A WAV directory for the AutoPlay is present containing two files that date back to January 18, 1996, Autoplay.wav and Silence.wav, the former is a jingle that wouldve played when the AutoPlay is initiated.
Like a lot of things not necessary for the show in this prototype, the release notes were not updated from the last release, called Beta 1.4.2. Thanks to this, they contain a lot of information about the game's development from January-March 1996.
This document seems to refer to two names not found in many other places in the prototype or the final game: "Click Clock" and "PPE". These names can be inferred as the name of the clock character seen in various unused .AVI and .PCX files in both the prototype and the final game and the name of the character seen in STAGE.AVI, STAGEXX.AVI, and STAGEYY.AVIin the prototype.
PPE had artwork of him "flying through the environment" at this point.
By March 1996, most of the sounds were placeholders but all were implemented.
Click Clock's animations are "temp" at this point due to a new codec for them being implemented. It is not clear what this codec is referring to.
All elements of the main hallway (main map) were included and working.
All classrooms were included and working.
New "siderooms" were available. It is unclear what this refers to.
All of the elements for Recess existed and were working by this point.
A new "exiting sequence" with PPE is mentioned to "clarify the relocation of the player".
All of the field trip elements were included and working besides the AVI videos, which had to wait for the "concept and characters" to be finalized.
The installer was created alongside Beta 1.3.1, on January 8th, 1996.
Beta 1.4.1 removed some "developer messaging", likely referring to leftover strings removed in that release.
Before Beta 1.4, it was not possible to boot up the game from the AutoPlay.
SONIC.INI, SONIC.ICO, and SONIC.EXE are still called AH.INI, ANSWHUNT.ICO, and ANSWHUNT.EXE respectively.
The icon used by the game's main executable is completely different, and is clearly a placeholder. Strangely, ANSWHUNT.ICO has a less rough looking icon, despite it being dated four months earlier than the main executable.
ANSWHUNT.ICO
(Jan 2, 1996)
ANSWHUNT.EXE
(May 16, 1996)
Final
This build seems to take longer to load.
This version of the game uses WaveMix as the audio library instead of Sound Operating System (SOSLIB). Accordingly, music is stored in regular MIDI file format instead of HMI.
This also makes this version easier to run on modern hardware after installing the WaveMix drivers manually to the system, getting the sound to work in the final is difficult.
When printing the Gumball machine, the print job name is "Answer Hunt Certificate" instead of "Certificate".
The quality settings depict a tree instead of a sign with Pentium / 486 written on, it also has a lower quality setting which halves the resolution of gameplay, likely dropped due to poor readability.
The Grades menu is broken, leaving it leads to all buttons being broken except the traffic lights
choosing green won't change the grade but the game'll be in a playable state.
choosing red will change the grade and you'll be warped to the last map before exiting to the menu, unless it's a cold boot, in which case you'll be at 0x0 in the schoolhouse lobby map out of bounds, but can still interact with the doors from the other side.
There is no speed cap when holding left to rotate, this was only partially fixed in the final and can still be triggered by simply moving forward at least once while holding left.
The schoolhouse lobby doors can be closed and reopened.
Balloons and bouncing letters / numbers are solid.
There is an odd extra entrance that leads to a narrow hallways, a fork to a small room with a fish bowl and back through a one way visible passage.
Another fishbowl is present locked behind the blackboards on the left side
Interacting with it makes the fish jump before disappearing entirely.
"Welcome to E3" is written on the blackboard with the current date near Robotnik, the final has a message per-defined for all days of the year, including a normally unused fallback.
The recycle bin hasn't been implemented, making it annoying to have the blackboard read out to the player, requiring Robotnik to take the answer.
No voice line plays when only giving a partial answer.
The game softlocks when solving all 10 blackboards and exiting due to problems with the FMV ending.
In the "Ring Hunt" playground minigame, Robotnik can collect rings, making higher difficulties near impossible to beat, especially with the smaller playground.
Out of 1,550 voice lines, only 24 are the same as the final.
A good amount of Sonic's voice lines are retakes of existing lines from the final. Some have more unique wording than others compared to the final game.
"JAZZ.MID", one of the demo tracks that shipped with the Sound Blaster 16. This track has a duplicate called F_.MID on the disc, made at the exact same time.
ERROR.MID
A short error jingle. Dated 29th August 1992, long before the start of the game's development.
MAIN_.MID
An earlier version of the title theme, likely left over from earlier releases.
Three very similar videos featuring the Purple People Eater from the 1988 film of the same name, referred to as the abbreviated name "PPE" in RELEASE.TXT, all dated November 21st, 1995.
The quality of the videos is similar to CCHELP_2.AVI, CCHELP_3.AVI and CCHELP_4.AVI, likely used to test which output would work best for the game. Curiously there's a STAGE1.AVI with the same Click Clock placeholder.
Only STAGE.AVI is used in-game and was replaced with the scene of Sonic holding sparklers.
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