version simply named prototype 510 with a 510 referring to the on-disk date of May 10 1993. this is so far the earliest known prototype of Sonic CD this prototype has numerous differences from the final game most notably is the title of the game itself in the Prototype the title screen had CD Sonic the Hedgehog which is quite different from the final version in which the CD got moved to the end of the title The Gold Sega logo on the bottom was also removed and the resolution of the title screen was changed from 320 by 24 pixels to only 256 by 224 pixels the Robotnik Mountain was also moved closer in the final version and little planet is more obscured other graphical changes include a different end goal post in which Sonic's thumbs up was changed and also the exit screen which was also completely changed from showing little planet to looking more like the title screen when completing or getting a game over in this prototype a coming soon screen would appear the file for the screen actually made its way all the way to the Final Cut of the game and it can still be accessed for some reason this prototype also has a funny little Easter egg left in by the developers although the special stage wasn't yet made playable in this prototype by waiting on the title screen for long enough a demo of it can be seen while the demo was playing text Will flash on screen saying the programmer has a nap hold out programmer this bad English is probably just poking fun at the Developers for slacking off and telling the player to be patient for the release of the special stages there are also a number of other small graphical and gameplay changes from this prototype but unfortunately way too many to cover in this video so if you want to read up on more of them check out The Cutting Room floor page which will be linked in the description next we have prototype 712 similarly referring to the date July 12 1993. seeing as this prototype is closer to the release of the game it is much more complete but definitely still unfinished unlike the 510 prototype if you wait on the title screen another special stage will appear but this time it is completely playable it's not complete and you can usually start out in odd places but hey it's still playable again there are several small bugs present and other changes from the final version which you can find documented on The Cutting Room floor there are three other known prototypes that have also been leaked to the wild two of them dated in August 1993 and the other in September 1993. all of these prototypes were right before the game's Japanese release in September and the North American release in November so as you'd expect they are really similar to the final builds as they are either demos or they just have minor changes nothing really worth diving into alright now moving on to the 1996 Windows 95 Port of Sonic CD it's a pretty straightforward Port of the game and not much has changed however amongst the game's files several unused high resolution Sprites of Sonic Metal Sonic Dr robotics some bad Knicks and even Amy can be found also I don't know which of these actually went unused or not but several images of what appear to have been used for desktop for cut icons and such can be found which I thought was pretty cool alright now coming up to the current century let's take a look at the 2011 remake of the game this version actually has some new cut content as well first is what appears to have been a menu option for swiping and tapping this was probably a leftover feature in the Xbox and PS3 versions from the mobile versions of the game similarly there's another scrapped option just saying d-pad since d-pad use is really the only option in the final game the option to change it was removed for obvious reasons as it should be hey get out of here anyways next is more unused text this time saying final fever final fever is the name of a scrapped boss fight that the developer Christian Whitehead was planning to add to the game it was intended to be an unlockable boss fight for players who would collect all of the time Stones throughout their Journey this boss fight Edition was decided to be scrapped to keep the 2011 remake faithful to the original and as such this looks like it would have been just used in the stage select screen before it got canceled remember that unused Sprite of Sonic's seemingly hanging upside down well that Sprite was completely removed in this version but in its place are the exact same spray positions but this time for Tails probably going to be used in the same way as the Sonic ones and lastly for this 2011 version is a scrapped level known as desert Dazzle similar to final fever this was another level Christian White had worked on to add to the Remake and again it was scrapped to keep the game as close to the original as possible this stage was influenced by a pre-release screenshot of the scrap Sonic 2 level dust Hill Zone by entering another code into the game's sound test this secret image can also be found with Christian Whitehead's initials via some modding textures for Desert Dazzle can be loaded into the game to kind of see what it might have looked like also if the design looks sort of familiar it's because desert Dazzle was ultimately repurposed as Mirage Saloon Zone and Sonic Mania and lastly for this video as lightly referenced earlier we will now have a look at this game's debug mode just like I covered in the first Sonic game and Sonic Mania by entering a code you can unlock a debug mode which lets you place items and objects and it lets you fly around wherever you want to see stuff we aren't normally supposed to so yeah in each level you can scroll through most of the objects that appear in the level like platforms monitors enemies and more most stages don't really have anything too crazy to place but some have some pretty cool things like the unused monitors Metal Sonic and uh whatever this is turns out it's Amy but until you get to where she is in the map her colors seem to be taken from Sonic's color palette kind of weird later in the game in Stardust Speedway you can also scroll to other Amy Sprites of her struggling while she's captured sup and like I mentioned the other cool feature of debug mode is that we can move Sonic and the camera around to our hearts contents almost as you can see if you move it to areas where you aren't normally supposed to sometimes really weird stuff will happen to the graphics of the game another neat thing that I found is that technically the S and time monitors aren't unused as they are secretly hidden below the palm tree Panic Eggman fight if you try to get to them before fighting Eggman though you will instantly die if you leave the debug mode and if you stay in the game kind of gets confused too that being said after beating the boss you can head back down and break the monitors like mentioned before the S monitor gives you invincibility super speed and an invisible barrier the time one will do much but you can see that the background animations stop when activating it just like in the other Sonic games the debug mode is awesome for skipping through levels quickly that you really don't want to play through I'm looking at you water levels and the last interesting thing that I could get to is an unseen and normally inaccessible area in the past version of quartz quadrant Zone with the visible letters CX in the background now no one knows for sure what these letters could stand for but the most likely theory is that it is the initials of one of the game's developers as cxx appears in the developer's best time screen who this person is however is still a mystery all right first let's start off with the second prototype that was dumped this one is labeled as version 0.51 and has a build date of June 21st 1993 placing it between the prototypes of May 13th and July 12th of that same year that have been previously dumped now this build is definitely further along than the previous 510 and 513 prototypes as it is the first prototype to include playable special stages and now the levels are mostly complete so it is also the first build that can be beaten without using cheats or the debug mode let's get into some of the bigger changes this build has from the final game one of my favorite differences are the UFOs from the special stages these Orbee guys look nothing like they do in the final game but these are the same ones that were seen in some very early screenshots and while we're talking about the special stages there are a few more Oddities here the special stage in this prototype doesn't contain any rings or other objects yet the oil slicks don't function and the water in the stage causes some glitchy graphics and can even result in a permanent black screen of death now even though there aren't any rings here the ring counter increases every three frames so I guess the developers repurposed it as a frame counter of sorts and finally probably the biggest difference is that Sonic doesn't auto run in this stage like he does in the final game instead Sonic will only run if you press V and on the flip side pressing down will slow Sonic being able to stop and turn around and such honestly would have made the special stages feel way different in my opinion while this prototype was being streamed by the hidden Palace when it was first revealed many viewers were pointing to some audio problems these include the audio not looping as well as it should [Music] as well as some of the tracks being desynchronized resulting in the music just sounding uncomfortable while there are a few more small differences like this build using a higher quality CD audio track when time traveling which was changed again for the final version the only other major differences from the final game