Sonic Jam commentaries tell all~

OH.SHIT.

 

Ok, to sum up what I think we know about Genocide city:

1- Concept art was released http://info.sonicretro.org/Image:Cybercity_concept.jpg
2- I think I heard some graphics and maybe the pallette was reused in the machine level in sonic spinball.
3- The map layout and level order was the same as Metroplolis city act 3. Originally there would be no Metropolis City act 3, it would be 2 acts, and the 1 level Genocide city would take place after Metropolis City zone act 2.
4- The level layout would probably be similar to the Simon Wai prototype with the unused lift, because that is probably closer to what the original layout was before it was refined.

One thing we don't know is what enemies, or bosses would be placed here. We also don't know the music that would be used.

 

Metroplolis city?



:P

 

;_; I'm never in IRC when cool shit happens.

Anyway, some excellent stuff there. It feels like we're back at the beginning again or something. Once Genocide City looked like it was done with, it almost felt like some magic left the whole Sonic Beta research. But now this - this is good =)

 

Tweaker said this was important to keep pertaining to this topic, it's the level slots. Sonic 2, with the Wai proto in parentheses.

00 = Emerald Hill (Green Hill)
01 = Empty
02 = Empty (Wood)
03 = Empty
04 = Metropolis
05 = Metropolis 2 [Cyber City?]
06 = Wing Fortress
07 = Hill Top
08 = Hidden Palace
09 = Empty
0A = Oil Ocean
0B = Mystic Cave (Dust Hill)
0C = Casino Night
0D = Chemical Plant
0E = Death Egg (Genocide City)
0F = Aquatic Ruin (Neo Green Hill)
10 = Sky Chase (Death Egg)

02:54:25 <GerbilSoft> slot numbers don't really mean anything though.
02:54:28 <MK> Why did they move Death Egg?
02:55:02 <Tweaker> Level slots don't just get moved around like that
02:55:05 <Tweaker> there's a LOT of shit to change

 

Okay, so get this. We have Wood Zone, we have Genocide City. We have Desert Zone. All of these levels have one thing in common: They're scrapped levels in Sonic 2. For one reason or another, they never made the cut, and there's only been speculation as to why. Brenda Ross in particular was crushed to see her work removed, with little explanation as to why. I think I have an idea why, though...

First off, let's start with Genocide City. We all know that, of course, this level was originally called Cyber City Zone, and was to follow a similar theme to The Machine in Sonic Spinball. In other words, it was your generic "Eggman's Base" type level, with your mechanical traps, buzzsaws, tight mechanical chutes, etc. It was scrapped, according to an interview with Tim Skelly by ICEknight, and the level was replaced with a third act of Metropolis Zone. Nothing special. But then we come to this, which I found in the Metropolis Zone article:

Two things to note here. Number one is the fact that this statement has existed for well over 10 years, and it took Tim Skelly to say the same thing in an interview years later—why did nobody ever notice this before? It's right there, plain English and all... Come on, guys, you're slipping. =P

Secondly, you'll notice that Naka says that the map for the Zone was reused, and that they didn't want to waste it, so it became Metropolis Act 3. Meaning, of course, that Metropolis Act 3 is Genocide City Zone! The first act, anyway. Did you ever notice that it had a different feel from the other levels? I'm betting that the map was reused because the levels had such a similar feel. It worked out pretty well, wouldn't you say?

Next, let's focus back on Brenda Ross. Brenda Ross designed, depending on how you view it, from 2 to 3 levels—Desert Zone, Wood Zone, and the Winter Zone which would accompany the Desert Zone. Each of these levels were created and scrapped very early in development for unknown reasons, and she was crushed! Who puts all that time and effort into designing full sets of level art just to get them scrapped?

Well, I think there was a reason behind this; they weren't needed anymore. Yeah, that's clear. But why weren't they needed?

Here's my idea: They were alternate timezones.

Whoa there Tweaker, full stop! Time travel was only a distant concept! They never did anything serious with it! That doesn't make sense.

