Unseen News

Sonic fans probably already know Sonic Retro, one of the best websites for informations about Sonic protos, hacks and various unseen stuff from our favourite blue hedgehog games. In these last years, the SR community was able to realize a wonderfull series of projects and researches, that help us to know more about the development of the Sonic saga. Sonic Retro is now a perfect example on how to organize a group of  expert gamers, “hackers” and lovely geeks, that collaborate togheter to preserve informations on lost games. What’s the secret of their success? We have contacted Scarred Sun, webmistress of SR, and she was nice enough to take some of her time to answer our boring questions about their site, the  Sonic Retro sceners and the beta-gaming world. Read the full interview » 

Thanks to MathUser and Robert Seddon, we have added some more beta screens in these archives: Sound Fantasy / Factory [SNES – Unreleased], Powerslide [SNES – Cancelled], Project Reality Tech Demos [N64] , Creator [64DD – Beta/Unreleased?], Mission Impossible 64 [Beta / Tech Demo], Into the Shadows [Saturn – Cancelled] and Dreadnaughts [PSX/Saturn – Cancelled] 

MathUser has found 4 new screens from an early version of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, with some interesting differences in the levels layout.

We can notice that the doors in the lava-room are in the wrong place (or it’s just a different room?).

The bridge looks different from the “same” place on the final map and those “things” for  the Hookshot were not in there yet. The background was changed too.

I cant find the same exact spot as this one with the ghosts: in the final game there is a woods full of ghosts  but the details, like the trees and the “wall” in the bottom left, dont match..

This scene is only missing a few background details and a skull.

You can find a bigger version of these and more beta-screens in the Zelda: Link’s Awakening U64 Archive.

In the discussion about these screens, MathUser has even linked us to artemis251‘s website, where we can see a wonderfull collection of unused Link’s Awakening sprites that he has found in the game! Some of these are really interesting, like a removed “old man” and a weird “dog/lion head”. Big props to Artemis251!

In the meantime, thanks to VanishedOne (Robert Seddon) we have found out about a “beta” screen that was printed in the manual of the game, where we can see Marin’s text “unfortunately, it is empty“, a dialogue that is unused in the final game (but reading here, it seems that it can be seen somehow.. and more unused texts seem to be hidden in there).

Thanks to everyone for these informations! There could be even more “unseen” Link’s Awakening stuff that we dont know yet? 

Silver Duran has made us notice a video that we can see in the YouTube channel of TheLittleCuteThing, about a beta demo disc of Final Fantasy 7. In the video’s description we can read a list of differences, like:

• 0:20 – There is text on the CGI intro
• 1:42 – The Final Fantasy logo says 1996 instead of 1997
• 2:34 – Instead of finding a poton, You find nothing on the guards and can walk through them.
• 2:42 – The guards that ambush you are for some reason wearing black outfits instead of red
• 4:45 – You dont talk to jess or anyone to open the doors, You go straight to them.
• 12:00 – The summon intro was slightly different..And you dont get summons this early in the final. AND the boss is no longer a red scorpion.
• 12:55 – You have 3 minutes to escape the reactor instead of the massive 12 that you normally have.

Props to TheLittleCuteThing for these finds!
Video: