Sonic CD's Mysterious Cut R2 Level Discussion - Post Origins Edition

I know there were many theories about R2. It won’t be a surprise for me if one of the obvious suggestions – “what if R2 is a remake of Marble Zone” – turns out to be true. There are a lot of similarities:

1. Concept artworks feature ancient architecture. And no sign of underground areas…

…however…

2. Both levels are mostly underground locations.
3. Stairs in Marble Zone and in 2R on Ohshima’s map.
4. Swinging platforms.
5. Lots of traps.
6. Technology. Switches in Marble Zone activate large columns. And this thing in Dubious Depths – I don't know what it is, but its form is also a "column" of sorts. Or maybe it was like those "elevators" from Scrap Brain to visit different floors.
7. Crumbling floor. I remember at least one example in Marble Zone. But in Dubious Depths it was supposed to appear often, judging by animated sequence.

In any case, we will know for sure when concept art for Sonic CD will be released. Because what we have now doesn’t reflect in-game stages or animated ending. For example, rainbow waterfalls are associated with R2, but we see no sign of them in Toei’s video. Consequently, they could have chosen another artwork for their version of R2.

Similar situation is with Stardust Speedway. I think that it was inspired by Star Light Zone.

The biggest new addition is Eggman’s statue – people at Toei probably used map of Little Planet as a basis, but it doesn’t exclude the possibility of other references being provided by Sonic Team.

Sonic The Hedgehog CD seems to be inspired by original Sonic The Hedgehog for the most part.


Just look at these levels. Only Palmtree Panic and Stardust Speedway have loops, just like Green Hill and Star Light. Also, those two levels from Sonic 1 were the ones where you can run fast. In Sonic CD, developers wanted to add more variety: “fast” Round 1 – “slow” Round 2 – “fast” Round 3 – “slow” Round 4 and so on. Odd-numbered stages have more free space, starting from Salad Plain.
Even-numbered stages are more about exploration, traps and gimmicks. Ridicule Root was supposed to introduce this idea. Naoto Ohshima described it as a level that “didn’t match Sonic’s speed.” Also, it could have been a dungeon. If we follow this logic, Salad Plain becomes a new version of Green Hill Zone, and Ridicule Root – a new version of Marble Zone. Four Rounds turned into remakes of four Zones from Sonic 1. New locations were also added (Quartz Quadrant and Wacky Workbench). The rest of Sonic CD follows first game’s structure: a place where player can run around (Star Light – Stardust Speedway) before entering the hardest part – Eggman’s base (Scrap Brain – Metallic Madness).
So yeah, Sonic CD looks like an expanded version of Sonic 1. Even if developers "were not particularly conscious of this during development."
It reminds me of Spider-Man vs. Kingpin for SEGA Mega Drive and Mega CD. The latter was a bigger game with added features.

 

The ending animation relfects the little planet map concept art. The little planet map shows R2 would be mostly underground and you can see that in the ending animation shot. It's not immediately obvious, but the camera is pointing downwards from the bottom of some rocks with grass on top of them. You can see them in the upper left and right corners, they look like stone bricks with moss growing downward on the bottom, and on the top you can see grass, indicating the entire shot is taking place underground. Which reflects what the little planet map concept art shows. You can see these blocks are up in the air, not on the ground, because there is a shadow under the ones far enough in the background showing they are elevated.

circled what I'm talking about:

 

I don't remember seeing these pictures in the thread. So here they are: early sketches of R2 robot (antlion) and boss.


From "Sonic The Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Artbook."

 

Great post.
Obviously R2's development is unknown and it's uncertain if the rainbow waterfalls were every supposed to be made into fruition, this is because it's concept art.

Concept art does not always depict a one to one in what will be certainly included in the final. For all games that go through development, ideas and concepts get taken in and dropped and even if we don't know the development for R2 in relation to its ideas, the most we can do is speculate.

As for Toei's depiction, along with depictions of other Rounds in the game (more damningly Wacky Work), it's obviously much different then depicted in the final. Be that development progress or design liberties, R2's animated depition will most likely NOT be in correlation to what sprites would've been made for the level. (tysm Dubious Depth's Modern Restoration)
As far as coverage in prototypes have to say, there is most likely no playable variant of R2 present in any of the proto builds that would surface for CD, since 510 and 0.02 has no left over content regarding the Round, meaning it was possibly, again I say possibly never implemented in the first place.

As for Sonic 1 similarities, to me this is obvious. Sonic CD was originally supposed to be a Mega CD port of Sonic 1. Between this, Sonic CD's individual development took many liberties from Sonic 1, including all Rounds present in the final and R2 that arn't Wacky Work and Quartz Quad.

 

I asked Naoto Ohshima about multi-colored waterfall drawing by Kazuyuki Hoshino. Specifically, if there were any plans to implement that idea in the game.
He said that he hadn't been interested in it.

 

Are you sure that he said this about implementing the drawing's elements into the game, or about answering your question?

Because it kinda sounds like you've been pestering him.

