Sonic R/Development

Sonic R has gone through several changes over its development process. There are several rejected ideas, level designs, and other things that were changed before the games final release. The following details several of these things.

Prototype Box Art

This early box art was found on Compuserve internet servers back in 1998. The artwork here is found in the ending scene in the game. It was probably rejected as it gave away that Metal Sonic was a secret character in the game.

Early Game Design

Various

The icons for the unlockable metal characters are different. It's possible the magazine made this change.
Sr YellowTrail.jpg

The trail after hitting a speed boost is yellow instead of a large array of colors.

Resort Island

The character icons on the HUD are different.
The level set in the evening. Only the PC version allowed the time of day to be adjusted.
Character icons on HUD are different and the fade-in of the background looks worse.
Very early level design and the HUD consists of numbers only.
The basic HUD again and a sunset setting.
Basic HUD and sunset setting.
A better look at the sunset background and some large mountains. The mountains are replaced by small mounds in final.
Sunset setting again but the mountains cannot be seen. They were probably on another side.
Sunset setting again.