here are the blue ring and clock power-ups as you might remember from the original Sonic CD lost bits this clock power up goes unused in the final game and its purpose was to freeze time for a bit although again just like in the other prototypes it still doesn't work the way it should but at least it still freezes things like the waterfall here now while the clock works the same as in other previous builds the one unique difference in this one is with the blue rings in previous builds the blue ring monitor would result in the same effects as the S monitor which granted increased speed as well as invincibility however in this prototype the blue ring monitor now just gives Sonic an invisible shield interestingly this Shield can also be stacked with a normal Shield to give Sonic some double protection and that's basically all the noteworthy stuff from that prototype so let's now move on to the big one the other prototype of Sonic CD or CD Sonic that was dropped has a bill date of December 4th 1992. facing it to be currently the earliest known prototype of the game this build is labeled as version 0.02 this prototype was apparently put together so the game could be shown off at the you say Sega world event that was held in Tokyo on December 6th to commemorate the release of Sonic 2 which had just released a few weeks prior to put this in perspective before this one the earliest known prototype was a build from May of 1993. so this one is more than five months before that one so what changes does this very early prototype have does it contain the elusive missing R2 stage let's find out okay so get this this prototype of Sonic CD was so early in development that it only has two playable stages available palm tree Panic acts 1 and 2. and at this point it wasn't even called palm tree panic yet instead it was called Salad plane yeah plain salad really great name for his own totally doesn't sound like something I'd order at a restaurant anyways we'll get back to ordinary coleslaw in a second but first I want to talk about this time attack mode menu it's very basic looking and again only the first two acts of solid plane are selectable that said the cool thing here is that currently this is the only prototype that explicitly shows off the famous deleted level R2 without having to use a level select cheat code AS usually the game just skips over the second Zone I go over the R2 mystery in more depth in this video which I will link here so if you want to learn more about it be sure to give it a watch anyways regardless unfortunately R2 still isn't playable in this build and since it isn't playable here or in the next prototype then it seems the only place it might be found isn't a build dated between these two so I guess the R2 mystery remains and speaking of the level select although it's not normally seen it still can be accessed by fiddling around with the game's code that said selecting anything but the first option will just instantly take you back to the time attack menu so nothing really crazy there all right let's get back to good old salad plane although the layout is generally similar to that of the final version of palm tree Panic there are still quite a few differences for starters while time travel to the past and bad future are present it is normally impossible to go to the good future interestingly enough though the level files for good future are still present and can be accessed by messing around with the game's code it's pretty clear why this wasn't included yet it's obviously not ready at all additionally even if you do manage to access the good future version of the act in this build the music Still defaults to that of the past timeline despite again the good future music existing in the files and it even plays when you beat both playable stages here and see the coming soon screen this prototype also has several unused objects that were given the ax these include these basic looking tilting platform objects this incredibly glitchy swinging platform that is thought to be an early version of the one seen in title Tempest this strange floating waterfall set of platforms which were seen in later prototypes and last but certainly not least this very weird object that causes the level to completely deform I really have no idea what the intended use for this could have been and its effect makes me feel not that comfortable but I guess it could have made an interesting gimmick if it were to unblock a secret ending in the act or something big shout outs to both Nat the porcupine and pixel pox OT for hacking these objects in and uploading this footage respectively I'll link the full videos below for you if you want to see more next up if you play Sonic CD you may remember that if you left Sonic idle for three minutes he will say I'm out of here and jump off screen which resulted in a game over regardless of how many lives you had left well that sequence also exists here kinda first off the animation sequence is quite different but even after the jump you can just tell it's incomplete camera movement doesn't seem right you don't get a game over and even better Sonic still keeps all of his rings when he responds I guess at this stage in development the devs were still working on how they wanted to implement this gimmick also in this build Sonic lacks his pillow animation and the time travel sequence is visually very basic and sounds different from the final game right [Music] oh yeah the black and white Sonic Death Sprite is of course once again found left unused in this build surprise surprise and on top of all of this there are several other strange things in this prototype you can't pause the game at all and pressing start on a second controller will spawn a second flashing Sonic which can then be controlled by that second player what's weird though is that in this two-player mode if player one dies the flashing Sonic will then become the player one but is still controlled by the second controller and then whoever's controller is plugged into the first player slot will become player 2. it's really strange and since Sonic CD was largely built off of programming from the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis here we still see many remnants from it such as the speed cap on Sonic as well as some glitches such as the one where he just falls through everything while standing on a falling platform my absolute favorite thing though is that if you charge up a pillow for about 21 seconds you can basically clip right to the end of the stage take that speed cap alright so I have no idea how much fan interest there is for this game so in this video we'll just be covering the final release of the game but if you're interested in me making a video on some prototypes of the game and such seems like there's enough cool stuff there for us to handle an episode be sure to let me and the YouTube algorithm know with a comment and like down below anyways on that note let's first kick things off with the stuff found dealing with the game's sound test which is really cool might I add it shows all of the notes that are being played on each track just really cool stuff first up is an otherwise unused sound that can be heard here listed at 6B now this Majestic sound is a reworked version of a sound that was once used in one of the game's pre-release Builds on the Sega screen when booting it up interestingly although it was reworked presumably with the same intended use neither version does go used in the final release here's a quick comparison of the two which one do you think is better foreign next this volume meter on the bottom right here may be cool and all but there's a weird secret method to have it replaced similar to accessing the game's debug mode which will of course come back to later this color test screen needs to be edited now this one's pretty obscure by setting the color bars to look exactly like this the volume bars on the sound test screen will now be replaced by none other than Amy Rose who will Groove and offer compliments to the music calling it cool sweets and most importantly catchy are really obscure but rather cool little Easter egg that I'm sure very few people saw around the time this game released I mean very few people got the Sega 32x so a small percentage of a small percentage basically lastly for the sound test not technically unused or anything but oddly despite the North American and European Regional manuals for the game stating that the six button Genesis or Mega Drive controllers don't do anything special on the screen in fact explicitly stating that they aren't used it turns out they actually are holding Y and pressing either right or left lets you speed up or slow down the sounds respectively while pressing X toggles between a mono or stereo sound output option the Japanese manual for the game mentions these so it's really strange that Sega of America and Europe were trying to hide the truth from us makes you wonder what else they could possibly be hiding anyways moving on next up are the game's unused graphics and boy oh boy does this game have a lot of unused Sprites first up are several text Graphics featuring numerous words from player to level to a colon with an X it's interesting to note that unlike most games where a full font set is used when calling graphics for text this game stores text as individual words like this also here it should be noted that the intended color palette for this text is currently unknown so the colors here are speculative additionally just based on some words and phrases here like it's a new record and start to the clock it's thought that these text Graphics or at least some of them might have been intended for a scrapped time Attack Mode that was actually found included in earlier prototype