Hirokazu Yasuhara revealing all kinds of Sonic development stuff

Just when you think everything relating to this game has been shown

Quick question: How was all this supposed to work? Five different time zones don't sound like they'd fit on a Megadrive or MegaCD game.

 

EDIT: Woops, completely forgot that this was story based time travel, rendering your post wrong. But my stance on keeping the big games out of CD's and within cartridges still stands.

ROM banking of course! Have you seen the cartridge hardware for the Mega Drive port of Super Street Fighter II? :P

EDIT: In regards to that it may not even fit on the Sega CD, therefore my suggestion being wacky: Having the game on cartridge would be easier in fact, because you wouldn't need to load a bunch of unnecessary duplicates, which Sonic Team horribly managed to deal with on Sonic CD. There's a file for each zone and each level, with a bunch of copied code and art everywhere. Overall, it's a mess that you would not want to touch.

Meanwhile, on cartridge, you can minimize the amount of code and art needed to a very small minimum, therefore giving you enough space.

 

Time travel looks like to be linear rather than dynamic as it is in Sonic CD.

 

Is it worthy of note that the domes on the islands resemble an unused background from the Sonic Level Creator?

 

The two versions of Sonic 2 didn't really have much to do with each other, though. I would be surprised if anything from Sonic 2 8-bit came from the original plan for the 16-bit game.

The two version of Sonic 1, however, were much more closely linked. Could Bridge Zone, Jungle Zone, and Sky Base Zone have been concepts for the original Sonic 1, and dropped from the 16-bit game? We're assuming they recycle unused level ideas, so it would make sense to me that:
Ocean Wind Zone may have been based on the original Bridge Zone concept
Tropical Plant Zone may have been based on the original Jungle Zone concept
Genocide City Zone may have been based on the original Sky Base Zone concept

Probably complete rubbish, but it's a thought.

That's not really how it works here; the time travel is story-based, so it's essentially just 18-ish zones. S3K had 12 full zones with different background art and music for each act, as well as Hidden Palace and Doomsday, so it seems feasible that 18 zones would fit if they didn't have different background art and music for each act, especially when we know that some of them reuse art.

 

Speaking of the internal zone order of Simon Wai, when you load up zone 03 (which is what the Desert zone would've occupied) in game it plays Oil Ocean's BGM.

Listen to the BGM again while looking at this:


Yeah...did anyone point that out before? This would mean that Oil Ocean's music was originally meant for Sand Shower Zone the whole time.

Coincidentally that would also explain why Oil Ocean in the prototype uses Casino Night's 2P VS track. If the Mystic Cave 2P VS track was supposed to be for Hidden Palace Zone the entire time, then what other 2P VS tracks were meant for cut zones?

Zone 01 (Ocean Wind Zone) is still using Emerald Hill's music as well as the palette data when loaded, oddly enough.

 

It was pointed out about a decade or so ago by Ayla when she was researching the prototype. It seemed to be forgotten until recently when I had made my joke hack and shoved DHZ art into the slot.

As far as the 2 pl music, S2 proto researchers have concluded that all the tracks were intended for whatever level they were in during the Wai proto as there was no secondary playlist for 2 pl mode in the build. Last minute cuts scrambled the music and shafted levels had their music reused for 2 pl modes.

Secondly, by purely studying some of the tracks, one can pinpoint it's creation during development. IIRC, I'd have to recheck my notes, but 3 of the 4 Two player tracks used nothing other than the drum samples that were available during the time when S1's driver was being used. Though it could be conjecture, but the fact that all the other tracks can't be used without adding new drum samples to the S1 driver, it is entirely possible this theory could be true, now with the recent evidence.

 

Ever since the time travel concept was revealed to have been planned for Sonic 2, I've felt that EHZ <> HTZ was the most obvious candidate for being the same place in separate times. Not only for using the same graphics, but also for the prehistoric feel of HTZ. Nice to get confirmation at last.

To the people saying "Where's HPZ?", remember that the zone was supposed to be separate from the rest, being a secret level accessible only when you get all Chaos Emeralds. That may be why they didn't include it in that concept art, especially if the purpose was showing the level order.

