Yes most of us are aware that Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles have a lot in common with the lost levels from Sonic 2. I think it's also where "Tails was the Guardian of the Master Emerald" started.
On topic on missing Sonic 2 levels, thought about Genocide City lately? - the level title's there (as is Dust Hill's) - its background uses grabled lines borrowed from another level - it doesn't have its own palette It looks no different from any mystery level slots...except for actually having a name and a stage select slot, that is...yet nobody ever (publically) doubted it was actually an intended level, especially ever since ICEknight or whoever got ahold of those sketches. I'll say again, those messy slots in Wai's beta are scrapped levels. Maybe you should be nagging the artists about those, rather than trying to confirm stuff you already know. =P And yeah, Wood Zone is Metropolis' past. Because I'm always right *shot*
Don't we have some concept art of this level already? That it looked like The Machine in Sonic Spinball. At least Wood zone has those "tubes" that look a lot like Metropolis' but in wood version. The day Tails was created =P
Well, looking back at this, I think what he's trying to say is that since GCZ has its own level slot as well, that it might also have had art for the stage completed (in Genesis format), even if the stage wasn't really in a playable condition. Similarly, it would seem, given what we know now, that DHZ had complete art but not a layout and thus got a level slot. At some point both levels were scrapped but nobody bothered to delete the leftovers in the level select.
I'm saying those nameless levels also had their art (concept or pixel) worked on, like Genocide City or Dust Hill. It also has a conveyor belt and Metropolis music and a pretty accurate layout to a part of Metropolis 1, but that's beside the point.
Wait... didn't a quote by Yasuhara say that Genocide City never had its own set of art, and the level layout they did for it ended up becoming Metropolis Act 3? Should be somewhere in the Metropolis Zone article.
Who said a level layout needed to be digital? They could have drawn a sketch with the basic stage design—remember the Cyber City mockup? General jist of the level, but no pixel art to associate with it.
Metropolis had Act 3 before they had even changed the name of Emerald Hill from Green Hill and they still had the older artwork for Casino Night. I had a thought last night wondering if what we've seen in these prototypes is only half the story. After looking over what we have for prototypes it seems the code wasn't put to cartridge for testing but for showing off. It seems we have the Nick Arcade beta (for Nick arcade obviously), Wai's beta (which appears to be the one a lot of the press received info on) and a load of QA prototypes leading up to the release. Do we know what they used to develop the game hardware wise? I ask because they must have been testing the code they were writing fairly regularly but it seems they'd be doing it without committing to a cart.
Hehe... do we really know that for sure? =P After all, if we've learned anything from this incident, it's that a level select screen isn't anything credible to base level names on. How do we know that, say, Neo Green Hill didn't stand for Emerald Hill Zone, and that Green Hill Zone wasn't referring to the actual Green Hill from Sonic 1 that was being used for testing purposes? After all, Emerald Hill is sure as hell more of a "Neo Green Hill" than Aquatic Ruin is! I think there's two things we need to find out here: - The significance of "Genocide City" (was it a joke spoof of Cyber City? A rename? Details!) - The significance of "Neo Green Hill" (was it a misplaced name for Emerald Hill, a old name for Aquatic Ruin, or something else entirely?) That's what's on my mind here at the moment. I don't think they would really call the first level the same thing in both the original game and its sequel, even in the conceptual stages—that's way too tacky.
I guess that might make sense... still it seems odd that NGHZ would have such a strange level ID if it was supposed to represent an already completed level that would be the first one in the game level order.
Well, I mean, take a look at S2Beta:Prototype Zones; Neo Green Hill is the first level you play, but it is not the first level slot internally—that title belongs to Emerald Hill. Would it not be plausible that, for whatever quick testing purposes, Aquatic Ruin was shuffled to the top of the level order while they worked on it? The idea is that before Neo Green Hill was changed on the level select to access Aquatic Ruin, it once led to Emerald Hill (and the Green Hill text would have led to the Green Hill from Sonic 1 used for testing). Since that was no longer in the game, they then changed "Green Hill" to access Emerald Hill while they began working on Aquatic Ruin. To clarify, here's what I'm saying—the level select text is completely outdated. It has no bearing on what the actual levels point to. We know this for sure now. So what I'm thinking is that this text is from a much, much earlier build of the game. This will suggest a few things, but I can represent it pretty well with a table: <table border="1"><tr><th>Level Text</th><th>Destination (Using Final level names)</th></tr><tr><td>Green Hill</td><td>Green Hill Zone (Test level, ala Nick Arcade)</td></tr><tr><td>Wood</td><td>Wood Zone</td></tr><tr><td>Metropolis</td><td>Metropolis</td></tr><tr><td>Hill Top</td><td>Hill Top</td></tr><tr><td>Hidden Palace</td><td>Hidden Palace</td></tr><tr><td>Oil Ocean</td><td>Oil Ocean</td></tr><tr><td>Dust Hill</td><td>Dust Hill Zone (desert—playable?)</td></tr><tr><td>Casino Night</td><td>Casino Night</td></tr><tr><td>Chemical Plant</td><td>Chemical Plant</td></tr><tr><td>Genocide City</td><td>Genocide City (Playable??? Does not explain MTZ3)</td></tr><tr><td>Neo Green Hill</td><td>Emerald Hill Zone</td></tr><tr><td>Death Egg</td><td>Nothing? Old idea for Death Egg?</td></tr></table> This would be the level select destinations before the pointers were changed. Note that I said the pointers, not the text—that was left untouched. It's a bit of a stretch, but it could explain a fair bit about the real use of "Neo Green Hill," (which hardly fits Aquatic Ruin) and why you have Dust Hill's slot pointer leading to Mystic Cave.
I guess that makes sense. It's a little hard to follow everything since this topic is now so big (and I'm also a little tired right now, too).
OK, I know that Metropolis 3 was due to time constraints. But before knowing all of this, was I the only one that thought that Metropolis had three acts because it was the last multi-act zone and Sonic Team wanted to be cool? =P
Could that be a reason for the music jumping back to Emerald Hill when you start drowning in Neo Green Hill? or is that lazy coding? anyway, I was more trying to get an answer for the question I posed as depending on the answer I have a follow up question related to this. Also, I get the feeling the only reason Aquatic Ruin was at the top of any of the prototypes is because they built the Wai beta to show off some levels to the press (I don't think it was created for testing purposes, nor any others but the QA betas 4-x)
I would guess 'lazy' coding -- the music ID is probably the same as in Sonic 1. It's the reason in the Wai beta 100 rings causes the music from DEZ to play.
In that case the lazy coding would be on remembering what track to play as the drowning music is fine, it's when you leave the drowning state that Emerald Hill music plays. (and why does it suddenly seem so busy in here)
I agree with that completely. If only we had a build of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 dating before the Wai prototype, but after the Nick Arcade one. It's the missing piece of the puzzle.
That's very true. There isn't much that can be said on the significace of it. It's a name, period. I don't see "Cyber City" anywhere in the stage select. Nor do I see "Desert Zone", as it's called Dust Hill. *shrug* Neo Green Hill is interesting, though - it could be the same deal like Mystic Cave. Though it's probably just Emerald Hill, so meh.
