Sonic 2 Original Music Allocations

As a kid finding the Simon Wai beta years ago, I didn't really think much of it but ever since a year or two ago, the latter is a delicious piece of reality and lines up with genuine prototypes and information. I def see why Stealth used the correct track in the Hidden Palace secret area

 

I will maintain that OOZ was meant to have 2P CNZ, but I will also say it's not exactly the same situation with HPZ. The context is noticeably different considering one level was finished and the other was not. One level was always meant to be a normal zone, while the other was initially concepted as little more than a cutscene, even if a playable one.

I believe that HPZ would've had 2P MCZ's theme had it been completed as a two-act zone, or even a one-act zone, and I believe that Sonic Team fully intended it to have that theme during development, but whether or not Masa actually composed that theme specifically for HPZ is still up for debate, and likely forever will be until someone interviews either Masa or the sound team about it. I personally don't think he did, and that he actually composed it for Secret Jungle. But for all we know, there could be totally unreleased demos for stuff like Ocean Wind or Tropical Sun in his possession, which would hold all the answers.

 

There are so many good tone setting moods between all of the Sonic 2 soundtrack.

Changing the tracks can sort of change how you play the zones because you will feel different throughout.
unexpectedly i just played through Aquatic Ruin with a youtube of Emerald Hill 2P and it was wonderful.

That is , it really brought out the sunnyness and early zone vibes in ways i hadn't noticed before, but obviously the ancientness and remoteness of the location were not as emphasized.

 

This might be a tenuous comparison but, the structure in the background of that concept art looks similar to the "fin" on top of WFZ to me, only facing a different direction. Similar angle of the slope, and width of the top. It's even got slots on the straight side.

 

If Wing Fortress was originally Death Egg then I think they definitely made the right call. Wing Fortress is brilliant and a really unique stage. I remember when I was a kid using debug mode I was floored when I learned the map was actually a ship. Really brilliant game design talent to create a great stage like that out of a different one.

 

"Wing Fortress was Death Egg" really contextualises what they did with the equivalent zone in Sonic Pocket Adventure huh.

 

and the whole structure itself doesn't really fit a "ship" either. It fits really well with a space station though if you look at it.

 

"Prominent community member" here:

there's another post of mine somewhere which suggested that Masato Nakamura wrote a load of songs without knowing where they'd be used (if they were even used at all), and the sound engineers "made them fit".

We've had endless debates about whether music x fits with theme y - I suspect some of this stuff was designed to be... "moveable" - swap some instruments around and you can create an entirely different feel without changing the core composition. Oil Ocean Zone also offers evidence that music was changed - the final tune is present in the Simon Wai prototype, but clearly someone decided at some point to use (what would become) Casino Night 2P.


I've never been too keen on the theory that the music IDs reflect level IDs, just because we know they were changing their plans quite late in the day. You would instinctively aim to keep the ordering semi-sensible, but to have any unused music at all suggests they weren't quite as organised as they could have been.

I also continue to doubt any care or attention was put into Hidden Palace Zone, given the level was barely worked on from the Nick Arcade prototype (i.e. at least five months before launch). $10 might be assigned to the level slot in the final... but there are no graphics in the final, so the music is totally right even though graphics are totally wrong?



To be honest at this point you really need to start asking the developers - I don't think there's much left to be gained by speculating on Sonic 2 in 2025. It's a very well-trodden video game.

 

I have to nit pick this comment I frequently see. There were likely different teams assigned to different tasks. It's also why it happens to have a level icon in the level select even though it wasn't worked on much from the Nick Arcade prototype. It could have very well had more done in a forked build, but was never properly implemented due to time. I highly doubt this, but I'm not sayings its not possible.

I do believe $10 was assigned that slot by whatever team with the information they had at the time. Otherwise, we'd see Wood Zones music changed as well. It doesn't add up. The intention was there, but the call was quite literally made last minute it seems.

 

The only reason I can think of is that in the process of making sure all the songs were used in the final game's zones, everything but Track 10 is used. They had to find some place to stick Track 10, and I guess the remains of Hidden Palace's zone ID worked. I don't get why some songs were swapped around by the CENSOR build, but that was in the last week-ish of development (likely September 15th to 17th) while all previous builds had the right idea on music allocation. Sure the Ocean Wind ID doesn't have a song at all, but it never had programmed work done to begin with, so no harm there I guess.

 

Now I'm curious what Wing Fortress would look like with a space backdrop and a gun-metal pallete.

Either the Death Egg s2 or S&K backdrop would work.

Mind you, I still think elements of GCZ/CCZ made it into the stage as well. Wing Fortress was likely a blend of leftover assets from both stages, and they did say in a recent interview that a test map for death egg was experimented with.

And remember, Wing Fortress was a very late addition to the game.

 

We're getting tons of Craig Stitt's old documents sometime in the near future, so hopefully they have some answers.

Hell, those archives will almost certainly have Hidden Palace level maps, which alone could end 30+ years worth of debates for good. Then again, there still are people who think that the desert zone is Dust Hill or that Metropolis Act 3 is Genocide City.

 

Honestly I forgot there was still documentation that hadn't been published yet. Is there any formal timeline or updates on when to expect pending information? I haven't checked in on that in awhile so I'm not up to speed on what the current status is.

 

The page for Stitt's papers still calls it "unprocessed material", but they have posted this on their Patreon:


Looks like Stitt had a portfolio VHS too, and it seemingly contains more Treasure Tails material.

