Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)/Beta elements

This article pertains to the beta elements from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).

Characters
Originally, every character was going to have their own episodes, but the idea was scrapped from the final version. Metal Sonic was going to be an extra playable character as well, but was scrapped as well.

Silver the Hedgehog
Silver had a more than one background concept done by Sonic Team. One was leaked from the Sonic Team in a "XLS" containing biographies of all the playable characters, along with scripts. Here, Silver is described as having special power that can draw upon the Chaos Emeralds. The concept of his creation was based on Trunks from Dragon Ball Z according to the same profile. However, the profile of Silver was described as "Temporary", explaining why it was not used, while all the other profiles were were later used in the official guide and on the game's websites.

Night and Day
A day and night feature was originally planned for the game, but was cut due to time constraints. This feature was shown during the demo for the game, and is evident during the cutscenes where Sonic travels through Soleanna at night.

Super Hard
There was originally going to be a mode named "Super Hard" for Sonic, Shadow and Silver which was extra difficult missions for each character. It is unknown if it is the same as the game's Very Hard mode for its DLC contents or not.

Chaos Smash
Chaos Smash was supposed to be a less advanced version of the Chaos Snap. It is only mentioned by the Shop assistant who says that the Chaos Snap is a more advanced version of the former. However, it cannot be used in gameplay.

Blaze's Pyrokinesis moves
It was planned to be combos between Silver and Blaze. By pressing /, the player could use Blaze's pyrokinesis to wrap her in flames. There was also another combo where Silver could pick up Blaze and throw her to launch a powerful attack. These are all intended for multiplayer mode.

Unused missions
There are a number of unused lines in the game indicating there was a number of different missions that did not make the cut, as neither Chao, ghosts, or mode selections appear in the final game:
 * "Get to the goal within minutes!"
 * "Collect rings!"
 * "Defeat all enemies!"
 * "Wipe out all enemies!"
 * "Get to the goal within minutes!"
 * "Collect rings!"
 * "Get to the goal before your rival!"
 * "Get to the goal before the ghost!"
 * "Find Chao!"
 * "Find the Goal Ring!"
 * "Get to the new Goal Ring!"
 * "Clear the minigame!"
 * "Clear hard mode!"

Music selection
In the game files, there are plenty of music tracks from previous Sonic the Hedgehog games like that were going to be purchasable in the Shop:
 * Sonic the Hedgehog 2
 * Sonic the Hedgehog 3
 * Sonic 3D Blast
 * Sonic & Knuckles
 * Sonic Adventure
 * Sonic Adventure 2
 * Sonic Heroes
 * Sonic R
 * Sonic Riders
 * Shadow the Hedgehog

Crisis City
Crisis City varies greatly between its prototype pictures and its finalized version. The Action Stage originally held Eggman's mechs (similar to that of the DLC version) instead of Iblis's minions and included sections that was cut from the final version. There were also Springs which Sonic used to bounce between walls instead of using the Wall Jump mechanic. Also the prominent tornado is still included, but is made of dust instead of flames.

Tropical Jungle
While not to the same degree as Crisis City, Tropical Jungle is quite different from its finalized version. Here, Sonic's eyes are darker and some unknown sections were included. The Vine gimmick is also used to travel to an unknown area, whereas in the final version, they are just used to swing upward. Most noticeably however, is that Sonic does not carry Elise during his gameplay (like in the Very Hard mode for the DLC content).

Kingdom Valley
Kingdom Valley is quite different from the final version. There are multiple unknown areas that appeared in the prototype images which were not seen in the final version, some with different placements of the enemies and more Ring trails for the Light Speed Dash. In some of the very early screenshots, the Springs have a different model which resemble the one for Sonic Heroes.

New City
Using a glitch, Shadow can access New City before Dusty Desert. Doing so reveals an early version of New City with several prototype elements that were left out of the final version:
 * Vehicles that drive through the city. However, their AI is unfinished as they often drive into buildings.
 * Mirrors of Sloeanna for Crisis City and Flame Core. However, they can not be entered.
 * An unused pigeon NPC called "Hatsun" that the player can speak to. This brooding little creature only say "Coo..."

Unused Town Mission/ Defeat all the enemies and protect company employees!
There is an unused mission in the New City that takes place at the same time Shadow is going to the Dusty Desert. Once the player proceed to where the unused Mirrors of Soleanna are, the mission will begin. In this mission, the player has to protect the employees and watch over their health measure. To succeeding in this mission, the player must destroy the leader of every group consisting of the purple minions of Iblis, thereby destroying them all. Some enemies are not linked though, and must be destroyed individually. The mission is filled with Super Rings and Chaos Drives power-up items. At the end, the player must destroy four Titans. After finishing it, the employee Mazzola will say what is happening and what they are working on at the Rimlight company. At the end, he will say that there is a Light Core reaction in the Dusty Desert. Note that this mission will not be saved in the save data once completed and everytime the player reenters the unused City, it can be played again.

