[Neo]

HOLY SHIT I AM BESIDE MYSELF.

TimmiT, on 22 May 2017 - 12:53 PM, said:

Adding to what others have summed up, here is my attempt to transcribe the zone themes in the above image:


グリーン Green
オーシャン Ocean
ウッド Wood
サンド Sand
メトロポリス Metropolis

トロピカルサン Tropical Sun
ブルーオーシャン Blue Ocean
ヒルトップ Hill Top

ロック Rock
オイル Oil
ダスト Dust
デスエッグ Death Egg

ヒルトップ Hill Top
ブルー Blue

カジノ Casino
ケミカル Chemical
ジェノサイド Genocide
ネオデスエッグ Neo Death Egg


Seems like at some points you would get sent back to previous stages. And it isn't mentioned in the other slides, but it looks like at least the name "Death Egg" was already conceived at this time.

EDIT: Fuck I forgot something important. Dust AND Sand. Dust Hill Zone is not the desert level. Sonique (I think it was her?) BTFO.

This post has been edited by Neo: 22 May 2017 - 02:15 PM

[DigitalDuck]

Montblanc, on 22 May 2017 - 02:05 PM, said:

And where is Hidden Palace Zone, if its development began before Wood Zone and Genocide City Zone?

Olympus looks like it would've been Hidden Palace Zone.

[TimmiT]

Source

It appears that Digital Dragons usually upload video of the presentations held at their event, so we may see video of this here: https://www.youtube....nsKrakow/videos

This post has been edited by TimmiT: 22 May 2017 - 02:19 PM

[Sparks]

It's crazy to finally see in detail what those plans for time travel in Sonic 2 were meant to be. It's also fantastic to analyze because we can see what ideas stuck early on and what didn't. It paints a very different image of the zones and their relation to each other.

[Montblanc]

DigitalDuck, on 22 May 2017 - 02:13 PM, said:

Montblanc, on 22 May 2017 - 02:05 PM, said:

And where is Hidden Palace Zone, if its development began before Wood Zone and Genocide City Zone?

Olympus looks like it would've been Hidden Palace Zone.

Looking at it again looks like Olympus could be Aquatic Ruin Zone, the past of Chemical Plant Zone. Makes some sense with all that water to release waste. Perhaps the name "Neo" Green Hill Zone was a leftover of the scrapped time travel idea.

Metropolis was a "good" present Zone and not part of a bad timeline. But its place is missing in the ruined present.

And the warp point, that looks like a pyramid... Perhaps that was Hidden Palace? It says that to do a time travel you have to activate something "hidden".

[ultima espio]

It's interesting how the levels are totally different to their other time counterparts, unlike CD. Olympus might have turned into Aquatic Ruin thinking about it, the columns in the map sorta look like the ones in ARZ.

[kazblox]

Strangely, the start of the zone as seen in the original Green Hill Zone 1 sketch looks more close to the final more than it does in the CES presentations, due to the lack of that additional platform with two hills:

Quote

Was this a later sketch or were they experimenting with the level flow?

[XCubed]

The timing on this could not have been any more perfect! I'm wondering what Mania will be incorporating from this.

What a happy day. The Sonic 2 time travel aspect was a theory full of rotten swiss cheese until today. Instead of each Zone having 3 acts and 4 timezones within each, they decided to give each area it's own zone depending on the time....very interesting. Back to work for me....then later my recreation of Green Hill Zone Act 2 music.

Spoiler

If this became reality everyone would say how much cleaner the time travel aspect was done in Sonic CD. We'd have a whole new level of fan base rivalry.

This post has been edited by XCubed: 22 May 2017 - 02:56 PM

[Black Squirrel]

GoldS, on 22 May 2017 - 01:34 PM, said:

Something worth noting is that the level order seems to sorta kinda fit the internal level order in the Simon Wai prototype:

(PRESENT TIME)
00: Emerald Hill (Green Hill)
01: BLANK (Placeholder for Ocean Wind?)
02: Wood
03: BLANK (Placeholder for Sand Shower?)
04: Metropolis
(SONIC GOES BACK IN TIME)
05: Metropolis Act 3 (Already filled in the Rock World slot)
06: BLANK (Placeholder for Tropical Plant?)
07: Hill Top
08: Hidden Palace (Olympus??)
09: BLANK (Placeholder for Blue Lake?)
(SONIC RETURNS TO A RUINED PRESENT)
0A: Oil Ocean
0B: Dust Hill (Same name in stage select, slot already taken by what would be named Mystic Cave)
(SONIC GOES TO THE FUTURE?)
0C: Casino Night
0D: Chemical Plant
0E: Genocide City
0F: Neo Green Hill
10: Death Egg

This is really significant.



Here's an obvious thing we missed - Hill Top Zone. It has dinosaurs and volcanos, and yet I don't think anyone made the connection that it might be Emerald Green Hill Zone in the past.