versions of the game also thought to be related to this scrapped time Attack Mode is this checkered Finish Line style Banner Sprites now next up are two graphics for what's believed to be a scrapped underwater segment in the game probably in Marina Madness we got this little bubble perhaps for a character exhaling underwater as well as a set of Sprites for this splashing animation for something falling in or popping out of some water next are these rotating balls in a red and yellow variety they look similar to the balls seen in the Sonic 3 bonus stages and having a star on them it's also thought they were meant to be a bumper of some sort you might also recognize these as they were actually reused several years later as part of these guys in Sonic mania's studioopoliso then moving on we have this strange unusual capsule device thing with a currently unknown purpose but some believe it could be a new age style of the capsule used to capture animals in previous Sonic games or it also kinda looks similar to the combi catcher there's this flying carpet that's a Remnant from an older prototype build these Graphics of what look to be spikes or claws or something this coil thing thought to be from the speed slider stage this spinning star a rotating tube machine thing and some switches thought to be associated with it this light post thing that's believed to have been associated with the game's title screen as well as these animations of a needle nose enemy that based on the 3D look is thought to have been meant for either the intro cut scene or perhaps the bonus stage now I'm gonna take a wild guess here but I assume these might have been scrapped because of this last exploding animation here it's pretty gruesome then next all associated with the amazing Arena Stage we got these horizontal two bendings which one used since in the game all tubes and vertically in the stage there's this set of blocks featuring the Sun and Moon which gives me vibes from that one stage in Warrior land three some unused hazardous platforms shocking I know and then we got some background stuff like these clouds as well as these stars both thought to be visible through the windows with the latter either maybe being mixed in with the clouds during night time or perhaps at some higher elevation next this game also has some placeholder Graphics that go unused including this very basic looking ramp that's believed to have been once intended to be used to implement Loop segments in the speed slider stage during development which if you've played the stage you know the loops never came to be then we also got this test graphic that literally just says test gotta love those and finally this rather creepy blood-stained skull the intention of this graphic is currently unknown and the Japanese text in the bottom left here doesn't make it any less cryptic as apparently it translates to to fly to jump pretty creepy not surprising why this isn't used and wait a second whose skull was this Sega I need some answers here next up is this graphic that reads Casablanca projects and this graphic is apparently loaded in during the staffroll credits in the Prototype builds but not in the final release a few quick Google searches didn't yield any noteworthy results so honestly I have no idea what Casablanca project means in regards to this game or Sega but if any of you out there might know be sure to let us know down in the comments anyways moving on next is what appears to be a scrapped monitor power up featuring an hourglass as well as wide hourglass the exact effect of these power-ups isn't known for sure but I'd be willing to bet that they might have had some effect on the time in the cuts time Attack Mode either that or something similar to the time stop power up seen in Sonic chaos or the clock power up that was also scrapped in Sonic CD even when loaded into the game these monitors have no effect but it's interesting to note that the thinner version of these hourglass monitors was actually used as a placeholder graphic for the combi catcher in one of the Prototype builds which also likes to crash a lot [Music] okay now some unused enemies or at least some Sprites for them first up is this guy known as shifter then we got this bad Nick that would extend its neck I guess to try and Chomp down on the player or something based on their coloring they are believed to have been once intended to be seen in the amazing Arena Zone then next are these rotated Sprites of the pop tank bad Nick which going used since in the final game they are only seen on flat horizontal surfaces and finally there's a set of graphics for this strange object it's a known what exactly this is currently but it kinda looks like some sort of bad Nick to me so yeah I'll just group it in here now unused enemies are cool and all but what about their boss luckily for us there's also some Dr Robotnik stuff for us to discuss here as well first up are some unused Sprites of the round fella looking like he can't decide which hand to use to open the jar of pickles now although some similar Sprites are used in The Game's bad ending these as well as this background do go unused due to their similarity it's thought that perhaps this might have been part of a scrapped version of the good ending then secondly is this texture set which when put together has the dock overlooking this capsule in a very foreboding way this was apparently meant to be used as part of the intro cutscene and it's a shame it was scrapped I think this looks awesome this game also has a few unused graphics for the Titan Metal Sonic boss we got this weird purple gas looking effect several exploding and fire effects including some from a spinning thing that would apparently have been part of a scrapped attack phase in which this thing would rotate on his wrist as he rotated his hand and then finally there's this creepy Sprite of his head now what makes this unused Sprite especially unique is that although most Sprites in this game are rendered using the Sega 32x this Sprite is actually rendered using the Sega Genesis Hardware honestly one of the creepiest looking bosses in a game deemed okay for kids and nope the unused Graphics don't end there with all those enemies and objects and such out of the way now onto the game's playable characters first up are some scrapped dizzy animations for each of the main fellas in a prototype version of this game similar dizzy animations were used when the player would take several consecutive hits from spikes so it's speculated that these might have had the same intention here then similarly there are also unused frames for the throwing animation for Knuckles Mighty Charmy vector and heavy for reference here the green bar indicates which frames are used in the game and the red one for the ones that aren't then on a more individual level we got an unused wall jump frame and a sort of diving move for Mighty extra pulling frames and a Dash starting animation for Charmy a jumping frame for bomb holding and throwing frames as well as a horizontal spin move for Espio when walking on walls both of which aren't possible in the game then for Vector there's this Sprite thought to be from his climbing animation these frames believe to be ending frames for his air Dash these thought to be for Vector launching onto and falling off walls Sprites for a front-facing roll animation and then finally for your boy nux there's this unused Sprite of him transitioning to a Glide this extra frame for his ledge grab animation and lastly this cool yet weird but also creepy graphic of Knuckles in an irregular spin dash form here we can actually see his face in the spin dash and yeah I just don't know how to feel about this one now before moving on to the last couple of unused Sprites it's important to note that it's believed that at one point Knuckles chaotix was actually planned to be another Sonic game featuring the main blue Hedgehog himself and various bits of evidence point to this including not just a prototype build still featuring Sonic and Tails known as Sonic crackers but also several Knuckles chaotic Sprites which appear to be just recolors of Sprites of Sonic from other games for example the jumping animations for both Knuckles and mighty appear to be pretty much just recolors of Sonic jumps seen in the bonus stages in Sonic CD and several other Sprites of Mighty appear to be very similar to Sonic as seen in the Prototype build I'll dive deeper into this if I do ever cover the pre-release stuff for this game but with that context set there are actually a few Sprites of both Sonic and Tails that do remain left over in this game first is this animation of Tails piloting the tornado then there's also supersonic flying with both hands forward as well as him putting one hand behind himself elf and then there's also these shines believed to have been associated with supersonic as well now based on the fact that these Sprites are found closely to those used in The Game's good ending it's believed that these Sprites aren't from the earlier prototypes but rather from a scrapped good ending cutscene where I guess the two would fly by the screen just like the text from earlier in this video it should also be noted that the exact color palette of SuperSonic here isn't 100 known and these shown here are just speculative but what's even more strange is that a sprite from this animation actually appeared on Sonic team's website back in 1996. so I guess the Sprite did get some use after all and now last up for this video I teased it a bit earlier but now let's finally get to talking about this game's debug mode it just feels like it wouldn't be a 2d Sonic lost bits video without one doesn't it well once again by toying around with the game's color test by setting