News: Sonic 2 alpha

November 08, 2006, 11:43 PM

by brandon, via hidden palace -
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You might've heard about it by now, but an alpha build of Sonic 2 had been found, and released. It's got quite an oddity, in that when Sonic was going at high speeds, he would bounce off of walls. That would've been quite a disaster! Special note for Sega - remember those days when you'd find something didn't quite work in your Sonic game, and you'd go back and fix it? These sorts of lessons aren't meant to be unlearned. I suppose they'll sell about a million copies of that no matter how much it sucks though.

Check Hidden Palace's forums for interesting captures of the alpha, and specifically the animated gif of the bouncing. I've mirrored it in the event that that Qjimbo, who made the image, can't manage the bandwidth. This version of the game contains the hidden palace zone, which was removed from the final, and revisited in Sonic & Knuckles (though in a different form).

As an interesting aside, reading UKR's post about the find, more specifically the comments, you'll find the story of the young man who beat Sonic 2 four hours after it was released on Sonic 2sday in the UK. It's pretty interesting!