Jon Burton, founder of Traveller's Tales, has started a new YouTube channel called GameHut. On it, he's sharing behind-the-scenes footage and documentation on the development of their classic games. Traveller's Tales is known to Sonic fans as having developed both Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R.
This video thoroughly showcases the first playable build of Sonic R, and potentially the only surviving copy, complete with annotations added. The demo is fairly barebones, showing an incomplete Sonic model running around an early version of the Resort Island track. Still, despite being a very early prototype build, it's remarkable how similar the track is in design to what appeared in the final game.
Jon Burton is currently a producer at Warner Bros., having worked on The Lego Movie series of films. Subscribe to the GameHut YouTube channel to keep up on the latest videos published.