the colors just like so the debug mode can be accessed can I just say I really appreciate the developers of classic Sonic games for hiding Secrets like this in weird areas like the sound and color test screens anyways once enabled a stage select option will be seen on the title screen here you can select the level of course the time of day as well as the character and second buddy a few interesting things to know here are that a despite Knuckles being the titular character Mighty is the first name in the list of characters again adding fuel to the theory that Mighty had just replaced Sonic during development and B there's this scrapped character whose name is just a bunch of stars which for Simplicity let's just call him 10 star now when loaded as the second character player strangely enough tends to star appears as knuckles but he uses mighty's color palette instead now tenstar is actually a remnant of tales from the old Sonic crackers prototype although more similarities to Tails controls were seen in other pre-release builds in the final here unfortunately not much remains as 10 star pretty much just plays like Knuckles well apparently as you guys have been seeing pretty much every stage I try to load him into would result in an immediate crash upon touching the ground then the second Main Attraction for this game's debug mode is of course the free movement camera we've seen time and time again in 2D Sonic games here on Lost bits as expected with the debug mode enabled and after pausing the game you can move around the camera basically wherever you want and the values here indicate the X and Y coordinates as well as the Zone act and current time of day in the game unfortunately what this game's debug mode lacks compared to those we've seen before is the ability to place down items wherever you'd like this makes this debug mode quite a bit less fun to play around with as it lacks the customizability placing items objects and enemies offers but nonetheless it's always still really handy to be able to fly around wherever you want to quickly or to zoom through stages or even Explore some areas that you aren't normally supposed to overall still very fun to just slap some relaxing music with and Vibe around for a while [Music] all right so for this video we'll be focusing on several prototype builds of Knuckles chaotix and taking a look at various differences as well as things that went unused and were cut from the final release well let's of course kick things off with the earliest known prototype of Knuckles chaotics back when it was still known as Sonic crackers and actually it seems like there were some conflicting ideas for what placeholder name to give this game although the main menu clearly listed as Sonic crackers the game's ROM header actually refers to it as Sonic Studio instead I assume a misspelling of Stadium I guess ultimately crackers ended up getting the actual title screen and here we can also see that this build of the game was made on April 1st 1994 about a year from the final release of the game now of course April 1st is also April Fool's Day so when this build of the game was dumped to the public in 1995 many people thought that this meant that this was some sort of hoax however similarities noted in later discovered prototypes definitely solidified this build's validity anyways here on this main menu we are given a few choices starting the game in either a one player or two player mode options as well as select the option menu brings up this really basic screen where you can select a value but it doesn't really seem to do anything starting the game well starts the game big surprise and lastly select here actually brings up a level select menu now unfortunately not all the levels listed here are functional but still a Nifty menu to get to any stage that actually works especially considering you can't really complete any of the stages here to progress through the game normally and on that note let's get to the actual gameplay here now of course as you're seeing originally Sonic and Tails were yet again going to be the main protagonist of this game and although that is a big change from the characters that were used in the final version even in this build the ring tethering mechanic was still implemented although it works generally the same as it does in chaotix in this build it's much more simplified as pressing any of the lettered buttons on the controller will do the same thing it will cause tails to stop in place Sonic to jump and if you're standing close enough to Tails you can pick tails up and Chuck them ultimately in the final version a button to recall the second character was added and the ability to stop the other character and pick them up was moved to a separate button now in this prototype there are a total of five stages or rather attractions that are left in a somewhat playable State four of these meant for the game's World 2 appear to feature a futuristic looking industrial theme each with unique platform graphics and different background color palettes and then there's one world one level that appears to have been planned as a circus themed area of sorts but we'll come back to that one in a bit here now unfortunately despite visually looking different the actual layout of all of these first attractions are identical so the gameplay experience between all of these is basically the same after getting through this clearly unfinished intro title card by pressing the start button we can see that these attraction stages don't really have any objects like enemies Rings or power-ups and they just consist of several platform chunks including some curves bounce pads and literally the only thing that can hurt you in this build some spikes and interestingly despite there not being any actual rings to collect when you take damage from these spikes either character will actually still lose a whole bunch of rings and even more interesting is that you still can't collect these Rings either so I guess collecting Rings wasn't really implemented in the stage of development and they must have just been testing taking damage with these spikes here interestingly though this prototype shows that there was a goal or limit of a hundred Rings usually Sonic games let you collect as many rings as you can and doesn't show you how many you have out of a hundred but this appears to show that obtaining 100 might have been like a goal or something for each planned stage another thing I guess they didn't Implement here yet is proper physics as in addition to the characters just yeah the effect of gravity are also called into question here as both Sonic and Tails don't seem to be affected much by it when walking up a wall yep makes sense now some Collision is also kinda scuffed around these attractions as often the characters will just fall through and such but thankfully there is a helpful feature to kind of help with that by simply just pausing the game you can actually move both Sonic and Tails through walls and basically wherever you want it's kind of like the debug mode Shenanigans we've seen in previous 2D Sonic games here on Lost bits anyways yeah there's no real end to these stages but when you reach the top or after three minutes have elapsed the game over theme will actually start to play then after a while you will be taken to a field level something we'll come back to later as well anyways due to the more vertical nature of this world of stages as well as the goal being at the top it's theorized that this attraction was eventually reworked into the Techno Tower stage seen in the final release now next up the only other real playable stage is this one that was planned to be the game's first world and like I said earlier it appears that this attraction opted for a carnival aesthetic and as such it's thought to be an early version of the speed slider attraction scene in Knuckles chaotics and if you thought the Collision in the other stages looked rough you ain't seen nothing yet as this stage is virtually impossible to play as basically every second step will lead to something messing up let's just say I'm super thankful the pause screen debug thing exists and unlike the previous set of stages this one actually appears to Loop infinitely with no end and this time the game over theme will play after only one minute after which you will then be taken to another field map this stage honestly looks really cool I think at least visually it's just too bad it's an absolute headache to play in this build anyways I've brought them up twice already so let's now talk about the field levels next there are only two of these present in this build one seemingly per world one for the circus themed world one and then another for the Techno industrial world 2. although it's not a hundred percent clear exactly what these were meant for I think it's likely that they were going to be in over World level selection map similar to something seen in several Mario games of the era unfortunately nothing like this is really seen in Knuckles chaotic so it appears that this was scrapped in favor of the Hub area that seen in the final version there is absolutely zero Collision present in these field maps and even though the pause debug mode still works here too there's not really much to do in them but either way still pretty cool to be able to see these and that's basically in a nutshell all that's available in this build of Sonic crackers as the rest of the options on the level select screen here just cause the game to crash but although that's all you can normally access there are also several things that go unused in this build that are still kicking around in the game's data first off despite this build not using any sound effects during gameplay there are several