And I honestly don't see where this speculation that time travel was tied to HPZ and the Chaos Emeralds comes from. It make no sense, seeing how it was supposed to be an optional level you could only get to via the Emeralds. You think Sonic Team would have forced players to collect them to advance the story? And why would they conceive Super Sonic, who was supposed to be a bonus reward for getting them all, if collecting them was mandatory?

I doubt it. According to the guy who produced the art for HPZ, the level's concept was an underground palace like its name suggests, rather than a cave. However, he mistakenly drew it as a cave as a result of poor communication steeming from the language barrier.

Not only that, but Yasuhara confirmed it as well:
http://info.sonicretro.org/Dust_Hill_Zone#Mystic_Cave_connection

Probably. This is supported not only by Emerald Hill's original name, but also the fact that the 8-bit version of Sonic 2 does take place on South Island. It's likely a remnant of the early Sonic 2 story, just like the 8-bit title screen is a remnant of the early 16-bit title screen as seen in the prototypes.

Huh? I'm pretty sure track 10 is the intended BGM for HPZ. Where are you getting all this from?

 

I wonder if Olympus was even a level? It's in a circle rather than a box like all the levels, and it doesn't say Zone on it. Seems like that's implying something, but I have no idea what.

 

To save everybody from "taco neck syndrome", I've kinda de-angled the images a bit.

Not the best repositioning I've done, but have at it, peeps:

 

It's so nuts to see Yasuhara and Oshima so almost casually dropping this stuff on us out of the blue. As if they didn't even know there was a large amount of people that would lose their minds over this kind of thing lol.

 

BGM 10 is not the intended track and wasn't until after the Wai proto. I'm too lazy to pull up and hunt down old interviews, but I remember Naka or Oshima had mentioned that HPZ was short due to the fact that it was supposed to be a cutscene level. BGM 10 was supposed to play when the actual cutscene started, which showcased Sonic ability to go Super. The level itself had been set to use what we know as the MCZ 2P music as it's bgm. It's more fitting, and actually loops properly =V

 

Is this the interview you're talking about?
http://info.sonicretro.org/Yuji_Naka_interview_by_GameSpy_(September_2005)

That's the only Naka interview in the wiki mentioning HPZ, and he says nothing about the BGM. None of the Oshima interviews there mention it. I couldn't find any other HPZ-related interviews mentioning the track via Google either. Perhaps you're misremembering?

And I don't really see how a nostalgic-sounding track fits an ancient, forgotten place like HPZ any less than the MCZ 2P theme :v:

 

Really amazing to see all this! I wonder if Dust Hill Zone being the bad present of Green Hill Zone would explain the reuse of the clouds. I wonder if they were actually planning to reuse GHZ.

Also the first thing that came to my mind with Olympus:

 

It looks to me like not every time period's stage has a counterpart. So while Hill Top is clearly Emerald hill in the past, Oil Ocean and Ocean Wind Zone are two different places that happen to be near each other.

 

Of course when I say Mystic Cave is Dust Hill, I don't mean that Dust Hill was ever a cave stage. The name wouldn't make any sense!

What I mean is, Dust Hill was originally a "bad future" version of Green Hill, and was eventually replaced with Mystic Cave later in development. Dust Hill was never the desert stage.

Sand Shower is the desert stage. It is the present counterpart to Rock World, which lines up with the description for the "Banper" enemy we've had since 2005.

"Winter Hill" was a name Esrael made up for his Sonic 2 Delta hack. Blue Lake could be the winter stage for all we know.

 

Wait, that cannot be. Brenda Ross literally confirmed the mockup was Dust Hill when explaining the way the zone would have a winter variant back in the 2001 interview. Here's the part I am talking about. "The desert zone was as you see in that image, with cactus and assorted plants..." The image obviously refers to the mockup, mentioned at the beginning of the interview.

 

These new pictures A are from a really early point in time. Zone names changed and new zone concepts were added after that. Sand Shower's name was probably just changed to Dust Hill at some point.

 

Okay, I'll bite.

These production sketches were drawn way back in 1992. (Or maybe... 1991!?) Interviews done 10+ years down the line, be it with Brenda Ross or Yasuhara himself, aren't nearly as trustworthy of a source.