Man, all this R2 talk makes me want to see R2 level assets and props even more. I always imagined R2 to have magma or something. But yeah, in the clip there is sand under the stone tiles, perhaps there were exterior desert like areas and interior ruin areas like Quartz Quadrant's double environment?
I never thought of that as sand. It does look like it though, but it's grey and don't match up with the Sonic CD PC map, which uses standard yellow sand. There's rainbow waterfalls though so that would mean the level has portions or the entire level takes place around an oasis. But the background in the concept art don't match up with a desert, you can clearly see mountains.
The ending cutscene would have been mostly finalised well before most of the in-game graphics were done - extracting precise details from it probably isn't a good idea (for example, Collision Chaos is given a very abstract look, Tidal Tempest doesn't get any representation to speak of, etc.). Hell in the beginning Sonic and Amy run away from a city with collapsing structures and floors - that's not really in the final game either. There's nothing to say that it doesn't depict R2, but to me it looks as if they were just showcasing badnik ideas.
But why would they create a level called METAL madness if there were floors made of stone and sand? The metal themed levels before it (Spring Yard, Star Light, Scrap Brain) used Metal floors and didn't even have Metal in the name.
Both Star Light and Scrap Brain have collapsing floors but idk concepts change and names tend to come after the level themes have been put in place. I'd just be hesitent to take a weird cutscene built by a separate studio too seriously when trying to decipher lost levels - one of the main things it shows is Sonic racing against Metal Sonic in Stardust Speedway present (something which can't happen), which might suggest it even pre-dates time travel (that key element of Sonic CD that isn't mentioned in any cutscene at all) I'm not saying it's not R2, but that there's no way to be certain that it is
The concept art shows a ruins level, and the area in the cutscene clearly looks like a ruins area. I dunno why they would put 2 ruins areas in the same game. With only 8 levels I don't think they should be reusing themes. Metal Madness don't remind me of a ruins area at all. There are trees and shrubs maybe but that don't mean vines and moss evolved into it.
It is important to note that on the ending when the columns collapse, it shows water on the ground. Metallic Madness has a strong connection to Scrap Brain... look at SBz act 3... Maybe R2 would be what SB3 was meant to be, but was not made due to time issues in Sonic 1?
It was a parallel to Marble Zone. This is pretty obvious. When R2 got killed, bits of it were spread across all the levels. I don't remember the specifics, but some of them stick out when you examine the levels.
like this ? Scroll down to post 80 ( keep in mind this was posted before that rainbow concept art was known) http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=11471&st=75
Bingo. It's not terribly different to how Sonic 2's scrapped levels found life in future games (HPZ Rock art in Sonic Spinball, as well as Cyber City entirely, then we have Sonic 3 with nods all over the place to unused stages. Ice Cap has some of HPZ's elements redone, for example.) Except in this case, the level was killed so early on, bits of it could be sneaked in across other parts of the game
Not so fast, Tidal Tempest IS a parallel to marble zone too. The point is: when R2 existed (pure Marble Zone), R3 was very different (pure Labyrinth Zone) (scrapped Lz badniks say hello). Current Tidal Tempest is (Labirynth+Marble).
I wonder if that explains that strange blue fire object that pushes you. That one object just always seemed so strange to me.
Ahh man, good catch! Totally think so too! especially with the leaked R2 sprite resembling the LZ badnick. This leads to a question for Taxman, How did you find the badnic zone assignments , were they in folders labeled R2 ? or did someone working on the original CD spill the beans?
So this game won Windows phone game of the year and Sega won best publisher in the Pocket Gamer awards. Great job on this port again dude. And hopefully this is a wake up call for Sega, we like good classic Sonic games.
Bumping for sonicblur's discovery of level layouts for Taxman's original stages Desert Dazzle and Final Fever:
The strange thing is that the Android version of Sonic CD released in 2011 and the one released in January 2014 is still 1.0.6. That's weird. I'll make a gameplay video if possible.