that are actually left in the game including stuff like the jump sound from Sonic CD the sound of a bad Nick being destroyed from Sonic 3 as well as various other sound effects from Sonic 1. I guess the devs just must have not got around to implementing these yet even in a test capacity in this build additionally there are also two unused sounds of someone saying let's go and hey it's unclear who or what this was meant for but regardless these were removed and all future builds of this game so whatever the intention was I guess the idea was scrapped then next the background music in all of the playable stages appears to be early versions of those seen in the final game just with some changes such as upgrading to better samples for example here is a comparison of the song walk in between Sonic crackers and the final version of Knuckles chaotix [Music] thank you [Music] the song evening Stars percussion got a pretty big bump in quality [Music] and another example is the song electoria's melody was changed quite a bit [Music] foreign [Music] the biggest difference however is heard in the game over track between the versions in the final version there is a unique game over theme that was added but in Sonic crackers here the developers just used the game over theme from Sonic 2 instead I assume only as a placeholder though [Music] foreign [Music] next up let's move on to some unused graphics now despite the fact that there are only a few playable stages in Sonic crackers here there are actually a whole bunch of level tiles that never got to see the light of day in this build everything from ramps to platforms to whatever this is yeah there's just a lot of these that didn't get used then I believe I brought these up in my last chaotics video but leftover in this prototype are these stars and clouds as well again suggesting that there might have been plans in some stages that if you went up high enough these would have been seen in the background the next are various unused Sprites for both Sonic and Tails these include Sonic climbing up to a ledge Sonic and Tails seemingly hanging onto something Tails getting tired when flying Sprites for Sonic and Tails holding which go unused here since the hold mechanic wasn't implemented yet jumping animations for Sonic and Tails meant for the Overworld field stages that go unused since the two can't jump there then there's an unused set of Sprites for Sonic and Tails throwing which surprisingly go unused even though the throwing mechanic is implemented in this build but yeah these just weren't implemented and the characters kind of just let go as they throw and finally there's these Sprites for Sonic doing a wall kick which also is something that wasn't implemented in this build yet now if you've watched my previous chaotix video this Sprite sheet might appear familiar to you and that's because it looks incredibly similar to the one that's used for Mighty now we talked about this in that video but there are many things these Sprites included which suggest that mighty's Graphics were essentially just recolors of Sonic with a few changes I think you can definitely see it when comparing some of these Sprites then there are some more unused miscellaneous Graphics including some Sprites for a sparkle effects the sparkle for when the player collects a ring which doesn't go used here since like we saw there aren't any rings that you can collect in this build and then there are several unused graphics for the heads up display these include text such as limits attack hurry up cool Combi and more now some text like limits did end up being used in the final version but many of these never got realized and it's believed that these ones with the red background here were probably meant to be part of the HUD for the special stage levels and lastly although not unused Graphics I guess since this game was still very much in an early developmental stage some graphics just look strange like when Tails walks up certain ramps or when Sonic goes fast enough his arm like disassociates itself from the rest of his body it's kinda weird now although that's basically it for Sonic crackers thankfully the prototypes for Knuckles chaotics don't end there there are actually like 12 more known prototypes with each one getting closer and closer to that of the final release we got now not all prototypes are created equal as some of them don't have as many changes so we'll just be focusing on the more interesting ones for this video so first up is prototype 1207 with v1207 referencing the date it was built December 7th 1994. now in the eight-ish month since the Sonic crackers prototype numerous changes have been made and already the game appears much more akin to the final build that said there are still numerous changes though for starters the intro Sega screen is already quite different as instead of the space background that's used in the final this prototype features an image of neutragic high Zone instead then the title screen is also different as it doesn't feature the five main protagonists of the game the text here is different as I guess the game no longer takes place in the super 32x world and the push start button is different here too then moving on the file select screen is different too as it only has a solid color for the background the character select screen is much less detailed and then after running through an empty early version of The Hub area surprisingly the menu to select your MPC partner character is even more basic some of the characters don't even have graphics for their portrait here the question marks here are for SBO Mighty as well as one that's unknown as it's unselectable and there's actually an empty unselectable slot in the previous character select screen too although it's unconfirmed it's speculated that both of these were meant for Tails as he might have once been planned to be a playable character in this game too further evidence to support this lies with this palette that was meant to be used for the character listed after Mighty in this game and many of these colors here are the same that were used for Tales in Sonic crackers and furthermore remnants of tales lasted even up until the final release with tenstar or weknia as he's known by the community as we talked about in my previous video anyways since the roulette level selection of the final version isn't done yet we are greeted to another early screen to select the stage and interestingly here we can actually see some early names of all of the stages botanic base was botanic garden speed slider was amusement park and here is the only stage to be missing a level icon amazing Arena was amazing Zone techno Tower was Resort Hotel and lastly Marina Madness was Marina Drive although mostly similar I thought it was interesting but not a single stage here kept its name for the final release and hey at least they also ended up spelling attraction correctly in the final release so that's pretty sweet too anyways the levels here are more or less the same as they're seen in the final version with some changes such as lack of music or sound effects and at this point in development bosses weren't yet fully implemented in both the speed slider and amazing Arena attractions Additionally the intro section is a bit different too instead of running into Robotnik and SPO found in the capsule thing here in this prototype Espio just kinda swoops in out of the blue and you deal with metal Sonic right away instead of him appearing a bit later with Robotnik again now another strange thing in this as well as a few of the other prototypes is that you can actually go into debt and have negative rings not sure if this was intentional or a bug but it's pretty weird to see in a Sonic game the bonus stage here is very similar though it uses some different Sprites but the biggest differences are seen in the special stage it's definitely in an early stage in development in this build as there's not really much to these yet not to mention the coloring is very different too now this prototype build also has numerous Graphics that either go completely unused or were updated in later revisions there are more minor changes like two Knuckles right here but other characters like vector here appear much less detailed compared to his final Sprite also the end signpost in this build appear much different than those in the final lacking the cool 3d effect and in this version of techno Tower you can find these pod things that open up when you get close to them but they don't really seem to do anything then for graphics that go unused in this build there's a level selection icon for isolated island the intro tutorial stage some text spelling out Sonic crackers s32x as well as one-up monitors of both Sonic and Tails and these last few Graphics basically confirmed the authenticity of the Sonic crackers prototype anyways next up there are some more interesting things that can be found back at the title screen here selecting options brings up a pretty basic sound test to check out the many sound files in the game and then several other Menus can be brought up if a certain button is held when pressing start holding the a button will bring up the color test screen we saw back in my previous video holding the C button will bring up a much more interesting looking sound test screen than the one that's seen otherwise and this appears to be a much earlier version of the sound test that's seen in the final version I honestly think this one does look really cool though and lastly holding down the B button will just bring up a black screen in what's known as jam out mode and here you can actually use the buttons on the controller to play various percussion sound effects it was honestly really fun to just mess