Sonic-1-Beta-Log-Archive

"Beginnings"

Originally uploaded on 2/15/11

[EDITOR'S NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS ARCHIVED FROM USER Sonic-1-Beta-Log AFTER THEIR ACCOUNT HAD BEEN DELETED DUE TO AN INFORMATION LEAK RELATED TO THEM. EDITOR'S NOTES WILL BE INSERTED THROUGHOUT BY THE ARCHIVISTS TO EXPLAIN THINGS SUCH AS CONTEXT BEHIND WHAT Sonic-1-Beta-Log SAYS.]

Today, I received an unexpected gift from a friend.

I was laying down on my couch in front of the TV, browsing through channels to see if there was anything worth watching. Right now, I'm on leave from work due to catching the flu, so I don't really have much to do other than just stay at home and pass the time. It. Was. BORING. There was practically nothing good on, and whenever I tried to boot up a game on my Wii instead, I couldn't get the motivation to play.

It was around half past three when my doorbell rang. This caught me by complete surprise, most people in my life already knew that I was sick, why would they come to visit me when they could catch it too? Still, I wasn't in a rush to get to the door, and the doorbell didn't ring any further, so whoever was there wasn't in a rush to get me either. It was only after the commercials came on that I mustered the energy to get off my ass and see who was there.

Walking up to my door, I looked out of the window to see who was there. As it turns out, it wasn't someone coming to visit: Whoever was there had already left. Instead, I opened the door to be greeted by a small package on my doorstep.

I initially thought to myself: "That's strange, I didn't order anything". My first thought was that it may have been sent to the wrong person, so I immediately checked to see if it was mine. Sure enough, it did have my address. Furthermore, it was from one of my coworkers, which I really did not expect. For the sake of his privacy, I'll refer to him as Cowboy, as it was often joked that he looks and sounds like that guy from Full Metal Jacket who gets shot by the sniper. He's even 5'9" as well, they do stack shit that high.

Cowboy and I aren't the closest of people. We talked whenever we saw eachother, sure, but we were often doing completely different things in completely different places of the same building. I don't want to give too much about my job away, so I won't get into too much detail. Despite our lack of consistent communication, I would still consider us on friendly terms. Hell, him being willing to send me a package out of the blue proves that he probably cares about me.

I took the package inside and opened it up. The package contained two things: A CD and a note.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sonic-1-Beta-Log had provided a picture of the note and CD, however, the image has since been lost. If you think you have this image, please message it to us.]

The CD was just a regular disk, it didn't have any marking on it to differentiate it from any other CD, not even anything written on it with marker. I was curious to what may be on the disk, but I knew that I should check what was on the paper sent with the CD before potentially pumping random shit into my PC.

The note had been folded, although not neatly, I could see a lot of crumples in it. After unfolding it, it read as such:

"DEAR ERIC (My surname, don't wanna share it)

I RESENTLY COME IN POSSESION OF A BETA OF SONIC 1

I KNOW YOU ARE HUGE FAN OF SONIC THE HEGEHOG FROM PREVIUS CONVERSATON SO I GIFTED YOU CD CONTANING THE BETA

PERSONELY I DO NOT ~~MATTER~~ CARE FOR THEBETA, SO I HOEP YOU GET MOOR ENJOYMNT OUT OF IT THAN I

SINCERLY - (Cowboy)"

One thing that immediately stuck out is how the letter is filled with spelling errors, and trust me, the handwriting was very sloppy too. I spent three minutes just trying to make out the word "Conversaton", not at all helped by the massive fucking headache I had. However, I had never seen Cowboy's writing before, this might just be how he writes. Maybe he just failed English, who knows.

Ignoring his poor spelling, he was right to send me this if he really didn't care for it. Beta content does interest me. I have read a few things about the Sonic 2 Beta, specifically the build discovered by Simon Wai. Could I perhaps have something like that on me for the first game? Could my name be immortalized by a Sonic beta build?

There was only one way to find out.

I went over to my PC and fired it up. That beautiful Windows 7 startup sound was music to my ears. I opened up that disk tray and popped the disk in with no hesitation. After inserting the tray back into the computer, I opened up the D: drive. Inside was a folder titled New Folder(1), which I opened. Inside that folder, there were 3 files: SONIC-NOVEMBER-1990.rom, SONIC-NOVEMBER-1990.exe, and README.txt.

Naturally, I opened the README first. I'll copy-paste what it said here, as it's relatively short.

"This is a prototype of Sonic the Hedgehog dated back to November 1990, 9 months before release.

Two versions of the prototype are included. The unstable ROM file which you can attempt to run in an emulator, and a port using a specialized emulator built to run the beta. If the ROM crashes often, please use the EXE instead as it is much more stable.

Sonic the Hedgehog is owned by SEGA.

-Feels"

The README was straight to the point: This was in fact a prototype build, though I'll still refer to it as a beta. I'm also a little disappointed it's dated after the Tokyo Toy Show one, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. The rom was also said to be unstable. That is to be expected from a pre-release build, but the writer is implying that it's badly unstable to the point that a "specialized emulator" needs to be used.

Speaking of the writer, his name bugs me a little. I swear I could vaguely remember the name from something Sonic-related, but nothing explicit comes to my mind. If anyone knows him, tell me.

I had Gens laying around on my pc, so I decided to give the rom a shot first. I copy-pasted the rom into my Gens folder, followed by running it. The game took several seconds to start up, noticeably slower than my other roms.

When it finally loaded, there was a Sega screen as always to remind you who made it. However, the iconic "SEGA!" chant was not there. The logo was static on a black background, like many other games by Sega on the Genesis. However, unlike those, the logo didn't even shine. It just stayed exactly the same.

After a few more seconds, the title screen popped up. It was relatively simple. The giant ring logo was still there, but the background was also pitch black. This must be before they implemented the Green Hill background on the title screen.

When I pressed start, it took about a second to bring up the level select. In fact, I quickly noticed while messing with the controls on the level select menu that I had some sort of input delay. I quit out the emulator and restarted it to see if that would fix it, but I still had input delay afterwards. Hell, I even tried loading up Golden Axe to see if it was a problem with Gens, and that worked fine. It was the rom itself. This input lag would be incredibly annoying to deal with.

Anyways, the level select differed from the final game's level select. It still had Labyrinth WAY earlier than it should be, but the list went like this:

Green Hills
Sapphire Gate
Labyrinth
Jungle
Marble
Bridge
Star Light
Sparkling
Clock Work
Sky Base

It seems like the plan for Sonic 1 was much more ambitious than what saw the light of day. They also didn't have "Zone" at the end of them either.

As most people would, I picked Green Hills first, as it was at the top. Not sure why they dropped the s in the final version, but it's so miniscule that I honestly do not care to see if an s or lack of an s has some sort of deeper meaning.

So, I began my adventure on South Island. I took a running start, jumped into a Motobug, and...