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

I've tried on 2 different machines, both with identical issues, for whatever reason.

I no longer see the sonic 1.5b folder up on google drive, though, so maybe something is being tweaked.

Either way, the downloadable folders will let people see the raw assets for now, at least. I think everyone involved in restoring these assets did a great job, and it goes to show we're probably at about the end of the road in terms of uncovering Sonic 2 mysteries, at long last.

We now know winter and sand shower only existed as mockups, with the surprise being that sand shower's mockup was animated at least! We get to see a tiny bit more of wood zone's functionality as well.

And we do confirm many great details about what Genocide City would have been like. The mockup build is still a bit unfinished in its most current form, but it gives us a clear idea of how the zone played and what ideas they toyed with.

All around, well done, and thank you again to everyone involved.

I'm going to take a step back and wait for everyone else to comb over the material and take it all in. To me, this leaves the only great remaining mystery about the classics as the Sonic 1 toy show build, and Sonic CD's R2. And given how little existed of the missing stages we hadn't seen, I suspect not much more exists of those either anymore. The biggest surprise today was an actual screenshot of the winter level.

 

To think STI planned to go the Sonic2 8-bit way of having the sequel unfold on South Island again...
And yeah, the vid was quite nice, there's been quite the progress in Sonic dev stuff these last few years.

Still, that image of a potential underwater area... I wonder if that was really Sonic2-related...

 

Hi all, I'm glad to see all of you excited over this, especially with the Brenda Cook art! I had the pleasure of helping with the group effort behind the Brenda Cook tape (am referenced as null in special thanks). Seeing your reactions is making my day. I would love to thank Frank (@TheRedEye) and CollisionChaosRadio (afaik not on Retro) for absolutely restoring the tape to the best of their ability. They did incredible work that took a ton of time and effort to make sure the tape was presentable in the best way possible. Would also love to thank @ChilliusVGM and @TheBrickster as they were also part of the group that made the Brenda stuff possible.

Quite frankly I know that some people were kinda pissed about GCZ being teased before on a charity stream and the scans not being shared back then immediately (this stuff does take a good amount of time to make sure everything is as great as it can be), but trust me, without that even happening, transferring Brenda's tape wouldn't have happened. It was that stream where Frank was showing off GCZ layouts that inspired us to contact Frank to get something going with Brenda Cook.

In fact, here's a screenshot of that exact moment we decided that something should be done.



I would like to thank Frank for making this all possible and presentable as best as it can ever be. VGHF is such a great nonprofit.

 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rAC0ZkAgkFJZUNcu5EB0jMvZXYo6iwOZ

 

Animated Sand Shower (AKA "Dust Hill") for those who've not yet seen this in motion.


Note that it actually shows a little bit more content to the left, but cuts off part of the bottom compared to other mockups. So the original source the magazine screencaps came from was close, but not a 100% EXACT match for what was on the video.

 

There's a second page with Sonic on it.

Spoiler: Water level

And yes, that is a Balkiry from Sky Chase Zone.

 

Also worth mentioning that on the Mockup Image version there are ring sparkles behind Sonic, which was probably added after the fact but since other rings are present in the video version makes it interesting.

 

I gotta say, it’s funny that frank released all of this on a Tuesday, happy Sonic Tuesday everybody.

 

Also fun fact, it's the 10th anniversary of Sonic 2's 2013 release.

 

I have mirrored all the Tom Payne scans, so they're now wiki-able.

Exceptions are:
- The photographs of Tom on holiday
- "Binder Clip 4 (Sonic the Hedgehog Setting Document Collection) (Binder Clip, Original Order)", because the wiki was doing something strange with those which I'll have to look into. But these had been released previously anyway so no massive rush there.

It's on Retro CDN because a good chunk of it has nothing to do with Sonic, and I thought it best to keep it all together. I've also used the original filenames. I think the JPEG format lets you specify a default rotation - our wikis don't handle that, so you might see some scans upside down.

There may be a whole bunch of old scans on Sonic Retro that can now die. Pages will need updating.


I'll apologise again for my less than stellar posts earlier in this topic - if anything this package has been under-sold. Sorry Frank, don't hate me.

 

I would also like to apologize for earlier statements. If I had any kind of clue that the reveal was going to be to this degree, I wouldn't have been so cynical about it. I don't think most people ever expected anything other than some level maps.

I'm most curious about this image. It uses the same assets from Sand and Winter. I suppose it's possible that it's from a later game and Brenda simply repurposed her art like Payne and Stitt did, but I have a gut feeling it was made specifically for Sonic. But as to what, I have no earthly clue. Olympus? It can't be, right? But then what else could it be?

 

The sea theme goes with the fact Blue Lake was renamed Blue Ocean at some point, and the updated past map changed the island's layout into a set of smaller isles on the sea.

Blue Lake:


Blue Ocean:


Edit:

I posted a comparison with the Sand Shower mockup in the S2 dev lore thread. People replied that Frank suspects it wasn't made for any particular game, but doesn't know for sure.

As for what S2 zone it might have been, perhaps Olympus, the pyramid used as warp point, or Rock World (which is one of Sand Shower's counterparts)?

 

The focus on the submarine and that big open space is interesting. I know it is just a rough piece of concept art but I'm wondering (pure speculations) if Blue Ocean (or Lake) was going to have aspects of Sky Chase's game design, with the Submarine serving as a stand in for the plane? Would help to partially explain the reused badniks and why there is such an open space.

 

I just noticed, near the very top-right corner of the page above the trees and signpost, the word "ZONE" is present but mostly cut off. Guess that confirms this is an S2 level?

 

I’m surprised no-one is discussing the new Bob - while the Bob itself is funny, what’s beneath it is actually more interesting; that’s Metropolis and Cyber City assets that this was drawn over, and it is using Cyber City’s palette, too!

 

I think we want to be incredibly careful here - there is more than one game on that video, and artwork that has nothing to do with games(?). Just because the assets are reused doesn't mean it was Sonic-bound - there's a history of assets being recycled for other STI projects. And a history of lots of STI projects. Hell the desert level mockup uses Sonic 1 assets.

There's Jester graphics in there, which is a game we know very little about, and something undocumented called "Fat Daddy starring <something>".

(Word of advice, don't look up "Fat Daddy" on Google.)

 

Just a small observation regarding the sheet with a palette called "COLOR2": http://www.retrolel.com/en/examining-sonic-2s-color2-palette/

 

I would also add that I believe all the pixel art comes from Deluxe Paint on Amiga, not Digitizer etc., so I would also not necessarily assume that the cat art was for a Sega project.