around with so much so that I decided to combine a few of the takes and make a quick little beat for you guys [Music] hell yeah then moving on to the next prototype we have prototype 1227 from December 27 1994. being only a few weeks from the previous prototype there aren't that many changes but still a few to note the title screen now looks much more similar to how it's seen in the final basically just missing the background Road and also for the North American region the text featuring Espio the Chameleon was seen here too this was ultimately changed to feature Knuckles instead in the final version also the basic sound test returns and this time is a bit further along as some green Bars were added in addition to the piano keys then as far as the gameplay goes there are also a few updates from the previous build namely The Hub area is more refined here as the attraction info screen was added here and although the combi catcher isn't functional yet this booth although pretty scoffed was added as was this claw then the roulette for selecting the stage was implemented here too but the graphics appear pretty scuffed and again here when the characters ride this car thing but as we can see step by step the game was getting closer and closer to the final product now another interesting thing about these prototypes I haven't mentioned yet is that some of them allow you to do the debug move through walls thing that we saw in Sonic crackers yeah just simply pause and the game will bring up debug info regarding your location and then you can move around freely to your heart's content as always a really Nifty little feature then as far as the special stages go some rings and blue spheres were added but you don't really need to collect the blue spheres yet in this build and since only a few rings were added to some of the stages they get impossible to beat since there's not enough rings to have enough time to reach the end next up is prototype 1229 which is actually from December 30th 1994 so just three days since the previous build since they are only three days apart there again aren't very many changes here but there are still a few such as this booth and these Graphics were updated here in this build finally there are also some special stages that can be completed and interestingly if you do complete one the message got the holy ring appears instead of God chaos ring as it does in the final version I guess the initial name for the Chaos Rings must have been holy Rings instead which is kinda strange since they mean basically the opposite thing then for the bonus stage interestingly here you start out with 999 Rings this was likely forgiving the developers enough time to properly test out this mode also starting with this build the option menu is different the jam out mode was removed and the sound test now looks much closer to its final iteration moving on we have prototype0111 and here the combi catcher finally actually works well kinda there is no visual time limit here yet it only offers various items below and unfortunately none of them actually work the claw will grab it and then it basically just disappears and nothing really happens you just get stuck in this room forever resulting in a soft lock so that's nice I mean I guess at least it's here now also the end goal that's seen in the final version was finally implemented here too the special stages are much more refined as well with some stages finally adding in enough Rings bumpers obstacles and more then next up is the January 19th prototype and there's one major difference here and that's that Robotnik has finally been added into the intro section here giving a bit more context to Metal Sonic appearing and also starting with this build it seems like most of the special stages were polished up and even some blue sphere goals were actually implemented now starting with prototype 0202 the final boss section has finally been added but only partially here only the first phase is added in this build and visible hitboxes can still be seen now from this point on there are about six more known prototypes all spanning up until prototype 0216 from mid-February as you'd expect these were progressively getting closer and closer to the final release but Combi catcher was finalized the debug features were removed and so forth now we went over a whole bunch of changes with all of these prototypes but there are even more usually minor ones that if I wanted to cover all of them this video would probably end up being like three hours long but if you're interested in learning about more of the differences in all of the Prototype builds be sure to head on over to The Cutting Room floor or sonic retro both of which will be linked down in the description below Knuckles chaotix definitely saw a lot of changes from the earliest Sonic crackers days all the way through the handful of prototype builds leading up to release again it's awesome that these prototypes have been made available to the public so we can all get a really cool glimpse into the early development stages of Knuckles chaotix foreign so let's first kick things off with the Genesis version and check out some changes seen in pre-release builds of the game compared to the final release well for starters according to the game's lead programmer John Burton who we just recently talked about a whole bunch in my Lego Star Wars videos the originally planned title for this game was actually Sonic spin drift Mr burden states that he doesn't know why the name of the game was changed but I'm assuming after Sonic extreme got scrapped around this same time Sega probably really wanted to focus on the 3D aspect of this game Sonic 3D Blast or Sonics 3D flickies whatever sounds good and all in my opinion but man Sonic spin drift it's beautiful and thankfully we're not done talking about Mr Burton either not by a long shot as on his channel game Hut just like we saw with Lego Star Wars he's also shared a whole bunch of pre-release footage of Sonic 3D Blast going all the way back to the earliest stages of this game's development the currently earliest known prototype of Sonic 3D Blast was found on a hard drive by John Burton and he posted a whole bunch of footage on YouTube although in some cases the graphics actually look more detailed here compared to the final game it still looks pretty primitive in this build with very basic ground tiles and a lack of background graphic now apparently the whole point of this prototype was to test the viability of a two-player split screen mode for this game being a very early build functionality for a second player wasn't even implemented yet and instead the bottom half of the screen would just scroll to simulate movement although some very rudimentary rotational controls were implemented for Sonic on the top half who has constantly seen running there doesn't appear to be any Collision data in this stage in development as you probably know if you played this game this two-player split screen mode was unfortunately cut from the game and in his video Mr Burton states that the small field of view for each player not allowing them to see much of the map was a key factor in making this decision then next up a second earlier build of the game was featured on the game Hut Channel this time showcasing a build with a built-in level editor it basically functions much like the debug mode I've covered in my videos on other classic 2D Sonic games as you'd expect this mode basically lets the developers design levels and add in stuff like enemies and items with ease well at least with more ease than other Methods at this time for the devs this build is obviously much further along than the previous one we saw but even so Mr Burton actually showed off an unused enemy that's kicking around in this build crabby mcgrabface here who was previously seen in some early screenshots of the game from a build made for E3 1996 is yeah actually found in this level editor build anyways yeah I don't want to just rehash his videos here so definitely check out these videos on the game Hut Channel many of them give an awesome peek into the development history of the many games that were made by John Burton and travelers Tales over the years and what's even extra cool is that John Burton actually made a mod for this game that overhauls it and even lets you access some of the earlier development content for this game like the level editor I truly wish more developers did stuff like this with the games they've made in the past anyways back to the E3 1996 build of this game even more changes can be found in footage and screenshots taken from it these changes include stuff like different Bridge designs a different design for the loop here and early version of The Door in the Floor and more now thankfully our pre-release Journey for this game doesn't end there as in 2008 several prototype builds of Sonic 3D Blast were dumped on mine and although none of them are as far back in development as the ones I went over earlier some of these builds still have a bunch of notable differences so anyways starting off with the earliest currently publicly available prototype we have one known simply as prototype 73 which in typical prototype fashion has its name derived from its build date of July 3rd 1996. now right off the bat when booting up the game here a difference can already be seen in the Sega logo intro instead of the letters just flying off the screen towards the end in the Prototype build the whole screen kinda just shatters additionally this old prototype still uses the classic sound instead of as how it's heard in the final then just after this we can see a big lack of the 3D intro video and then the start screen is a bit different too being built shortly after E3 1996 this build