I'm pretty sure I have first dibs on it, of all people. Unless the owner sells it to some pawn shop or something, but I doubt that. Eventually, I'll get it.
Well if it requires any insane amount of money you can always count on me to donate a couple bux for a fundraiser.
Finally, that's settled. But that means that we don't know what was the deleted level from Sonic CD, do we?
Now we need to take that post and claim that it's a truthful theory and that we all should believe as real =P
Wow I'm a little late to the party here! Anyway I don't know if this has been brought up in the past 20 pages or so (all I know is I'm not going to go through all of them on this painfully slow connection) but I do have concerns about this. First off, Brenda Ross gave the name Dust Hill in the original interview, and in a follow up interview, and she confirmed that she was certain that was the name for the desert level. However, it was stated that her email address was public for a short time, which might have led to a flood of emails asking about "Dust Hill". I always had problems with this theory. First off, generally when someone gets a LOT of emails, they just stop replying to all of them, however, she still answered the original email, which to me suggests the flood can't have been as severe as originally suggested. I think people were extremely unfair and insulting in accusing the original author of the zone of not knowing what it was called for christ sakes. My second point, which is sort of viewing it from the other perspective, is the exact same arguments could be applied to Yasuhara. For example: "It's been 16 years since he worked on the game it could have faded his memory", "He might have been contacted before from people asking about Dust Hill". In fact I think he original interviewees were rather careless in using the name "Dust Hill" within the question. More care should have been taken to not contaminate the source. The fact Yasuhara was possible to contact by a couple of people in the scene suggests it might have happened before, and we have no way of knowing how many "Dust Hill" emails he may have got over the past 10 years, just like Brenda Ross. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's still testimonial evidence. Even though I have always thought Dust Hill was a logical name, I'm kind of angry over the sudden change of attitude towards testimonial evidence. Brenda Ross should have been enough. Oh and as a little final point regarding testimonial evidence, it has been demonstrated that it is inaccurate on occasion. For example, Craig Stitt claimed Hidden Palace's emerald was a tube blocker, where as Yuji Naka claimed it was supposed to be the master emerald.
This is what I was saying way back when this first got published. We kindof put the words in his mouth, and judging from the response it looks like he just did a search and when he found the delta rom on youtube and used that to fill in the gap. I mean, we're asking him for information on content that was only relevant for a very short period of the early development cycle 16 years later. If the question were worded more carefully, we could've asked him what the name of the level was supposed to be, showing the infamous mockup and desert level description. It's too late now, but I think that question would've given us a more firm response.
Oh please. Surely if it's been confirmed twice then Dust hill is Dust Hill. Anyway, what more proof does someone need to see that the "desert level" is Dust Hill? Surely two people who worked on Sonic 2 and even made the art for Sonic 2 is more than enough confirmation.
Oh I'm not argueing that Dust Hill != Desert Level, more against people's inconsistant attitude towards testimonial evidence.
Brenda Ross made it very clear that she was shaky in regards to memory about things that happened during Sonic 2's development. Besides that, pretty much all of her work was scrapped! I know if I got blown off like that after putting all kinds of hard work into designing levels that I'd just want to forget about it and put it behind me. However, Yasuhara has made it clear—both during this conversation and during other interviews people have had with him—that he absolutely does remember pretty much everything that he ever put his soul into when it came to Sonic game development. He would talk about designs, why he chose those designs, why they're very important in making a great game... all that. But not once in this testimony did he say that he wasn't sure about the significance of "Dust Hill" in Sonic 2's development, or even implied that he may not have remembered—he outright said "This is Dust Hill Zone," linking to both a picture of the mockup and a fan-made version that he went out and found himself on YouTube. Yasuhara's testimony was solid. Brenda Ross' was too shaky to be taken concretely, and that's why we needed this confirmation—especially when the details surrounding it didn't strongly imply the outcome. However, with knowledge that Dust Hill is the Desert level, it's actually quite easy to rationalize why certain evidence used to imply the contrary now, and why it was incorrect to make those judgments. The magazines were just as wrong as we were! But yeah. This "inconsistent attitude," as you dub it, was very warranted. Not once did he ever mention the term "Master Emerald", or even that the Emerald had particular significance in the Zone. All he said is that Hidden Palace was where Sonic would be granted his Super Sonic powers. He didn't say, how, he didn't say when—just that it would happen in that Zone.
