Fast becoming one of the most important resources for digital archiving of prototype software, Hidden Palace have released another slew of prototype versions of various Sonic the Hedgehog titles. These new dumps of late development builds of Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Spinball and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine showcase some fascinating insight into their development and feature a slew of differences from their final builds.

Sonic Adventure 2 features many grammatical errors that would be corrected for the final build, Metal Harbor and the final Sonic and Shadow battle are considerably more difficult and the driving stages feature different collision results when driving into other vehicles. The full list of differences can be read on the Hidden Palace entry for this release.

Sonic Spinball features an entirely different menu theme which was infamously changed at the last minute due to STI discovering they didn’t have the license to use the original Sonic the Hedgehog theme. The full list of differences can be read on the Hidden Palace entry for this release.

Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine features the smallest amount of differences between this dump and its final release, with only the staff credits missing from this build. The full list of differences can be read on the Hidden Palace entry for this release.

All of these dumps can be downloaded and played through emulation or on real hardware from the Hidden Palace entries linked above. Hidden Palace will be streaming and revealing their “last present from under the tree” tonight (31/12/2020) at 10pm GMT on Twitch, so if you’re excited to see more prototypes from their team then be sure to tune in.

[Source: Hidden Palace]

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