still has E3 demo replacing the blast subtext of the game several colors are slightly different like the bass ring and the bottom of the gradient for Sonic 3D and it also looks like several of the models here are older iterations or at least are seen from a different angle in the final version like yeah the flickies and the Prototype title screen look quite a bit less detailed compared to the final as does the flower Sonic is sniffing here then getting to the gameplay although there's no title card that shows up at the start of the level as seen in the final left over kicking around in the files is something pretty neat by editing the game a bit this original early title card can be restored into the game for a Green Grove Zone where we can see that originally the levels were going to start out with an intro card similar to that scene in previous 2D Sonic games especially Sonic 3. being so similar it's likely that these were just worked off of those as a placeholder until the final one was made other major differences in this build include Knuckles and Tails being completely absent and as such there's no special stages implemented here either several power-ups are missing including the fire Shield speed shoes and invincibility some item monitors don't have their Graphics implemented properly yet there's an early version of the level completion screen and in this build every stage just uses the music from Green Grove act 1 as a placeholder then also for a Green Grove zone right away you might notice that the level tiles here appear to be brighter in the Prototype and then for some reason in Green Grove act 3 although you start out with 10 Rings the actual level itself doesn't have any other Rings present of course being an E3 build of the game it shouldn't be a surprise that this build isn't quite complete and here the game only has up to Rusty ruin Zone developed surprisingly although the Green Grove and Rusty ruin zones have bosses implemented Gene Gadget Zone doesn't have a boss yet I'm sure the reason Rusty ruin probably got prioritized is that this was meant to be the end of the demo as after you defeat the boss here the text to be continued pops up on screen before the game resets then another Oddity for Rusty ruins on here is that the first two acts are flipped as what's seen as act one in the final is actually act two in this prototype and vice versa and then lastly for this build there is a really Nifty little debug feature that's left over here by simply just pausing and then pressing the a button on the Genesis controller you will actually automatically warp to the next level so although this build doesn't have a level select or anything like that implemented yet this is a really slick little way to jump to a certain level quickly without having to play through all of those leading up to it then next up we got prototype 814 which strangely starts a trend of being named just off of the bill today to this time being August 15 1996. so about a month and a half after the previous one as you'd expect with a few weeks of added development this build is much further along than the last one yet it still retains several differences although Knuckles and Tails all seven zones seen in the final version and more music tracks are all added in this prototype this build still has the pause level skip function basic level complete screen lack of special stages as well as some other unfinished aspects of the game that were seen in the prior build and although there are a few other changes in this build such as they're now being Press Start text on the title screen and the title card font being slightly different than how it's seen in the final probably the most interesting thing for this prototype build is found in some development text found left over in the game's memory found leftover in a text string containing What appears to be copyright data for a psiq development kit is the statement that knows gay is a word and shiver my Timbers whoever wrote this wasn't kidding as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines nose gay as a small bunch of flowers well I certainly learned a new word today I have no idea why a developer wrote this outside of it being some sort of hidden joke but a pretty cool leftover nonetheless I guess now moving on next is prototype 819 and despite having a build date less than a week away from the previous build there's actually a decent amount of progress seen here for starters this is the first build to finally implement the game's special stages it's more or less the same how it's seen in the final with one difference being that the ring requirements are slightly higher here and although the level skip function seen in previous builds is still here this build actually does have a level select screen and in fact actually defaults to it after pressing start on the title screen but being a few months away from release of course this build still has a few more changes in addition to various smaller changes with music and some object placement there's still no 3D intro video the Sega intro screen is updated but still uses the classic Sega sound and the in-game timer displays 959 after reaching the 10 minute Mark instead of too long as is seen in the final honestly I love the too long thing I wish more Sonic games had used this this build also contains some placeholder screens including one for completing the game with or without all of the chaos emeralds as well as for the screen to show the chaos emeralds that a player has collected then another really cool thing about this build is that it contains two unused music tracks that never went on to be used at least not in this game first off is this unused track [Music] foreign you're probably one of the Unfortunate Souls that's played through Sonic the Hedgehog 4 episode 1 as this tune was later repurposed for a boss battle track in that game [Music] secondly there's also this absolute Banger of a track that was found left over unused here foreign [Music] foreign [Music] ly unlike the last track this one doesn't appear to have been repurposed as of yet and although where it might have been intended to be played in the game isn't a hundred percent clear it's speculated that it might have been meant for the special stages next up we got prototype Ace 25 from August 26 1996 and once more although only about a week from the previous build many more additions are present here the 3D intro video was finally added here and there's a much more proper main menu that was added too one of the biggest differences in this build however is with some of the rendered images where Sonic's model appears less than finished firstly for the good ending cutscene the rendered image appears to be from a different angle and the coloring is also slightly different probably the biggest reason for this change though was to hide the fact that Sonic's neck in this model is uh yeah and then probably the most well-known is the change scene in this render here seen in the background of the main menu where Sonic's eyes kinda look off now apparently according to John Burton to make the fix for the final version the developers didn't actually change the model itself at all but rather just edited the rendered image instead I guess yeah the developers didn't want Sonic to look like he was staring right into our souls now on to prototype 830 we're finally moving on from the E3 phase I guess as this build finally has a more proper title screen still different than how it's seen in the final version but it's getting there there's not all too many other notable changes in this build aside from the game's credits being partially added in here the text is only white compared to the purples and blues seen in the final and outside of the credit for John Burton the rest of the credits basically just have an IOU placeholder screen for where they were eventually going to be added yeah I'll give you three guesses as to who you think implemented these credits in this build the next is prototype 831 which despite the naming was actually built on September 3rd 1996. this time around we get the smaller amount of changes that we'd expect from a newer build only a few days from the prior one the only major changes here are a we finally have the finalized title screen here B the rest of the credits have been properly added this time around although the coloring is like flipped on this screen and then the blue is used for the position titles instead of purple as seen in the final and then see the background graphic of Sonic with a nose gay has been brightened up quite a bit in this prototype there are some other smaller changes that have been made to polish up the game such as implementing all of the demos that are seen in the final as well as locking the level select screen behind the secret title screen code instead of it just being accessible by default for those that don't know if you punch in be a right a c up down a on the title screen to misspell Barracuda you'll actually get taken right to the level select screen anyways overall this build is getting pretty dang close to the final version of 3D Blast there is one final currently known prototype dated September 4th 1996 so just a day since the previous one as such there's not really much else to bring up with this one so on that note let's finally talk about the final retail release of Sonic 3D Blast to start a few years ago John Burton had found an old cassette tape containing various demo tracks that were meant for the game yeah remember these anyways pretty much every track on this cassette is either difference to how it's heard in the final game or outright just never got implemented for example for starters with the opening theme Here heard I believe in the key of