Is there any proof Tails was originally not meant to appear in SA2?

Well, seems like Archive.org undeleted some ezboard information.
https://web.archive.org/web/2002031...zboard.com/fstharea51messageboardfrm1?page=20
Which shows that 01 and post SA2 launch were as far as that goes. And trying to find older pages on any of the discserver Era posts was proving unfruitful.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010127193000/http://disc.server.com/Indices/100481.html

 

So depressing that so many links don't work. Talk about taking things for granted.

 

Considering due to Tapatalk or Yuku (later incarnations of ezboard) having put a robots.txt in and they had purged everything (though I guess never completely), I'm glad even just having partial archival now. Even then I've noticed that platform did seem to clear out a lot of older dormant forums though. Now Archive.org's plan is to just archive everything they can. Let alone the independent archiving teams. That and the fact there were several backups of various forums at one point I'd love to see an effort to get them all together and available again.

I still remember when Sega purged their own forums due to bots years back promising they'd be back when they could fix the issues. Ha. Or when bioware dumped their Sonic forum. A lot just isn't there anymore.

 

To add fuel to the Tails fire, I've always found it odd that he has a fairly complex flying mechanic in the Chao Garden with very impressive animations. Maybe they just decided to make it for his Chao Garden but I do wonder if they planned something for his flying in very early development.

 

I feel like the answer is no just because SA2 has different models from SA1. Also the animation is different but that's minor.

 

People always bring up Tails-stuck-in-mech as one of the oddities that lend credibility to the notion that the characters weren't supposed to be clones of their rivals at first. And while I agree he's a prime example, I think Shadow and especially Rouge count too. Personally, I've always found it weird that they were just re-skins in their very debut game, especially when their concepts imply that they should have abilities of their own.

Rouge is a bat, so you'd expect her abilities and moves to be built around flying, rather than gliding, climbing and digging (with her legs no less). Shadow as a Sonic clone is a bit more palatable, but he still has his hover shoes which are treated as pretty much a footnote. You can't hover, even though he should be able to. You can't use his Chaos abilities either, at least not outside of multiplayer. Some of the later 3d games make actual use of his unique abilities.

On the one hand I understand that making each character a clone of their rival gives the teams a certain symmetry. On the other, if that was the plan since the beginning, why give Shadow hover shoes and make Rouge a bat when the game isn't going to make full use of these traits? You'd think they would have designed them to better fit their movesets instead.

 

In fairness, echidnas don't glide and aren't really animals one thinks of when it comes to "strength", and yet we have Knuckles anyway. I wouldn't look too deeply into choice of animal meaning anything for the SA2 characters.
The rocket shoes do make sense for Shadow, actually. His speed isn't natural, it comes from the shoes, so it works with him being a "fake hedgehog." It's weird that he can't hover in-game with them but that might just be a gameplay concession, he's so good at jumping already that it'd be kind of a pointless ability for him.

 

Eh. Perhaps, but I think the difference is, Knuckles' gameplay doesn't feel like it stints his abilities. Digging and curling up into a ball are also things echidnas can do in real life. By contrast, Rouge's air movement feels rather limited for a bat. You'd think she would have at least some degree of flight capability like Tails or Cream in other games. As it stands, she's no more flight-capable than Knuckles or Blaze.

It would also have been cool if they had given Shadow the ability to hover to make up for the fact he doesn't get the Bounce. Instead he has no mid-air B-button move, making him feel like a gimped Sonic.

 

It isn't. He has multiple animations because he has multiple layers of flying descending.

 

Well, I spent a day and night just pouring over things. Wish I had my notes at home too but away for the holiday weekend. I'd followed up on the submarine/branching story thing a while ago and I honestly can't recall how much headway I'd made, beyond the US ODM everyone has been pointing out. I had been asking around on several topics I'd been researching to try and dig more up and despite feeling I'd made some headway i have no clue anymore just what it was.

Kinda just building a timeline of articles online and in print to try and figure things out for Adventure 2 as of right now. I found it interesting that Iizuka mentions in interviews in both 2001 with IGN and 2021 with 4Gamer that they had wider plans and then cut back down to two stories and six characters. After finding in the other linked thread started by Blaze that an ODM article mentioned that beyond the 3 shown characters there were 5 additional ones (though they only drop vague and likely useless hints as to who) and with that earlier discussion of Amy and the unused slot there may very well be a lost character and the story is disjointed because each character likely had their own story arcs and that under time constraints they just ended up being pieced together. With all the info we later received with the Sonic 2 development maps, I very much hope someday we have some early SA2 design document that helps break everything wide open.

Not sure I want to know about the giant Terios final boss though. Kinda like the direction they took in the end even if it led to the Black Arms.

Oh, also, I have to follow more up on this later. I saw Sonic HQ and I think also Stadium that a site called Swirlvision had some kind of official statement that Tails would be playable and that Amy & Big wouldn't be November 2000. Between the Tails Mech concept art in this thread, the data that was mined from SA2: The Trial that same month, and the Light/Dark theme I really do think the core cast was always planned out.

