[Tenniru]

In the past few years, with new material, protos, and interviews coming out, we've got a much clearer look at what Sonic 2 could have been had there been more production time. It seems like had it all been done, it would've been huge. Now, at one point I read this post by Tweaker in the topic about Sonic Jam's liner notes:

Quote

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.

This just got me thinking; if Sonic 2, one of the greatest games in history, was incomplete, how good would it have been "done"? What if it was relative to an imaginary Sonic 2 Awesome Edition what Sonic 2006 was relative to, say, Sonic Adventure? Or, in a bit less extreme metaphor (and more realistic), what game could have been to Sonic 2 what Sonic 3 and Knuckles was to Sonic 3?

I'm basically wondering, first: exactly what to we KNOW was planned to be in the game, and cut?

I'll start off with basic bells and whistles:
-When Sonic dies and falls down the screen, the camera follows him.
-The snail enemy.
-The door in Aquatic Ruins, presumably dropping in front of you to be spindashed through.
-Turtle animals. I guess they would have fallen from other enemies than in Sky Chase.
-An icon for HPZ.
-The rotating platform in Wing Fortress had a laser shooting through it.
-Mystic Cave zone had a weird platform that swung around depending on where you stood. It's made of rings, which makes me think that there were going to be other graphics that weren't done.
-Spinny pole thing in WFZ.
-A monitor that has nothing in it.
-A croc badnik.

Levels:

According to Sonic Jam, there were to be 18 levels. So let's start with our 11, and go on:

-Hidden Palace. One-act after getting chaos emeralds.
-Genocide/Cyber City. Took the place of Metropolis 3, same layout, different graphics (possibly with CPZ pallette?).
-Wood Zone. Presumably a "past" version of Metropolis' first two acts.
*-Desert Zone. No idea. Crocodile badnik was in there.
*-Winter Zone. No idea.
*-Rock Zone. No idea.

*Probably time travel of the same thing?

This gives us 17, one short of what Jam claims existed. What is #18? Did they get confused and it's just the Special Stage? That's really all I can think of that doesn't enter the realm of speculation.

So we have those bells and whistles, and six more zones. I almost want to say there would need to be a save function, but in that ancient day of awesome gamers I think it could've been survivable (especially since HPZ was supposed to be a quick one-off, Cyber City is technically already there in disguise, and Wood Zone just runs parallel, so it's not really LONGER except for the desert/winter/rock trio). After all, people could play SMB3 all the way through in those days. Also, the fact that you keep your emeralds after you beat the game means to me that this was the extent of it.

So, is anything I mentioned actually wrong? Did I miss anything? I'd like to understand exactly what this could have been.

[Hybrid Project Alpha]

Really the only level that "could have been" was Hidden Palace. The others were cut very early in production, some not even started.

[Master3k]

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*-Desert Zone. No idea. Crocodile badnik was in there.

I don't think that screen was a level being played in-game.

[Tweaker]

Master3k, on Jul 12 2008, 11:04 PM, said:

Quote

*-Desert Zone. No idea. Crocodile badnik was in there.

I don't think that screen was a level being played in-game.

No, it wasn't. But it was a level in the conceptual stages, which is something you can't really argue against.

I've already stated my views on this general subject (as you've nicely pointed out =P), but what I will say is that Sonic 2 was very rushed. Seriously—the title screen change was last minute, the level select change was last minute, Super Sonic was last minute, removing Hidden Palace was last minute... the list goes on! I don't think there's a single Sonic game that hasn't been rushed in one form or another.

When it comes to other concepts that could have been in the game, I think we're overlooking the fact that the special stages were originally meant to have full 360 loops, rather than just curves going in either direction. It would have been pretty interesting, and made the Special Stage a bit more complex and fun to play through.

[SegaLoco]

Tenniru, on Jul 12 2008, 09:45 PM, said:

-When Sonic dies and falls down the screen, the camera follows him.

Wasn't this just a glitch that happened in one of the Feb 23 proto's. I doubt they were planning to actually add that to the game.

Edit: Sorry, I heard someone say it was, I guess I never checked back to see if it was wrong or not.

This post has been edited by SegaLoco: 12 July 2008 - 11:08 PM

[Tweaker]

SegaLoco, on Jul 12 2008, 11:57 PM, said:

Wasn't this just a glitch that happened in one of the Feb 23 protos?

No. That was fully intentional behavior that they simply decided they didn't want to keep and reverted later.

What gives you the idea that a scrapped feature is a "glitch"? Is the wall recoil in the Nick Arcade proto a glitch because they removed it? Come on now, use your common sense.

[Metal Man88]

The added features would have probably given it a more full feeling. Playing it all the way through as it is now, it feels a tad incomplete—not because I know of the other things, but simply that it feels like it could be longer. Whereas Sonic 3 and Knuckles and Sonic 1 and Sonic CD give a more 'full' feeling by comparison.

But it'd probably have all been gravy, as Hidden Palace was never seemingly super complex; Cyber City was so like Metropolis it wouldn't have been very 'new' and the other zones I can't really presume much on.