 

How the hell do you even have contact with him lmao

 

vro yous been asking questions for two years
I think its time to freeze

 

Would like to explain some things:
1. I've been in contact with Naoto Ohshima for 10 years. This is how it started.
2. I hope that I don't overstep my bounds. I would write to him once in a few months. Or in a few years, even. He is a busy person, so I don't want to bother him with messages. Especially with the same topic. I come up with something different each time, not necessarily related to Sonic. At the same time, I try to avoid personal questions. One exception is when I clarified when his birthday was. At the time, Wikipedia page said it was January 26th. However, it turned out to be February 26th.
My goal is to know the truth. That's all. And I looked at how we would learn new names of Palmtree Panic, Wacky Workbench, but still refer to the missing level with a letter and a number. So I asked mister Ohshima about that. He would not have answered an ordinary Sonic fan like me, if that was a secret information.
3. There are not many questions about R2. I asked about it for the first time since 2023. And for the last. Frankly, there is nothing left to ask on that particular topic. And I haven't made any reference to Round 2 or its names. Just the drawing.
4. I'm sure that he was referring to the idea of waterfalls being uninteresting to him. Because, since 2015, he hasn't expressed any signs of irritation / lack of interest in answering. Sometimes I get a response after several months, but that's understandable, as he's always busy. In the meantime, I don't repeat the same question or send any other messages. Don't want to be pushy / imposing. I just mind my own business and remember that everyone has their own things to do. I don't expect that people would reply 100%. Or even read my stuff, for that matter.
5. Just in case, in the beginning of the chat, I wrote something like: "If this information is confidential or the topic is sensitive in some way, please ignore my question or let me know that I should not ask similar questions."

 

For some reason, there's an uncomfortable aura around asking the Japanese developers questions that doesn't exist with the western devs like Craig Stitt. As if they're gods on Mount Olympus and we are mere mortals who mustn't think of approaching them. But if this community wants answers to some of the series' biggest mysteries, that's what we have to do.

We're so used to being fed answers by devs randomly dropping stuff on Twitter or the release of artbooks that we assume anything not released is stuff they flat-out don't want publicized at all.

 

Agreed, more or less. To put that "uncomfortable aura" into words, it's a combo of a lot of things: culture barrier, Japanese propriety, the sense of verbal ambiguity built into the language, the draconian beholding to 30 year old development contracts. And like a ton more.

Should the Sonic community be reaching out to devs? Absolutely. But not you, average reader of this post. Please don't blindly email developers. The line between being courteous and getting the answer is one that changes from person to person. @MasterDreamcaster can likely attest to his experience there. Above all, your first email needs to be very careful, written with consideration for where they're at in life right now. No pushiness, no expectations, at least in the beginning. Send that email like you're representing a hundred-person company. Cause if that bridge gets burned, no one else can cross.

Everytime I speak to someone at Sega of America, it's like, "Yeah and like 6 of my coworkers are dead." That number's gonna be a lot higher the more we wait.



Maybe we'll get a Discord group together. Make some breakdowns and cheatsheets for best interviewing Japanese devs. All devs. Do some training, show some examples, get a group of Retro users confident enough to start doing this on the regular. Turn Retro into such an exclusive destination for knowledge that we have EXCLUSIVE KNOWLEDGE. We're already close to acting as the de-facto keepers of Sonic history, but so much of the wiki is horribly outdated or landmined with drama that even Sonic Wiki Zone regularly outclasses us. Something needs to change, and this might be one way to do it.

 

I don't think this has anything to do with the differences between Japan and America, just with common courtesy.

Hell, people get way too pushy with their questions towards the western devs too, if not more often than with the Japanese ones. Anyone remember how Brenda Cook had to shut down her email? Or the whole fiasco with Christina Coffin, dear god.

 

At the same time, if you are a key figure working on a franchise as popular as Sonic, you should expect fans to try and contact you. I'm not saying this justifies harassment; I'm saying developers like Ohshima are not unprepared and untrained for how to deal with their fans. It's one thing to reach out to a programmer or an artist who was just doing their 9-5 job and didn't think much of it, but it's another to reach out to the creator of Sonic, or anyone else who holds a fairly high position (or just clout) within Sega.

The issue with Brenda was that people were literally calling her, at her house. That's only slightly less creepy than knocking on her front door. Beyond blocking every individual caller, changing her number, or pulling her phone from the wall, there's not much she could do to prevent people from doing that. The same is true for peoples' personal emails. But on social media platforms, you have the power to pick and choose who messages you, where they do it, WHEN they do it, whether or not you accept their request to do so, whether or not it's private, and whether or not you even get a notification from them. If someone fucks up, I can't see that dooming the entire rest of the community. Obviously in the case of Christina, that still doesn't help much against the mental trauma of bigotry and death threats. But I doubt Ohshima would get anything like that over something like fucking R2.

(On that note, I'm respectfully and politely interviewing a member of SoJ as we speak. I'll post here when it's all said and done.)

 

I have to agree... this can't be done by just anyone... there are those who are good at interviewing and those who aren't (and speaking for myself, I'm not good at interviewing anyone)...

At least our friend @cartridgeculture was successful recently because he knew how to do things the right way...

Interview: Brenda Cook (2025-03-10) by Alexander Rojas

 

Wait. It was Brenda, who came up with Tails name? Also, is she mixing up Knuckles with Tails, or Was Knuckles planned since Sonic 2 in some form?

I’m confused.

 

She took Naka's name of Miles and came up with the pun "Miles Prower". Later, during Sonic 3's development, she saw/heard the name Knuckles floating around the office and conflated the two.



Just added some editorial brackets for clarification.

 

I'm glad you aren't the type of person to just berate him or any other people with questions like that, that is something I can deeply respect.
Thanks for elaborating.

 

For what it's worth Oshima seems to be very glad interacting with fans on social; he tends to retweet and like fan art and even answers flyaway questions in comments sections. Once I followed him and he followed me back. I posted a very low-effort drawing that wasn't even directed at him in any way and the man took the time to view it and leave a like.

On that note I think what MasterDreamcaster is doing is just fine, especially considering how polite and well-spoken he is.

 

That was a great, insightful post. I enjoyed that.