The July Game Informer of 2000 (which would have been out it June) that the game was 40 percent done shortly after the E3 presentations. Which makes the original window of being out for the holidays silly in hindsight. The US ODM mentioned that there was a push from this period to "March-ish" and then of course another bump back to June. So I'm pretty sure most of the game was locked in by then at the sixth month of development at least. Still feel from the racing levels that some other content is missing though.

Oh, and despite the link I have not existing now Ch1pper in one of these threads thought Iizuka was asked about the branching paths thing at maybe Sonic Boom? I'm pretty sure there was some chatter on Twitter after someone asked one of the devs (can't remember or find it right at the moment, dead link like i said) about it quite recently and they denied it. I'm definitely believe it was just part of the concept/art phase that never made it off of the drawing board.

Edit: I was also going through interviews with Maekawa & Uekawa about the early concept process, Shadow, and the adoption of the Light/Dark theme. I'll refind the links later but it seems a lot of this was locked in from early on.

 

You know...I wonder if Silver's hovering ability in 06 is a remnant of something they had planned/sketched out for SA2.

 

Anything is possible, though it was stated that Silver's gameplay came from the scrapped Fifth Phantom Saga.

 

For clarity, I believe it was at some in-person event, I just don't remember which one.

And yes, I was trying to suggest that it was more of a broad concept idea than something to be taken literally. Would love (and hate) to be proven wrong though!

 

The event was Summer of Sonic 2012. I mentioned in this thread, and even linked to the video of it, together with the timestamp. But it looks like the video is no longer online.

 

Thanks Big Smile. All very handy. Was the video one from TSSZ? A lot of event coverage gone from that all of that. Definitely feels like the branching paths thing at most was like one of the unused concepts in the Frontiers presentations. But besides Blaze's summary I'll see if I can get my notes together tonight and see if I made headway. I know I'd seen a seperate write up of the sub story somewhere and I'm really hoping that I still have a listed copy.

EDIT: Been trawling through a lot of archives and old links from the Sonic Internet of 2000 - 2001. SonicHQ, TheSonicFoundation, TSSZ, Alt.Sonic, IGN, SegaDojo, Planet Dreamcast (Gamespy Network), and more. I can't find the original branching paths reporting anywhere at the moment. It's still likely buried somewhere out it the aether.

Also, to note. Sega Retro's collection of magazines is thorough, though I note GamePro and Game Informer articles missing for Sonic Adventure 2 so besides the US ODM there could still be other mentions elsewhere too. So various publications still may be worth a shot. I find it crazy that outside of a couple of Twitter conversations and Blaze's Tumblr post a lot of chat on the topic is all recursive to Retro anymore. It's a weird time capsule of inanity that pops up every two to three years.

I also usually go through metacritic and old site links to find any web coverage of a game so I'll probably note more of the things I've at least partially ruled out Sunday. With EZBoard possibly being back in part on Archive.org I also want to delve through that more. The archives of the present still online forums seemed to only go back to 2005 for whatever problem they went through. That and some old chatter on Area 51 or MoogleCavern might pop something up. I know I'll check out Daily Radar due to a lot of articles being posted from there over time.

Also, is anyone in contact with ArchangelUK still? He might be one to know what was floating around the Sega archive once upon a time.

 

Honestly as glib as this response is, I hold true to the "Tails, Rouge, and Shadow were late additions" belief because it just feels very clearly obvious in how their stages are made. Shadow has merely four levels, one of which may not actually have been his. Tails' levels are routinely less polished than Eggman's. And finally, Rouge has two of the most infamously hated levels in the entire game (Security Hall and Mad Space). Their levels just feel less polished and more messy than the other three, and then we have the fact that their levels all blatantly reuse assets. Tails, Rouge, and Shadow do not have a single original level theme to their names. Maybe they always planned on using each "environment" twice, though. Every single Adventure Era game does reuse levels (Adventure 1, Heroes, 06) or locations/assets (Adventure 2, Shadow, Unleashed), so it's not unprecedented.

...huh.

I just thought: maybe Radical Highway was supposed to be a Sonic level? I have three brainblasts to prove this:

-it makes no sense for City Escape to immediately lead into a night-time boss battle...but it would make perfect sense if Sonic was actually supposed to go through Radical Highway before fighting Big Foot. Seriously how did I not think of this before. Why does no one point this out when it's literally right there lmao

-When I think about it, there's very little story reason for Shadow to be at Radical Highway. He steals a chaos emerald, but that could easily have been a post hoc justification for taking this level from Sonic and giving it to Shadow. If SA2 had more dev time, I would have expected Shadow's first level to be a unique one at the bank he steals the Chaos Emerald from.

-Mission Street is the only one of the Tails, Rouge, and Shadow levels that doesn't reuse a SOnic, Knuckles, or Eggman stage location--it instead reuses a Shadow stage. BUT...perhaps Radical Highway was a Sonic level originally, which was then put in a blender to make Mission Street, and then they gave Radical Highway to Shadow...

 

*cough cough*