 

In regards to the Oil Ocean debate from the start of this thread, I just think it's funny how the level ID that's believed to have belonged to Sand Shower was given the very strongly influenced middle eastern desert music, despite being a very clear cut and paste western desert level concept, whilst another (implied) desert theme existed, with a full on reference to a wild west movie soundtrack (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly), which was given to the ruins level instead. Intriguing, right?

 

We've literally disproven all of these claims in the past.

1. It's a fantasy cartoon desert, not a real damn place in Nevada or California. The Oil Ocean music fits just fine.
2. It's not a fucking Morricone reference in Aquatic Ruin, but either a pan flute or a Tarzan yell. Y'know, musical elements associated with jungles for a level set in a flooded jungle? And in a music track inspired by samba, a genre from the jungle-covered country of Brazil at that?

Can we bury these dumbass theories already?

 

I don't think the abrasiveness is warranted, but Aquatic Ruin does indeed not call back to the whistle in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The demo is especially clear about that, and if anything reminds me more of lambada (which was a popular Latin music rhythm at the time) than anything else.

 

Jeez man, no need to be so rude about it. The point of my reply wasn't to criticise the use of Oil Ocean's song over Sand Shower (I think it fits perfectly fine too), it was just something I thought was a little funny. I also wasn't aware some of these things had been disproven, so please forgive me, no intent to spread misinformation here.

On the topic of what Aquatic Ruin is probably trying to be...


About 2 years ago a friend of mine showed me this song, which the start of undeniably shares a likeness to Aquatic Ruin Zone, I would not be surprised if this song is actually what inspired it. Gives an interesting look in what direction Aquatic Ruin's music may be heeding into, as that whole 'jungle' feel is even there in this song's rhythm and such.

 

There's an elephant in the room when it comes to Sonic 2 level discussions: Wood Zone.

We know that the early version of the Sonic 2 story didn't feature a correlation between Wood and Metropolis, but the Simon Wai beta speaks multitudes to me. I know I remember people writing off the shared music as something related to outdated song IDs leftover from the Nick Arcade builds, but the fact that both stages are side by side in the level select, feature similar color palettes (an inverted use of deep browns and greens), and similar gimmicks (the conveyer belts, the doors and the tubes between them resembling the portal tubes), even in the final game when you try to boot it up it pulls up Metropolis's objects in Debug Mode.. that's a whole lot of coincidences to write off.

All of this makes me think the team was considering them to be related at some point. It's an interesting thought too; if they were back to back, maybe it could've been how the game shown Eggman's effect on Westside Island? IDK, it's a fun idea.

Plus, there's no other song in the game that really fits the stage. I've seen arguments for the tracks of EHZ2P, Aquatic Ruin, and MCZ2P. But I've never really felt EHZ2P fits Wood. It feels far too sunny and tropical, and likely intended for Ocean Wind / Tropical Sun / whichever of the beach-ish level ideas they were throwing around. MCZ2P feels too echoy and "cavernous" to me, and it seems pretty clear-cut that it was intended for Hidden Palace anyways, at least when it was intended to be a full Zone. The last is Aquatic Ruin, which is.. interesting. I certainly think it fits Aquatic Ruin better, as the ruins and less coniferous foliage feel more appropriately "Latin", but I do see the "jungle" angle in it, and Sand Shower's weird music discrepancies tell me the vibes didn't have to match 1:1.. Still, I don't think it was intended for Wood, since there's no build of the game we have that's not already assigned the track to ARZ.

So we're left with Wood Zone not having any unique music. Which I find it hard to believe they would do on purpose.. unless there's more Masa demos that went unreleased. But I highly doubt it; if he released Song #10 I can't see why he'd withhold any others. Regardless, it all leads me to believe Wood and Metropolis were going to have the same music, at least for a time. I can't help but assume they're connected in some way.

If there's any major things I missed along the way that can IMMEDIATELY debunk my theory, I'd like to know. But I don't believe there's currently enough proof for or against it. Maybe we'll know the truth someday! Who knows.

 

The toxicity is not necessary.

As for Craig Stitt's material, I doubt it will have much that we haven't seen before. Craig has said multiple times that he didn't have any maps. At best, he's told me that he has a development journal he wrote when working on Sonic 2, which should give info such as the exact day HPZ was completed, at least on the art side.

I've heard this theory before, and I'm curious myself. It sounds similar enough to be plausible. This could be a Brad Buxer situation where Masa was once a session musician and he happened to work on that album. It came with a booklet with liner notes, so if Masa were credited in there, that would be all-but-confirmation. If someone got ahold of it, they could confirm (it's easy to find, and very cheap).

You're forgetting the possibility that Wood was cut before any work was done on Metropolis, and they simply moved some of the gimmicks planned for Wood over to Metropolis. Also, we barely have any idea how Wood's gimmicks would've worked, so we have no idea if the tubes would've worked the same. It could be that there was just an elevator that would've taken you down (also, doors? what doors?). Both zones have conveyor belts, but so do CNZ and WFZ. Doesn't that HAVE to be a coincidence? It's a pretty basic platformer gimmick. I find it very unlikely that the two were related. If they really wanted to show they were related, they would've shared the same tiles like Hill Top and Emerald Hill did, or Desert and Winter did, but they don't.

This topic is slowly moving away from discussion of the music into yet another Sonic 2 Development Lore thread.