Brand new Sonic Heroes prototypes uncovered

A NPDP cartridge containing two Sonic Heroes prototypes were publicly unveiled for the first time Thursday night.

‘Sewer56‘, a programmer and an Extreme Gear Labs contributor, has successfully managed to boot the builds that were dumped on Hidden Palace by a user identified as ‘MSX’, who owned the respective carts for “eight years.”

One of the prototypes is a debug prototype. A debug prototype is basically a version of the game that was built for internal development, rather than an end user. Prototypes like these usually feature a lot of code checking for functionality.

A second prototype, this one believed to be dated between the 10.8 and 11.18 versions based on noted differences, was also found. This one being a regular build, not featuring debug options.

‘Sewer56′ told Tails’ Channel that the Sonic Heroes debug prototype dates between the non-debug recently uncovered NPDP prototype and 11.18.

Here are the most noticeable differences seen at the moment that are exclusive to the non debug NPDP prototype:

• The Story progression counter doesn’t work correctly.
• Different character positions for some teams.
• Super Hard Mode is unavailable.
• Background in menus often breaks after returning from gameplay.
• Egg Emperor has a more recent model; complete with the Eggman View (10.8 featured a circle placeholder), but is not quite the final. His gameplay is more-less like the final version.
• Team Rose’s Ocean Palace is shorter than in the final version, but in levels like Power Plant, it hasn’t been shortened down to the length it is in the final version.

And here are the noticeable differences that were present in both prototypes:

• 2P Intro Animation has no sound for team taunts or delays before proceeding menu.
• Features earlier design for thumbnails and titles in the menu.
• The super Knuckles glide glitch has been patched.
• Unlike 10.8, most menus can be navigated in any order the player wishes (left-right-up-down) instead of a fixed order.

The programmer also noted in a Twitter thread published Friday morning of the following tools that were available:

• “A fully featured object layout editor.”
• “A fully featured camera editor and previewer.”
• “Tools to measure and view memory that has been allocated on the game’s own managed heap.”
• A CPU profiler that “counts time taken by the game’s internal functions and the object collision system.”
• “CCL (Object Collision System) debug, and “Snapshot Mode”, a built-in free camera mode.”
• “Enemy Testing Tools.”
• “Event Debug Mode.”
• An editor that “allows you to edit and save particle data on the fly.”
• “Special Stage Debugging Tools.”
• Land Information that “shows the amount of vertices being rendered per material (or in total if you hold Y).”
• Block Test that “tests the rendering of non-geometry objects.”

‘MSX’ also released additional prototypes for Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic Riders.

The two builds, Prototype 1 and Prototype 2, can be accessed on Hidden Palace.

Friday 11:00 pm ET: This article has been updated with new information.