Forest
Using a glitch, Sonic can access the blocked portion of Castle Town and enter the Forest before Wave Ocean. Doing so reveals several oddities:
 * Double sets of doors in several locations, including the entrance to the Forest that can only be seen by clipping through the walls.
 * The Forest itself holds a multitude of signs, including signs with the "no" symbol, checkered strips, stop signs, and speed limit designations. The latter two can be destroyed with the Homing Attack. On top of that, they are unused remnant of the cars planned for New City.
 * No NPCs are included in the Forest.
 * The bridge to the gates are not present.

Castle Town
By utilizing a glitch, it is possible to reach an early development version of Castle Town right after returning to the present from Flame Core in Shadow's episode. This version is without its doors (just a black room) that lead to the Forest and New City. The player cannot speak to people and there are two bridges near the supposed entrance to the Forest. One leads the player to between both sides of the town and the other one leads into a wall. When entering this area, the player will be stuck and can only get out by exiting and reentering the episode. Should the players save their progress in this area however, they will be stuck there indefinitely with no escape.

Super Gem/Rainbow Gem
The Super Gem is a Level Up Item that was in the Demo/final version of the game, but was not finished and scrapped. This gem was presumably meant to let Sonic the Hedgehog transform into Super Sonic in normal gameplay. By hacking through the game's files, the player can make use of it, but it will only make Sonic use a "Transformation pose" with no special capabilities.

Speed Up
There was going to be a Level Up Item in the game that Silver could buy in the Shop to increase his speed.

HUD items
Along with the Custom Actions, Key, Medal, gift and Disks, there are heads-up-display icons for various other items like the Rainbow Gem in game data, but did not make it into the final version.

Unused Mirrors of Soleanna
Every Action Stage except Crisis City, Flame Core and the End of the World have their own Mirror of Soleanna. However, there is a texture in the game-files that shows an image for the Mirrors for every gate, including the three absent stages. Some of these normally unused Mirrors were later found by forcing the game to load unused object layouts into some of the hub areas with the use of glitches and gameplay tricks, but due to fact that they were not programmed to behave like the Mirrors the player normally interacts with, they are not working.

His World
The game files hold a variation of "His World" without lyrics (the one used in the game's commercial). Parts of this song can be heard at various points in the game, such as in the main settings, multiplayer, and Solaris phase 2, but none of them have the complete track.

Dreams of Absolution
The game files hold the song "Dreams of an Absolution" without lyrics which is different from the final version of the track.

Unused Shield
The Shield was presumably a power-up that was meant to appear in the game and was even listed in the game's finalized manual. If the player uses a special mod to swap E-123 Omega with Silver the Hedgehog in Crisis City and grab an Item Box, the Shield's icon will appear on the bottom of the screen, although it will not change the contents of the Item Box.

Unused lines and mechanics
In many of Sonic and Shadow's unused lines, several plot points can be heard which was removed from the game. These include absent parts of the stories and scenarios, like where both Sonic and Shadow worked together to find all the Chaos Emeralds before Eggman in a scrapped final stage. Unused animations in the game data also suggest that Sonic was going to use the Buggy and have an alternate falling animation. These differences also apply to some of the supporting characters, especially Amy Rose.

There are also lines that hints of moves absent from the game, multiplayer quotes for every character (even Elise), Shadow vs. Rouge Town Missions, and Eggman talking about many subjects, like the Eye of Solaris and some hidden stories.

Eggman without Sunglasses
In the game files, there is a yet-completed picture of Eggman without his glasses before he makes Team Sonic travel to the future.

Soleanna and Egg Carrier's maps
In the game files, there are a lot of pictures that are presumably used by Eggman on the Egg Carrier to locate the Chaos Emeralds. The maps included the errors that occurred onboard the Egg Carrier before it crashed.

The pictures also include renders of the Soleanna newspapers that Sonic read upon his return to the present from Flame Core.

Leftover E3 Content
Two loading screens from the E3 demo of the game were left within its data. Note that both of them state "Head for a Goal Ring!"

Multiplayer
Several graphics related to the multiplayer mode of the game still exist in its data, but was not used.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 Xbox Live Demo)
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 Xbox Live Demo) was a demo released for the Xbox 360. Once, it was available through Xbox Live Marketplace. It is currently only available for re-download to the Gamertags who downloaded the demo when it was publically available.

