New Sonic 2 development lore drop - Genocide/Cyber City palette and art!

I will once again caution that we probably need to wait just a tiny bit longer before we speculate endlessly, as what we're recieving might well be all that was ever conceptualized for Genocide/Cyber city.

My best guess of events is as follows.

- Game is initially conceived as a massive, time traveling story driven epic, a collaborative project between both JPN and US studios, and perhaps one of Sega's biggest games ever. Something like 18 plus zones are conceptualized! (At the same time, late 1991/Early 1992, Naoto conceives of a similar idea back in Japan for Sonic CD, and he and Naka occasionally discuss some of their ideas, but ultimately take wildly different gameplay approaches to the concept).
- Future Setting has Genocide City (the name at that time) as the last Zone before the "Battle in Space/Death Egg". How this transitions to it is not entirely clear, but there is no clear evidence of Sky Chase Zone or Wing Fortress Existing at this early stage. Chemicals, Genocide, Death. This dark, doomed future is DEADLY and Sonic has to stop Eggman's dark, cyberpunk industrial madness!
- Come early 1992, Sega solidifies that the game must be released by November. The JPN and US teams find collaborative work a tad difficult due to language barriers and cultural expectation differences (this would be a much bigger challenge in 1992!), leading to the realization that the project is far too ambitious for the massive deadline it has to run up against (Before Black Friday!). The original time travel concept probably would take a minimum of 6 extra months to build, when Sega needs a new hot Sonic title to compete with Mario by the year's end (And we all know how successful Sonic 2 Final went on to be).
- By Simon Wai Beta, major decisions on what to cut and keep were being drafted, but not yet finalized. Hidden Palace would be kept as a story based bonus stage. Genocide City and Wood Zone were not yet finalized, but were likely planned to be dropped. Most other zones with major progress up to that point would be kept, and anything not included was entirely discarded. Genocide City was tied into the original late/endgame, so there was still discussion on how much of it could be salvaged/preserved for the final stretch.
- At one point, they considered retooling it into Metropolis Act 3. You can see minor elements of it surviving in the pre-Simon Wai map (like the fans). Since the entire zone had been conceptualized, enough assets and ideas existed that they were usable in some form. Sky Chase and "Sky Fortress" were conceptualized in late Spring 1992 as the new final stretch, leading up to the 1 act Final boss Death Egg. This meant they could still have an epic chase into space even without the future concept.
- This is where our big question lies. What from this old zone survived? Some of it went into Spinball's "The Machine". Some into the unproduced B-Bomb, and now we speculate that some concepts (if not actual art) were retooled into Wing Fortress. My hope is that the full documents reveal where each of those elements made it, and at what point. If we're very lucky, what Tom had may reveal almost every bit of Genocide/Cyber city that was ever made for the game, in whatever form it was in.

Quite a timeline this game's had. Hopefully, soon, we can finally get a better understanding of this game's confusing 18 month development cycle.

 

I'm so glad I'm not the only one. There's some really solid evidence that points to it being otherwise (with the 'totally not Star Wars' leitmotif in Wing Fortress), but I simply can't imagine the Death Egg Zone track fitting in Cyber City at all. It's simply too 'threatening-sounding' for something that isn't intended to be the final level. I kinda prefer the old interpretation that Casino Night 2 Player was intended for it. It still has a 'mechanical' feel to it and is a bit more 'depressing' sounding, without being too threatening. Like-wise, applying Wing Fortress' final theme to Death Egg feels really unfitting. It sounds too much like a 'triumph' even though Sonic hasn't really won yet, even with the knowledge that Death Egg was planning to be a lot longer. Even listening to the original demos, I'm not completely sold on the idea. Scrap Brain Zone's 'feeling' in it's composition more closely matches that of Death Egg Zone's track?

The only thing that's kinda sad about all this knowledge coming to light is that the kid in me is really going to miss those more speculative fan interpretations of the Zone when all we had to go off of was the original Zone title, and had to work with the 'absolutely destroyed city' idea that stemmed from it. People got really freaking creative, and I still have a huge soft-spot for Hachelle-Bee's old interpretation of the Zone since I played that hack in Kega back when I was a pre-teen discovering emulation and Sonic ROM hacking:



(Hachelle, assuming you're reading this, the kid in me begs you to keep this version in the hack as some sort of Easter Egg. Alright, enough nostalgia..)