Well now, hold the phone there! Allow me to explain.

We all know that Time Travel was a proposed concept in the development of Sonic 2. We've got concept art that supports this. The question is, of course, how far did they take it? Was it just something that was proposed and shot down, or was the game designed around it? Were many level concepts meant to be tied together to hold a purpose in the storyline? In fact, might there have been actually been an involved storyline to the game?

Consider the levels that were scrapped. You've got Wood Zone, which appears to draw parallells to Metropolis Zone in level design. You've got tree trunks following similar paths of the teleportation corridors. You've got the level slot in the Wai proto playing the Metropolis Zone music. Eggman's gigantic mechanical city has to be built on top of some sort of foundation—what better than a massive forest, right? Tear down the resources, use them for fuel, and use the land to build your city. What better way is there to make a base?

You know something else about Wood Zone? A few years back, saxman reported an oddity with one of the Pattern Load Cue definitions for Wood Zone. Specifically, it was explicitly telling the game to load the Tails life icon, and not the Sonic life icon, which was the standard for the other levels. He suggested that it may have been some sort of preliminary pattern load cue that would have loaded something like a timezone icon, similar to Sonic CD. It was initially disregarded, but think about it—doesn't it make a bit more sense given the surrounding details? I think it does.

Back to the other levels. You've got Genocide City Zone, which is another one of Eggman's massive bases. It's got your buzzsaws, your tube gimmicks, your slopes, your run-the-fuck-away-while-Eggman-sends-massive-armies-of-badniks-after-you, and what have you. It plays Chemical Plant's music. Wouldn't it make sense to build another base off an Energy Plant? It's got all the resources you need to maintain a massive base—and, after all, the more land you've got established, the easier it is to take over the planet. It would, indeed, be an ideal place to build another Cybernetic City!

On a side note, I'm starting to think that "Genocide City" was a joke name thought up by the developers, because all that level ever ended up being was Sonic falling to his death. Hey, programmers can make funnies too! Besides that, the name "Genocide City" doesn't seem to be familiar among any of the level designers. I'm not making any outright claims in that regard, but perhaps it's food for thought. =P

Now we circle back to Desert Zone. Based on the concepts we've got, this was likely meant to be its own original Zone rather than a timezone of another existing Zone. In fact, the Desert Zone had its own alternate timezone: Rock Zone! Rock Zone was meant to be the past of Desert Zone, in which many different gameplay aspects would change. It'd have a prehistoric feel, likely meant to depict the land before years of decay and corrosion turned all the solid rocks into sand. However, both the Desert and Rock Zone concepts were canned pretty early on.

Still, do you really think the concept of time travel was shallow enough that it only covered the Desert Zone? And do you really think these levels were scrapped without purpose? I don't think so. I think that, once, Sonic 2 was planned around this time travel storyline. I think that once that concept went down the drain, levels related to that concept started getting canned slowly but surely, until they were all gone. And I think that's why Metropolis Zone got a 3rd act—because now there wasn't an alternate timezone to place that level data in. No need to make the game shorter, right? Recycle that layout, just like you'd later recycle the Hidden Palace concept!

And you know what else? I think that once the time travel concept was initially dropped from Sonic 2, Ohshima wanted to see it live, so development on Sonic CD started. The parallels between Sonic 2 and Sonic CD, indeed, may be much more relevant than we once thought they were.



Something else I want to do here is mention Hidden Palace Zone. We've had conflicting stories about why Hidden Palace was scrapped, and what purpose it had. Let's cover a few common misconceptions in list form thusly:

Myth: Hidden Palace was scrapped due to a lack of space.
Truth: Hidden Palace was scrapped due to a lack of time available to finish the level to the extents that they wanted it completed.

