Protosonic
I posted a while ago about my unorthodox status as a Sonic fan. I don't interact with the Sonic fandom but there are two pillars that keep me attached to the series. The first was the 'other' comic. The other is my love of prototype games, leaked betas and unused data. In this field the Sonic series seems to trump every other major franchise combined.
People might believe that there would be no more juicy internal material from early-ninties Sega left to leak after ten years but they would be wrong. Last month's leak was one of the best I've seen in a while; drafts of Sega of America's development bible for Sonic 1, dated June 1991. In this context a bible is a compendium of information about a series, usually covering story, characterisation and other things. This information keeps depictions of the series consistent when it's being handled by multiple parties.
Along with the two drafts of the bible is an extremely early origin story for Sonic, which is a must-read for it's sheer 'WTF' value:
Sonny Hedgehog was born on Earth in the early 21st century, in the town of Hardly, Nebraska, population 1,226.
The sheer crazy of the first-draft origin is probably the best evidence this is legit, because it's too insane to be a credible fake. I can also see the origin and evolution of the Kintobor story through the draft bibles, which appear to become the basis for the later Stay Sonic handbook. A few phrases from the earlier draft and whole paragraphs from the later one appear word-for-word in Stay Sonic. Even more fascinating is that the bible mentions seven Chaos Emeralds, which the games didn't have until Sonic 2, which means this story might have influenced the Japanese devteam when they were making the sequel!
The leaked bibles fill a missing link in our understanding of the series. Before now the Kintobor story could only be traced as far back as the first comic. Now we have evidence that it was written and promoted by Sega even if they were never able to use it in the games. This makes a lot more sense than promotional comic being allowed to make up it's own story and that story randomly influencing people on the other side of the Atlantic.
If you want more like this check out the second page of the thread where you can download a hundred-page design proposal for 'Sonic Mars', an unmade 32x Sonic game set in the cartoon continuity that apparently mutated into the cancelled Sonic X-Treme somewhere down the line.
Now, does whatever series you like have behind-the-scenes stories this fascinating? :P
People might believe that there would be no more juicy internal material from early-ninties Sega left to leak after ten years but they would be wrong. Last month's leak was one of the best I've seen in a while; drafts of Sega of America's development bible for Sonic 1, dated June 1991. In this context a bible is a compendium of information about a series, usually covering story, characterisation and other things. This information keeps depictions of the series consistent when it's being handled by multiple parties.
Along with the two drafts of the bible is an extremely early origin story for Sonic, which is a must-read for it's sheer 'WTF' value:
Sonny Hedgehog was born on Earth in the early 21st century, in the town of Hardly, Nebraska, population 1,226.
The sheer crazy of the first-draft origin is probably the best evidence this is legit, because it's too insane to be a credible fake. I can also see the origin and evolution of the Kintobor story through the draft bibles, which appear to become the basis for the later Stay Sonic handbook. A few phrases from the earlier draft and whole paragraphs from the later one appear word-for-word in Stay Sonic. Even more fascinating is that the bible mentions seven Chaos Emeralds, which the games didn't have until Sonic 2, which means this story might have influenced the Japanese devteam when they were making the sequel!
The leaked bibles fill a missing link in our understanding of the series. Before now the Kintobor story could only be traced as far back as the first comic. Now we have evidence that it was written and promoted by Sega even if they were never able to use it in the games. This makes a lot more sense than promotional comic being allowed to make up it's own story and that story randomly influencing people on the other side of the Atlantic.
If you want more like this check out the second page of the thread where you can download a hundred-page design proposal for 'Sonic Mars', an unmade 32x Sonic game set in the cartoon continuity that apparently mutated into the cancelled Sonic X-Treme somewhere down the line.
Now, does whatever series you like have behind-the-scenes stories this fascinating? :P