 

Both of these assume that when Masa was composing, either his mindset or the description of DEZ that he was given was "Menacing, final zone, Sonic is in the heart of darkness" and I just don't think that's true. I think the description of DEZ was simply "Final level, Sonic in space". I think he saw Sonic in space on a level called "Death Egg" with a very Star Wars-esque environment, where Sonic was jumping around in what looks like low gravity, and went with the most obvious route. Furthermore, it's not as if the track doesn't have any danger. Once you get past the first 20 seconds (of the demo) it starts playing this bit that does indeed sound very panicky and gives a sense of danger, as if to remind you that it's not all fun and games with this level and you've still got a villain to stop. Scrap Brain isn't exactly the creepiest and most panicky stage theme either. I think CCZ would've been the zone that got the "Eggman's stronghold, Sonic is in danger" description. Compared to DEZ's artwork, CCZ's artwork shows a lot of hazards and traps.

It's also worth mentioning that Masa has stated he envisioned Sonic and composed for it as if it were a film. And even in Japan, no film was bigger, more popular, and more influential on pop culture than Star Wars. I don't think there's any possible way it wouldn't at least have been a thought in his head.

 

I agree. I've always assumed WFZ's music was meant to evoke dogfights in old-school war movies...which of course Star Wars stea--er, borrows heavily from to begin with.

and also the rhombuses. the annoying rhombuses. And a good amount of the layout. I wouldn't even say "considering", I would say that they were retooling it at the point and had only gotten as far as the "convert everything" stage.

 

Not even that but I genuinely don’t hear what they are. I’m not saying that it couldn’t have been this or that or whatever as I don’t want to entertain the idea right now, but assuming “oh it must be star wars due to a vague similarity in how the music moves” really bothers me when surprisingly, music uses patterns and many music pieces share many patterns despite being completely different and purely coincidence.

 

Soon....if I could just get a hold of the rest of the numerical data. (I just was able to convert the parts that were shown in the livestream, which was only a section of act 1 unfortuntely)

EDIT:


the whole section is interesting though and almost has a second starting point? (Unless I imported this incorrectly).

 

Are there any plans from anyone to port Cyber City to Sonic 2 Absolute in full?

 

It's surreal to me that CCZ will get the most accurate recreation of a zone compared to even HPZ. The 2014 release of that zone was mostly a total reimagining based on limited information, but this? We have the art, the layout, the objects, the music (likely)...everything.

 

What I am using is backwards compatable with the Sonic 2 decompile level layout, and object layout wise. If Absolute works the same as the original, it should work fine. Objects will have to be programmed though by someone more skilled than myself if want to see it in the ROM or in Absolute.

 

By decompile, do you mean the 2021 decomp for the mobile version? If so, it's definitely possible.

 

This looks cool. Do you plan on making the tileset brownish bronze like the concept art, or are you going to stick to purple? I think a bronze foreground with purple accents and objects would look pretty nifty.

 

The first act layout that was presented in the stream I think is incorrect in bits. Throwing the raw data in here, I've found some areas the AI didn't pick up.

I've padded the rest of the level at the moment that I don't have the raw numbers for. There seems to be another pully system thingy in the first area here.




I've better stabilized the layout by adding padding.




Also, this bear trap and the way its placed makes me really question how it worked

 

I was kinda thinking Eggman would have launched the Death Egg from Genocide City.
They placed alot of importance on the Death Egg lunching in S3&k Launch Base Zone in S3 and probably just after the HPZ events in Knuckles though you don't see up in the air till the end of Sky Sanctuary.
While in S2 it just kinda seems like the Death Egg was always up in there in space, I'd think if they had more time they would shown the launch in Genocide City.

 

Ok, this could work. Do you mind if I make the RSDK version with permission and credit once all 3 acts are done? If so, you need to send the SonLVL project files so I can convert it.

 

Is there any reason that we're so sure at the bear trap is part of the level layout, seems like it should be an object to me.

I'm assuming that these are the earliest docs that were made for Genocide City, so something isn't making sense it's likely because it was never played tested and just designed on paper.

 

I always assumed Casino Night 2P was meant for Oil Ocean (since it's set to that in the prototypes), while OOZ's final track was meant for Sand Shower. OOZ's personality would definitely feel different if it kept that track; maybe a bit more fitting to the kinda haughty jaunt you'd put over an oil tycoon's lot.

I don't know, Scrap Brain definitely feels a bit more treacherous and eerie than anything in WFZ.

Anyways I can see where you're coming from, but even if that were the initial thought, I can see why they would've switched things around. I just don't think the idea works as well as it reads on paper.

 

It's so surreal to see Genocide/Cyber City get resurrected after all this time. Is there a remote possibility that Brenda Ross would be willing to release her level assets at this point too, if she even still has them?

 

Go for it. You will need to convert the level chunks to SonLVL format yourself though. I can provide what I have for the layout for SonLVL as what I am using for that is backwards compatable.

 

I mean I could try programming the object it's self, but I don't know enough about how object animation works in assembly.

 

IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong) the last time this community contacted Brenda Ross, she was so annoyed that she unplugged her phone and changed her number. I'm going to guess the answer is no.

EDIT: Ok, it was her email, but still.