There have been various testimonies that there was a lack of space on the cart to fit Hidden Palace along with everything else, and that, as a result, the game was scrapped. This is bullshit. With the recent acquisition of drx's set of internal SEGA prototypes, we've been given a much clearer, much broader look at Sonic 2's development. These betas spanned from roughly two weeks before the game's final build date up to its final compilation. As we can see, drastic changes have been made during this very short period of development time. Hidden Palace was wiped (though its objects remained), levels were renamed, the new title screen was put in, serious game-breaking bugs were fixed, a new level select was programmed, among other things. And even after the game was released, there were at least two more revisions to fix existing bugs!

If there's anything we can gather, it's that Sonic 2 was rushed. "Sonic 2sday" was advertised in all of Sonic 2's marketing items promising a release date without any intention of changing it. A delay could be a serious dent in SEGA's reputation, and there was no time to mess around. The development team was put under immense pressure to get the game out on time.

Hidden Palace was a level which had a significant purpose in the storyline. Which ties into our next myth--

Myth: Hidden Palace was meant to be a normal level without any specific purpose.
Truth: Hidden Palace was the level in which Sonic was originally meant to gain his Super Sonic powers.

Yuji Naka himself stated in an interview that this was the purpose behind Hidden Palace Zone. The team had full intentions of including this level within the roster, and it was definitely scrapped for different reasons (and reluctantly, mind you) than the other zones. I mean, Hidden Palace had nothing to do with the time travel concept—why get rid of it?

With this strict deadline and heavy ambitions for this zone, there was clearly a clash—nobody wanted to get rid of Hidden Palace, but at the time they really had no choice. In this sense, Sonic 2 is an incomplete game—there were many concepts they wanted to include, but ultimately could not due to a lack of time available to do so. I believe that Sonic 2 could have been vastly different if given more development time, in this sense. For the better? I'm not sure; if these concepts weren't canned, Sonic CD may not have ever been created, at least not exactly as it was today. And we all know that Sonic CD has a feel to it that has never been replicated in any Sonic game. It's very unique, and receives high amounts of praise for that.

Hidden Palace was a great concept. The Chaos Emeralds have always had a deeper purpose in the Sonic canon, as they've always been very mysterious and widely based around legend. Nobody knew what they did—exploring their deeper purpose in a level like Hidden Palace would have been an excellent touch on the part of the developers. This is why the concept was reused in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. It's remained a staple of the series ever since!



Many have boldly claimed we know everything there is to know about Sonic 2. In reality, I don't think we've even scratched the surface. There will always be "facts" that we need to review, because as more information comes in and more developments are made, they tend to completely disregard everything that we've accepted as true for years. This is one of those times.

 

And suddenly, Shade's crazy time travel theories hold credibility.

Called it.


Anyway, as I've been saying for quite some time now, I've always believed Wood Zone to be evidence of planned time travel. For one, it has that temporary "one word" name that other time travel concept zones held (rock, desert, etc), as well as painfully obvious placeholder art. One of the earliest and most incomplete Sonic 2 levels, and one of the earliest to be trashed; they obviously threw time travel out the door more or less from the get go.

I've also always theorized that "Genocide City" would have been another time zone of "Cyber City", seeing as how the levels are apparently, more or less, one in the same (as the concept art showed us). Just a personal hunch of mine, given the evidence. I have nothing so substantial to back it up outright.



basically what this all comes down to is god damn we rock.

 

If Metropolis 3 is Genocide City...Why not just change it's graphics? Then again, Metropolis wouldn't have a boss, but neither does knuckles in s3k's hidden palace. Graphics can't be that hard (It is sega, atleast when they were good). They never really focused on it, (Example broken tiles, esp. in ehz) The thing is they have a lot of 1 act zones only, Metropolis 3 (Judging this is GCZ), Hidden Palace, Wood Zone(Don't know about this one).

Maybe time travel was intended, but why wait until sonic CD? They could have done it in s3k. As for Desert Zone, I'm starting to think that hoax/concept was real, HPZ's is pretty darn close, and the Emerald Hill one is almost identical (Next to the layout, just mean graphics wise, and this one WAS off centered). What about the 'electrocution' that was 'supposed' to happen? I'm thinking sonic could have been zapped and thrown into another time zone(?).