The demo includes Sonic's first section of Kingdom Valley. The Action Stage, as well as the game ,itself contains some differences from the final version. It also contains the game's 2006 E3 trailer but without the voiceover.

General

 * Different enemies, item placement, and no Medals.
 * Rings are dispersed in a wider circle when Sonic is hit.
 * Sonic immediately re-spawns after losing a life. The screen will not black out.
 * Sonic never falls back from hitting a wall and never gets temporarily stunned from being clipped to the sides of the walls.
 * Most trails of Rings can be used for the Light Speed Dash.
 * Sonic falls from ceilings instead of being rooted to their surfaces (e.g. the high cave full of Egg Bombers).
 * Camera angle shots were added in the beginning of the Action Stage.
 * The camera control is much slower than in the final version.
 * The Action Gauge starts out empty, but it can be filled by defeating enemies. However, it fills much slower than in the final version. The first of the three bottom-right squares are red, showing a non-existent Custom Action Level 1. The bar below the Action Gauge also has a small section of red filling it, in contrast to the final version where the gauge is always empty.

Visual and sound

 * Title screen uses one of the last riffs from "His World" (Ali Taba. & Matty Lewis version) instead of the song's introduction.
 * The title screen and pause screen's options refer to the demo as "Play Demo" and "Quit Demo" respectively.
 * The controls are shown on the Action Stage's loading screen in the demo.
 * The music and the screen will not fade out after losing the last life.
 * The visual effects of the Homing Attack are a little different.
 * There are no flashy effects for the Spin Dash.
 * The Bound Jump's "shockwave" is mostly white with yellow edges instead of blue in the demo.
 * Surfing on the wind paths in the demo does not produce the appearance of wind debris being stirred up from the character's feet.
 * No voice sound effects except for subtitled scripts. There are also no scripts on the results screen.
 * Pressing or  on any option on the pause menu will not produce the "confirming" high-pitched sound effect in the final version. Instead, it will produce the "cancel" sound used for pressing "Start" or.
 * There is no music for the result screen, although there are unused result music in the demo's files.

Scoring

 * 1-Ups rewards 0 points instead of 200.
 * Light Speed Dashing earns a "Good!" bonus and the point increments increase for combining them together.
 * The Light Speed Dash is configured properly with the Slide, unlike in the final version.
 * Hitting a rock pile is worth 20 points, and hitting any of the scattered rocks gove 20 points each. In the final version, the rocks disappear immediately when scattered but the initial pile is still worth 20 points.
 * The Egg Searcher wields three re-spawnable pods that are each worth 100 points. The robot itself is also worth 100 points. Any pods that the Egg Searcher is armed with upon its defeat will add to the total point score. Defeating an Egg Searcher when it is armed with all three pods earns a "Radical!" bonus in the demo version. This does not happen in the final version.

Bugs

 * Egg Bombers can crawl in mid-air.
 * Homing Attacking an empty 1-UP capsules will get Sonic stuck in midair and then dropped down.
 * Completing the Action Stage in twenty minutes and one second, or over will result in an S-rank, regardless of score.
 * When triggering a Hint Ring and continue on move, the box containing the description vanishes while the reader still reads it.
 * In most cases, upon earning a "Good!", "Great!", and "Radical!" bonus in quick succession, the player will earn -2,112,941,584 points, causing the score to be maximized. Completing the Action Stage with this score will cause every factor besides the time to be maxed out.

E3 Demo differences
The E3 demo containing both Sonic's Kingdom Valley and Silver's Crisis City has several differences from the final version. Crisis City's differences include:
 * Blaze's section was not included.
 * Only Silver has an Action Gauge.
 * Silver's speed increases the more Rings he collect, like Sonic.
 * The Action Stage has Eggman's robots instead of Iblis' minions as enemies.
 * There are a few grammatical errors in the dialogues.
 * The characters' text boxes are simple black rectangles, unlike in the final version.

Trivia

 * Despite the fact that this variant of "His World" is ultimately unused in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), it is used in many of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog TV advertisements.
 * The New City glitch can be performed before proceeding to "Save the Archaeologist" mission as well, but the entered version is without the unused mission and the Flame Core and Crisis City warp gates.
 * It is possible to score 50.000 points in the unused mission of New City.
 * The Homing Attack used in the earlier demo of the game lets the player to instantly destroy multiple enemies, unlike in the final version.
 * It should be noted that some of the game's beta elements are very similar to those in in Sonic Unleashed, like the day and night cycles, the Chao and ghost missions.

External link

 * Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 Xbox Live Demo)