Mindblowing: Gaming enthusiast to release hundreds of SEGA prototypes

by Ian Dumych Feb 17th 2008

DRX, a member of the Sonic Retro Forums, has done something unprecedented in the gaming community. After years of research and detective work, he has gotten his hands on a treasure trove of materials from the golden age of SEGA, including hundreds of prototypes, documentation, and possibly other things as well.

It's not currently known how much of the material he plans to make public, but he has confirmed that he is going to release the Sonic the Hedgehog prototypes this coming Saturday, the 23rd. A large community of Sonic fans have been searching for prototypes and lost levels in the games for many years now, and to document their accomplishments so far would be beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of people looking forward to this release.

It can be seen almost like postmodern archeology, with teams of researchers poring over old ASM code and decompressed art. Sonic prototypes have been unearthed in the past, such as the famous Simon Wai Sonic 2 Beta, but the sheer amount of content involved here is unprecedented. According to DRX, the files he obtained represent an entire year's backup of data from the Sega of America offices from 1993-1994. They are original builds of the games, designed to be burned onto developer cartridges for testing. As a result, much of the work is passworded or in odd formats.

A lot of details about this release are sketchy, but we'll be sure to keep you up to date as things develop.

Tags: Gaming, Lost Games, LostGames, SEGA, Sonic the Hedgehog, SonicTheHedgehog

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Khuffie said 11:57PM on 2-17-2008

You know, I'm not quite sure what it is...but something tells me you're a HUGE Sonic fan...

Ian Dumych said 12:07AM on 2-18-2008

heh, whatever gave you that idea :P

Smarky said 6:15AM on 2-18-2008

God I love classic Sonic, that's why I bought a nintendo DS so i could play the Sonic Rush games, shame they ruined all the other modern games.

They really should do a really graphically enhanced 2d sonic on the new generation of consoles. I still think you can do a lot in 2D with the current consoles.

Benedict Murray said 11:11AM on 2-18-2008

A new 2D Sonic?

That, sir, is a fantastic idea.

anon said 1:03PM on 2-18-2008

Here is a site where you can download all of the games

http://tiny.cc/segaromx

Danny said 2:10PM on 2-18-2008

>Here is a site where you can download all of the games

Very funny.

gibbysalem said 3:31PM on 2-18-2008

if only there were a games blog on AOL where you could post stories like these

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