Sonic 2 was really an early sonic CD...If they had applied all their ideas sonic 2 would have owned. Sega should really focus on Quality over release date. I'm pretty sure they were planning that for Sonic Unleashed, but they leaked and had to announce it. (Ohshit)

 

I guess I forgot to mention this, sort of on topic of new discoveries. This is also a comment from the Sonic Jam strategy guide:

"At first this stage was set to appear about after Zone 10. Although there would be fewer Acts this time, we thought having about 18 zones would be good, but having each zone stand out and fit in the story in a way that was easy to follow, in the end it dropped down to 11 zones, and Chemical Plant was placed as the second stage. In the end it was a success (laughs)"

So there are 11 zones in final, we know of these scrapped levels:
Hidden Palace Zone
Wood Zone
Genocide City Zone
Desert Zone
Winter level
Rock Zone

So, that leaves out one undocumented scrapped level. But maybe he could have been counting the special stage as a Zone too, who knows. But I thought I'd post this anyway.

 

Pretty sure he's referring to Genocide City, since it's rather redundant outside of a time travel-based storyline.

 

This is probably a stupid question, I'm committing a big no-no in not going through and researching the sites, but it is 3 a.m. and I'm tired and can't be assed into checking, but along the same lines, could Hill Top Zone/Emerald Hill Zone be evidence of some sort of time travel? Maybe an ice age wore Hill Top Zone down or something to EHZ, or after years, maybe continents crashed together, pushed up a bunch of hills and mountains and shit. and turned EHZ into HTZ. They have roughly the same art, with a few alterations an a different background in there. *shrugs* Feel free to tell me I'm full of shit/there's an alternate explanation. Its just one thing that came to mind.

 

I like how when I brought this up before everyone went, "No, that's not true, Naka was just saying what we wanted to hear. Nothing special was in that zone..."

and now everyone believes. I hate it when no one listens to me. And I thought we all ready knew that time travel was going to be in Sonic 2. Seriously, this is nothing new. I don't know why everyone is spazzing about it... the only new thing is:

Interesting about MZ3 being Genocide City though. That's pretty freaking awesome right there.

 

Meanwhile this has been in the wiki for yonkers and no one even pointed it out :P

But yeah, finally someone pointed it out.

 

Okay I think I get it. These were theories before but we never had the 100% evidence and now we do. Got it... still, god when Tweaker IMed me, the way he was acting I thought we found a Sonic 1 beta =P

 

More food for thought:

Makes sense, what with MZ3 being Cyber/Genocide City and all, which would thusly be a single act, and presumably the act preceeding sky chase > Wing Fortress etc etc

 

Well one thing I'm glad about is this'll put an end to all those ridiculous Genocide City Zone theories about things blowing up, ghosts, people dying and Tails getting shot in the face and all that.

I wonder if anyone is going to put The Machine's graphics in Metropolis Zone act 3.

 

Wow. I always had a theory thanks to similarities that Sonic CD more or less existed because of the shit cut from Sonic 2, but since stuff like that has always been disregarded as retardation, I dropped the idea when I was like 13 years old in favour of keeping my mouth shut. These are some pretty amazing revelations up in here.

 

When I played Sonic 2, I always felt something was not right. Apart from the incoplete feel he had (And now I know why), the thing that bugged me more was how some subsequent Zones were amazingly different (Take Sonic 1, even if the Zone order was changed during the making, Zones had still some sort of continuity). Sonic 2 it's the first game in the Sonic series that was rushed, and I'm so sad with the fact that, if completed, it may have truly been the greatest Sonic game, if not the greatest game of all time.

I'm happy to hear that, maybe, the old Sonic 2 concept was used for Sonic CD, because now I know why that game is special.

But nothing will change the truth; Sonic The Hedgehog 2 will allways be an incomplete game.
But today, we have the ability to RomHack, and I'm sure that one day someone will finally complete it, right how the game should truly have been.