But there's the thing—if it isn't rushed in some way, then it isn't like the average Sonic game...

[Aquaslash]

The thing I wonder about is what the music would have been like for those zones. HPZ's was in game, but what kind of tunes might have been in the others? There's almost enough vs tunes to go around but not quite.

Also, you forgot the auto Super Sonic transformation.

[Maxd]

Aquaslash - music brings up a very good point with me. If you play the Oil Ocean levels, snake charmer kind of music plays occasionally. I'm thinking desert zone. Just a thought.

EDIT: Another thought: isn't most of our oil from -I'm stupid-desert-I'm stupid- like places in the Middle East? Putting two and two together.

This post has been edited by ADHD positive Kiki: 14 July 2008 - 04:56 PM

[DistroyA]

Metal Man88, on Jul 13 2008, 07:01 AM, said:

The added features would have probably given it a more full feeling. Playing it all the way through as it is now, it feels a tad incomplete—not because I know of the other things, but simply that it feels like it could be longer. Whereas Sonic 3 and Knuckles and Sonic 1 and Sonic CD give a more 'full' feeling by comparison.

I have to agree with you there on the completeness of Sonic 2. I've ALWAYS felt there was something not quite right about the game, and you've just hit the nail on the head there. It needed that bit more added to it, just to make it shine a bit more. The extra levels might have made the game feel a lot better than it does now. But I guess we'll never know now...
Yeah, it's an awesome game, but there are things that really spoil the game for me, and couple of them are zones; Hill Top and Metropolis, although the latter zone's saving grace is the funky ass tune to accompany it.

Aquaslash, on Jul 14 2008, 12:07 AM, said:

Also, you forgot the auto Super Sonic transformation.

This is the other thing that pisses me off concerning Sonic 2. I love Super Sonic, but having to keep rings under 50 just so I don't risk fucking up at super speed after jumping once is a fucking pain. I noticed this the other night whilst playing through the whole of it. Thankfully, Super Sonic managed to save me the trouble of skipping a fuck load on Hill Top, but it was a real pain on Wing Fortress. Double jumping should have been implemented in this game for the Super Sonic transformation, to save people fucking up due to bad implementation of the transformation.

[Tenniru]

Hmm, I've never experienced a problem with a sudden Super Sonic transformation during the game. Then again, I never managed to even get 50 rings and 7 emeralds at a time during Wing Fortress, so I can imagine the platform-to-platform-over-a-death-pit sections turning ugly if Sonic suddenly freaked out and flung himself to his doom.

You know, it'd be kind of cool of Sonic 2 HD did something like this; re-incorporated the lost bells and whistles, renamed Metropolis 3 as Cyber City and maybe changed the graphics to a CPZ-esque thing, Hidden Palace, maybe even Wood Zone as a past Metropolis 1+2 (just duplicate the layout). (I guess Winter/Desert/Rock Zone would need a few too many artistic liberties to incorporate, though.) That would really put that Sonic 1 GBA port to even further shame.

[Mirai]

ADHD positive Kiki, on Jul 14 2008, 02:14 AM, said:

Aquaslash - music brings up a very good point with me. If you play the Oil Ocean levels, snake charmer kind of music plays occasionally. I'm thinking desert zone. Just a thought.

You know youve just reminded me of when I was a small kid and played sonic 2 in oil ocean zone.
I always used to think when I was playin that level, that the music always had a sort of desert, eerie theme, and the background with the large sun made me think even then if there was gonna be a desert kind of level in act 2 or sumthin.

[Ollie]

Tenniru, on Jul 13 2008, 03:45 AM, said:

-Turtle animals. I guess they would have fallen from other enemies than in Sky Chase.

If you mean the flickies walking animation, correct me if I am wrong but I thought it was in the final, just really hard to view it.

[Qjimbo]

Tweaker, on Jul 13 2008, 04:11 AM, said:

I will say is that Sonic 2 was very rushed. Seriously—the title screen change was last minute, the level select change was last minute, Super Sonic was last minute, removing Hidden Palace was last minute... the list goes on! I don't think there's a single Sonic game that hasn't been rushed in one form or another.

It might not be as rushed as you think. For example I don't believe for a second that that title screen was created at the last second per say. I'm sure it was just done and just sitting around for a while before it was put in as it wasn't priority. Super Sonic's code may also have been created in a seperate fork quietly, but not added as things were still being done to check general bugs, though I could be wrong here. As for HPZ, that was probably canned early on, just only got removed when they started optimizing the ROM, which is a final process before release.

[Squints]

ojdon, on Jul 14 2008, 08:49 AM, said:

Tenniru, on Jul 13 2008, 03:45 AM, said:

-Turtle animals. I guess they would have fallen from other enemies than in Sky Chase.

If you mean the flickies walking animation, correct me if I am wrong but I thought it was in the final, just really hard to view it.

I don't think it's actually possible to see during normal gameplay, because the enemies that drop turtle animals when beaten only exist in Sky Chase, and in Sky Chase there's no ground for the animals to land on, so they stay in their falling pose.