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Mindblowing: Gaming enthusiast to release hundreds of SEGA prototypes

Proto
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.

Chaotix
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.
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