Well, I wasn't fully aware of the circumstances in which Brenda Ross was contacted because I wasn't there back then. However, when the stage name seems to better fit the level concept, and two people confirm the stage name, I'm more willing to believe it. I don't know that it's so much an issue that people are being inconsistent, but that having a second apparent confirmation of the stage name means that it can't totally be tied down to one person forgetting. I guess it's possible that Yasuhara might have forgotten this as well, but he seemed rather confident in his answer and I don't have any reason to suspect that he's had a lot of other people contacting him on this issue. I mean, outside of this community I can't see it being a big issue worth asking him over (not to mention that he seems harder to contact than Ross). Meanwhile, if we make the assumption that both of them have poor memory of the level and were somehow swayed to answer the question the way they did, then who can we trust? Since the information given to the magazines (as noted throughout this and related topics) was incomplete at best in nearly every case, they didn't have much more to go on than we did -- it would be the equivalent of taking some commentary on some pictures on another site about Sonic and saying that it's fact because it's based on videos and gameplay.
Yasuhara was able to pick the level out specifically though, and even out of the blue pull up a video of a ROM hack that put the level back in.
Not to be rude, but where did she make it clear that she was shaky? I don't remember that at all personally. I mean there was the whole Woods zone deal but that was an understandable mistake. Everyone keeps saying Brenda was uncertain about the name but I don't remember her ever saying or suggesting anything like that. Brenda outright said the desert level was Dust Hill in the follow up interview Wetflame did a while ago. I don't know how it was that shaky peticularly. I think the points against the interview were blown out of proportion personally. But thats just my opinion. Well yes I'm well aware of "in hindsight", but I think in this case it just feels like Brenda said it from the start, with good certainty, people made a fuss about speculation regarding her leaked email address, disregarded the interview, then we end up having to waste someone elses time when we could have just been more rational from the start. Don't get me wrong though, it's good to be certain, and with 2 testimonies we can obviously be fairly sure it's true now. Not from where I'm standing. Why should Yasuhara's testimony be considered the "word of god" when the original creator's point of view, despite this supposed "ill feeling" idea you've put forward, was thrown in the bin. Fair enough, my bad =P but there were still differences in the way Craig and Yuji described the zone. All I'm saying is instead of this being seen as Yasuhara vs Brenda, it should be seen that, now we have 2 testimonies, we can now be sure of the Zone's name. Just as a future rule for things like this, or something like that.
She said something to the effect of "It was 10 years ago and I don't really remember." See the interview for more specifics (it's on the wiki). Yes. A follow-up. After she had already recieved tons of messages saying that was the name of the Zone. She had assumed that, real name or not, that's what people referred to it as. Add to the fact that when asked if it was really the name for the zone she just said "Sure," which is hardly any kind of surefire way of saying "Absolutely." The problem is that she didn't know with good certainty, and there was no reason for us to violently lean on a testimony that even the person who said it isn't sure of. And the email flood was another good reason not to trust the testimony, for many reasons. Yasuhara didn't have the same circumstances surrounding his testimony; add that he was probably the one who conceptualized Dust Hill in the first place, and, well... yeah. =P Because all Brenda Ross did was what she was told to—draw the level. She only designed the graphical aspects as she was instructed to by the game's chief designer--Hirokazu Yasuhara. Understand where I'm coming from? And it's ironic that you say Yasuhara's testimony was taken as the "word of God"... he pretty much was the God of Sonic design (next to Naka) when it came to Sonic 2. So his word is the word of god! XD It's not a future rule at all. Our concerns were valid, and I still don't believe for a second Brenda Ross had any idea what the level was actually called. But, of course, this doesn't matter, because Yasuhara did. Fun times!
1) Sure, saying "Dust Hill" could have got Yasuhara confused, as well as the Mystic Cave screenshot we sent >_> If Dust Hill was Mystic Cave, he would have got in doubt. Not only he didn't but he even sent other footage just to make his answer stronger. 2) Ross said she didn't remember stuff about Sonic 2 development like in-between every sentence, to be honest =/ In both interviews, I mean.
Once again, if you don't buy Yasuhara's explanation, who would be able to convince you? There's simply no one who would know better than Yasuhara E: definitely not directed at Sik
By the way, Chris Senn also thinks Yasuhara is sure about what he said =P (and seriously, the answer was way too straightfoward for Yasuhara being in doubt about that)
