She said in her interview that she may not be remembering correctly, and yes, Dust Hill IS playable in the beta, as Mystic Cave Zone. The desert level (which was never called Dust Hill Zone) was scrapped early in the development process, before our beta ROM, so we don't know much about it at all, except for what we've seen in the concept art. Simply put, there is no desert level to be found anywhere. Dust Hill only exists as Mystic Cave in our beta ROM, and later betas as well, as seen in screenshots. This battle has been fought in other topics, and this was the conclusion.
I'm gonna try this, I have a friend who worked for a game mag in the early 90's I'm gonna ask if he has a sonic 2 beta cartridge and check it out, maybe it's a more early or later beta, if he has one, I don't think he does.
Well, there is no evidence of anything on this level. But from the interview of Brenda Ross, she said that she made the desert level. Even though there's really nothing about this level, it's created but never released to public. There is no prove of why Dust Hill is canned. But for sure there's no supporting details of saying that Dust Hill didn't exist.
There is only proof that dust hill was renamed, but there is a theory that is wasn't. For now, there was no dust hill zone. Only mysic caves. And don't bump topics that are age old! :P
Heh I don't remember any proof it saying it was renamed (I could be wrong), just that they had a working name being "The Desert Zone" and the planned in-game name being "Dust Hill". Thanks to Wetflame we now know Brenda Ross' memory is intact :P Anyway appleby read all of http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=3179 for more up to date info, this topic is a bit outdated now.
the desert zone was never a working title. It was an unnoficial name created by IceKnight to be used instead of Dust Hill.
Yeah and Brenda Ross was the one drawing the art. She was the one working on it, so I called it a working name, because that's what a working name is in my opinion.
She said something in between that though, I think, as I cut the interview down quite a bit, but the answer was indeed "Yes" in some #form#.
No, I'm fairly sure that it's more important to know the fact that she had always called it the desert zone or desert level, until she started getting news from teh community. =| Also, Tim Skelly said the level artists were just given generic names and descriptions, something that explains the above statement. Any chances of releasing the uncensored version? Why was there a need to cut anything, anyway?
It as pretty long, and I had to remove some stuff at Brenda's request. I I still have the interview, I'll try to find it. Keep in mind, some of the time is actually a bit messed up =P Because I talk too fast, so I also attempted to correct things in one or two places because of that.