C this was changed to a flat minor for the final version [Music] then other notable things about this cassette is that it appears to reveal some older development ideas such as Green Grove Zone originally being planned as a green alley Zone and what was used in the game as the music for a spring Stadium Zone act 1 is here listed for a casino night Zone then on the B side of this cassette there are actually a few more tracks that never made it to the Final Cut for starters although in the final game the same background music is used for both the Tails and Knuckles bonus stages this tape appears to reveal that both Sidekicks were planned to have their own unique track so yeah here's a quick sample of the theme that was meant for the knuckles bonus stages but was scrapped because this intro video hogged up too much space [Music] oh foreign if this song sounds familiar to you it should as it was actually later repurposed in a different key as the music for pleasure castle for twinkle Park in the real first 3D Sonic game then similarly there's another track that was apparently meant for a scrap special stage that never made it into this game together [Music] now this track did actually end up being briefly used in this game in the intro to panic puppet Zone but just like the last one it eventually got more of a spotlight as it was reused in Sonic adventures twinkle Kurt for twinkle Park [Music] [Music] thank you and then lastly here there's the same unused Boss track I mentioned that was found in the Prototype build earlier but here there's both a minor and major key version although still not 100 clear it's theorized that these themes may have alternated between the boss fight themes for each Zone and next there's actually some more unused audio stuff found in the game itself well partially anyway although obviously you do get to hear the invincibility theme in the game when collecting the power up it actually cuts out leaving a portion of the track normally unheard after the theme normally cuts out there is an extended segment of about eight seconds where the theme undergoes a key change before I'm assuming it was supposed to Loop [Music] thankfully enough though you can actually still listen to this theme in full by using the sound test menu found in the game now the last thing I want to touch on here for the Genesis release is probably one of the most well-known bits of trivia for this game basically if Sonic 3D Blast ever crashes there's a secret little crash Handler screen that will pop up actually congratulating the player for finding it then right after this the player is rewarded with instant access to the level select screen now you can trip up the game to cause this screen to show up in a bunch of ways like using an improper code with a cheating device or using a bad safe state if emulating but I think John Burton showed the best way to get it in a recent short that he uploaded and on that note let's finally switch gears and talk about the Sega Saturn release of 3D Blast which of course featured many improvements over the Genesis version now although not nearly as many as we saw with the Genesis version there is actually one currently dumped prototype build of the Saturn version dated October 8 1996 a month away from its release in North America but despite being so close to the release date and built later then all of the Genesis prototypes we covered there are actually quite a few changes present in this build although tails and knocks make an appearance here their functionality hasn't been implemented yet no bosses were added yet either the a button does the spin dash here instead of the B button as it does in the final acts from diamond dust and volcano Valley zones are missing and to top it all off there's like no sound in this build except for the sound effect of Sonic losing Rings which is only heard on the title screen for some reason oh yeah and you also get a whole bunch of different choices on the main menu in this build like start start or start oh and these start buttons all use like a watery background texture here instead of the more earthy one that's seen in the final release also as you can see this Prototype 2 uses the background image of Sonic for the main menu instead of the Sonic less background that the final uses and next if you thought the debug feature to skip levels in the Genesis version was too difficult this build simplifies it even more as literally all you need to do to skip a level is to press the start button yup one button is all you need this build also still has a title screen lacking the sky background as is used in the final version making it look more similar to The Genesis one though still having a slightly different color palette too and this prototype build is also normally unbeatable without the level skip function as past the rusty ruin Zone there aren't enough enemies implemented in the rest of the acts to satisfy the flicky requirements to progress so yeah I guess it's definitely a good thing skipping levels was made so easy then on top of everything else as you can see some of the textures weren't layered properly as yeah this happens there's actually a bit more history to this Saturn version of 3D Blast regarding a scrapped Billiards or pool-like game but I think I might save that for another dedicated video to it someday so on that note let's now switch and talk about the final version of the Sega Saturn release now although the Genesis version has the level select that could be accessed with the Barracuda code or with smacking the cart only the Japanese release of the Saturn version has a level select it's also accessed in a unique way here too as all you need to do is press down three times followed by one of the face buttons each resulting in taking you to a different zone for example pressing down three times and then pressing the x button would ship you right to volcano Valley Zone it's pretty strange that they removed the level select in the other versions but I guess at least one of them has a Nifty way to skip through the levels quickly now next up there are a whole bunch of unused Graphics left over in the game here and these are all actually also found left over in the PC Port as well so let's take this as a good chance to segue into the PC release first up the watery start Graphics from the Prototype builds actually also make their way into the final release here there's a textured white background graphic that's similar to the one used for the ACT clear screen so it probably had the same intention there's a version of The Island map without the path and Sonic's head and then there's also an unused graphic of a blank scroll that appears to be an alternate version of the one that's seen in the pause screen for Green Grove Zone next there's also leftover text for what appears to be a cut intro card for the final fight stage suggesting that it too would have had an intro card instead of just being faded into after Panic puppet Zone also related to the final fight there's this unused image of a render of the final boss it's thought that this might have been intended to be used for a sequence where the boss explodes just like it does in the Genesis version the next there are a pair of unused renders of Sonic being flown by both tales as well as knuckles seeing as how their main part in this game is to take Sonic to the bonus stages it's believed that these images might have been intended to be used for a loading screen after interacting with the respective character now those are all the unused Graphics that are found between the Saturn and PC versions of the game but there are also a pair that are exclusively found in the PC port and these are a pair of placeholder special stage textures listed as bonus zero as well as bonus 0-6 respectively in true placeholder fashion these have the numbers 9 through 16 crudely drawn all over them there's not much else in the special stages that follows a gradient pattern like this so I'm gonna take a big brain guess here and say this was probably a placeholder for the section in the middle of the half pipe the next one Oddity in the PC Port is that both the invincibility and speed shoes power-ups have different sounds compared to the Saturn release well not even different in the case of the speed shoes as they actually don't have any Associated music for them in the PC ports at all then instead of the invincibility theme that's used in the Saturn release just a ring sound plays in the PC version it's extra weird too because the themes for both of these items from the Saturn version are still found left over in the game and on that note fellas that'll wrap up not only this video but the main series classic 2D Sonic games here on Lost bits feels nice to finally get all of these done and now I look forward to covering Sonic's transition into the third dimension anyways I hope you enjoyed this video as always if you did be sure to check out some of my previous Sonic lost bits and be sure to subscribe to find your way back here in the future and as always thank you all so much for stopping by today and I will see you in a bit [Music] thank you

Channel: TetraBitGaming

Views: 320,027

Keywords: sonic, sonic the hedgehog, 2d sonic, classic sonic, sega, sega genesis, sonic unused content, sonic cut content, sonic lost bits, sonic prototype, sonic beta, sonic beta music, sonic unused music, sonic unused sprites, tetrabitgaming, tetrabit, lost bits, tbg common, sonic & knuckles, sonic 3 & knuckles, sonic lost media, sonic 3d blast, sonic cd, knuckles chaotix, sonic crackers, sonic cd lost bits, sonic cd cut content, sonic 3d blast unused, knuckles chaotix unused

Id: IrBDw_CDdHQ

Length: 88min 37sec (5317 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2023