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See Sonic 4 “Beta” Running on Wii

You may remember the PartnerNet Leak of Sonic 4: Episode 1 quite a while back, which sent the community into an uproar over several questionable design choices Sega put into the game.

Thanks to a slight slip of the hand on Sega’s part, the company accidentally uploaded the same build up on the Wii’s Shopping Channel over in Japan. For a small period of time, people who purchased the game received this build until it was taken offline and replaced with the actual final build.

But as with all slight slips of the hand, just a few minutes is enough time for things like this to leak out on to the Internet and pop their way onto YouTube. Forum member 1stKirbyever has taken the time of tracking down said leak and recording a 55-minute playthrough of the prototype Wii version, noting differences between this leak, which includes the infamous pinball and mine cart stages, and the final build.

Look below for a full breakdown of differences without watching the whole video.

General Changes:
-Sonic’s full running animation is almost never used. This was changed in the Final.
-Level select screen uses pictures of levels instead of a landscape.
-The opening is different, it fades in from a white screen compared to the final. ESRB logo is also missing.
-Music is slightly changed.
-Different loading screen.
-Cannot go past the end-of-level border.
-Blue screen tile lacks animation.
-No lock-on SFX
-No way to progress to the next act without using the Level Select screen.
-Super Sonic uses invi. music.
-Special Stages lack the usage of the Dpad, you must use tilt controls. Lack of jump too.

SPLASH HILL Changes:

ACT1
-Sunflowers lack any dancing animation.

ACT2
-Nothing major, a few object changes.

ACT3
-Nothing major, a few object changes. Most notable is near the end; missing spikes.

BOSS
-Nothing.

CASINO STREET Changes:

ACT 1
-Nothing major, a few object changes.

ACT 2
-Everything.
-Lack of cards.
-Music. (Dear god.)

ACT 3
-Quite a few things; most notable near the end and the lower path.

BOSS
-Nothing

LOST LABYRINTH changes:

ACT 1
-Nothing major, a few changes in object placement.

ACT 2
-Everything.

ACT 3
-Faster wall and more objects during the chase, including a bubble that just stands there and hits you if you use the homing attack on an object.

BOSS
-Red Orbinauts are everywhere. That’s about it though.

MAD GEAR Changes:

ACT 1
-More Asterons than normal. Quite a few of them were removed.

ACT 2
-Twice as many splicers and Asterons.
-Bubbles during the vertical moving gear. Including a red rail.

ACT 3
-Wall is much faster.
-Sirens lack any SFX.
-Some springs are missing and some springs are added.
-Two 1ups have been moved.

-E.G.G. Station
-Checkpoints have been added. (I’m pretty sure they lack any in the Final Build.)

-Ending/Credits
-The “Secret” lacks any SFX.

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21 Comments

  • Reply

    What’s this? A Sonic 4 blog post without a single mention of physics? Astounding!

    And on the subject, can we expect a public release anytime soon? I’m sure many people here at Retro would love to get a shot at playing the beta themselves.

    • Reply

      Much like we don’t have the 360 PartnerNet build up, we won’t be having this one up. Still, the file’s obviously wild on the Interwebs, so feel free to go hunting.

  • Reply

    Note how speed shoes now speed up music without restarting the track.

    • Reply

      And SEGAH removed this because…

      • Reply

        Code regression. This happens all the time in software, and is usually fixed if they have decent bug tracking. Apparently they don’t.

    • Reply

      It’s actually not. The guy playing hit it at the right moment and it sounded like the song was sped up.

  • Reply

    Also there were checkpoints in EGG Station Zone in the final version. I don’t know about the Wii version, but there were in the 360 version.

    • Reply

      I can reinforce this, I used the one before the Labyrinth boss many times because I suck at that boss. D:

      This is very interesting, I love betas and seeing what got changed!

    • Reply

      Yeah, there are also checkpoints in the PS3 final version…. I’ve not seen the wii version, so i have no idea what that one’s like for the final fight…

    • Reply

      You’re all right. The checkpoints have always been there.

  • Reply

    alwanys wanted to play this build of the game.

  • Reply

    I actually like the music in this version better for Casino Street 1…

  • Reply

    It’s Sonic be-4 we truly reimagined it

  • Reply

    Thank god this build got leaked when it did. Sonic 4 as we got was mediocre enough, but this would have been a disaster. I mean, dear god that pinball level, what the hell was that?

  • Reply

    Indeed the pinball level looks annoying, even more then the casino level 3. But man, this guy can play Sonic 4 much, much better then me!

  • Reply

    Actually, the iPhone version basically IS the PartnerNet build. The running animation is BARELY used, not to mention the two (shudders) other levels.

    • Reply

      The levels suited the iPhone better. I don’t see LLZ2’s revised stage working out as well on the system. As for CSZ2? That was just a horrible idea all around. It’d been better off as an extra minigame instead of a full stage.

  • Reply

    um… this is the Wii v. right? well, why does he have face expressions?? on my wii, he only has 1 expression, which is eyes, and big smile. sonics face expressions are only in hd versions.

    • Reply

      Much like Gerbil said earlier, it could be code regression. Hard to say.

  • Reply

    They should have had the replaced “act 2” levels as bonus levels in the console versions.

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