I have my doubts about Hidden Palace being this "Olympus" stage though - my thinking is it was always meant to be some sort of secret ("hidden") level - something you might find in this so-called "ruined present" where there apparently aren't many other levels.

i.e. it's the future of Olympus. And if it's true that Hidden Palace in Sonic 3 was built on Sonic 2's ideas... maybe that was Olympus. Or maybe they were going to re-do Marble Zone.


Here's two questions:

- Where is mystic cave?
- What are the chances of "blue lake" becoming the Never Lake in Sonic CD?

[DigitalDuck]

Black Squirrel, on 22 May 2017 - 02:55 PM, said:

Here's two questions:

- Where is mystic cave?

Likely a concept invented later, like Sky Chase/Wing Fortress (also not in concept art).

Black Squirrel, on 22 May 2017 - 02:55 PM, said:

- What are the chances of "blue lake" becoming the Never Lake in Sonic CD?

I'd argue it's more likely Blue Lake became Azure Lake, and Dust Hill became Desert Palace. It would surprise me if they didn't reuse the scrapped levels in some form.

[Chainspike]

Black Squirrel, on 22 May 2017 - 02:55 PM, said:

Here's two questions:

- Where is mystic cave?
- What are the chances of "blue lake" becoming the Never Lake in Sonic CD?

It's likely Mystic cave wasn't even a concept yet until it quickly replaced Dust Hill. I was thinking "Blue Lake" was an inspiration for Azure Lake in Sonic 3, but that's just me.

[Ralakimus]

Regarding Mystic Cave, if you look at the Sonic 2 Simon Wai proto, you can see how incomplete it was. The 1992 Tokyo Toy Show, where the proto was shown off, took place in early June 1992. The game was released in November of 1992.

I guess before the toy show, they knew they were running out of time, so they started to come up with other concepts and stuff to replace the old concepts they had, since they wouldn't have the time to properly implement it, so Mystic Cave replaced Dust Hill and they discontinued Hidden Palace and Wood Zone and other crap.

This post has been edited by Ralakimus: 22 May 2017 - 03:11 PM

[DigitalDuck]

ultima espio, on 22 May 2017 - 02:46 PM, said:

It's interesting how the levels are totally different to their other time counterparts, unlike CD. Olympus might have turned into Aquatic Ruin thinking about it, the columns in the map sorta look like the ones in ARZ.

Montblanc, on 22 May 2017 - 02:44 PM, said:

Looking at it again looks like Olympus could be Aquatic Ruin Zone, the past of Chemical Plant Zone. Makes some sense with all that water to release waste. Perhaps the name "Neo" Green Hill Zone was a leftover of the scrapped time travel idea.

I don't think Olympus is Aquatic Ruin precisely because of its position in the data - Aquatic Ruin seems to have been tacked on the end of the list (second to last, before Sky Chase), and certainly isn't where the other zones in its era would be, so it probably postdates this concept (although you're right that the Neo Green Hill Zone would suggest that the time travel concept was still in play).

ultima espio, on 22 May 2017 - 02:46 PM, said:

And the warp point, that looks like a pyramid... Perhaps that was Hidden Palace? It says that to do a time travel you have to activate something "hidden".

Looking at the map again, Rock World Zone is in both the past and the (second) present. If you go around the map clockwise from the warp point, it'd be the last zone in the past, and then probably the first zone in the second present. Hidden Palace Zone was pretty rocky, too.

I've changed my mind, I think Rock World Zone was Hidden Palace.

[JaredAFX]

So from what I'm understanding, the Sonic 2 team also had an idea of time travel (which we knew previously but not to this degree), but instead of going to past/present/future versions of the same stage a la CD, the stages themselves were going to change depending on the era? That's very interesting. THAT'S something I'd like to see implemented (well) in a game today, it doesn't even have to be Sonic (I guess Chrono Trigger kind of already did it. Maybe that's why it's the best game ever )

[Yeow]

This is really incredible stuff. The time-travel stuff is very neat (and arguably opens new boundaries on what we knew before about Sonic 2's dev history), but I'm more intrigued on the pre-Sonic 1 level design sketches. The spiked see-saw is an interesting twist on branching paths, in that you could actually get injured if you're not fast enough to take the lower route. Meanwhile the collapsing log bridge, with the logs rolling down to the hidden gate, is a great example of having the player's interaction with gimmicks allude to the existence of level secrets that are hidden in plain sight. The logs being stacked together in front of the gate also looks like it's blocking access to the gate off, which (if that was the intent, I am not sure) would also be an example of the player's interaction with gimmicks affecting the existing level design / available level routes.

Yasuhara really knows / knew his stuff in terms of keeping the level design interactive and engaging, hopefully he has more sketches of those to share.

This post has been edited by Yeow: 22 May 2017 - 03:33 PM