Judy Totoya speaks about the making of Sonic 2 - why Wood Zone was cancelled

I'm pretty sure the time travel stuff was long gone by the time it was redesigned.

 

Also, I don't think this has been mentioned yet but they were responsible for the secret upper path in chemical plant 2???

https://twitter.com/judy_totoya/status/1595348339423580160

Apparently it was found during a location test lol.

 

I think he's talking about designing the page for a strategy guide, not the level design itself. And he's right; most people would NOT find that! I think I had already long beaten the game by the time I discovered it, which was by accident.

 

Yes, but the implication from Totoya's tweet is that Casino Night looking weird was not by design, and that the artist really was trying to achieve an inviting, gorgeous atmosphere.

 

No, the tweet says that while it’s on game strategy sites nowadays, he made the route thinking nobody would ever find it, only for it to be discovered by a kid during a location test.

 

Hmm, I see what you mean. It doesn't quite read to me the same way the second time. But I thought he was just an art guy. Yasuhara designed the map. Why would an art guy be doing level design??

 

I think it's very likely there is still stuff they haven't released. I don't think most of us expected to see the design documents for Sonic 2 and 3 released over a decade and half after the games' first came out, and yet here we are.

Besides, Sega has been hush-hush about certain scrapped stuff like Nights' Selph before. Iizuka's responses when asked in interviews imply he's not allowed to talk about it. There is the possibility that Sega has material it doesn't want to or can't release, at least at the moment.

 

E: never mind, delete this reply

 

It'd be a lot better if we could get translations from someone who knows Japanese, instead of relying on auto-translation. There may be some nuance we're missing here. Unless that's already happening and I missed it?

Also I've always misread "Totoya" as "Toyota" at first glance. This thread has finally made me start reading it properly on first read lol.

Regardless, it's awesome that he's posting this information. He seemed genuinely surprised that there's still interest, but maybe I'm reading too much into this tweet:

 

I also always thought it was Toyota.

As far as translations, we have our very own Gryson. He's not allowed to quit, ever. This is his job. Maybe his destiny...!

Anyway, yes. The translations are pretty decent from what I can see, but I also feel there may be some misleading nuanced-type stuff in a few posts. It'd be nice to get it all clarified.

 

Dang, I also misread "Totoya" as "Toyota" for all these years xD
The heck with this, how has it gone this wrong for so long? ^^"

 

Wait, it isn't Toyota? :o

 

It's "Toyota" in the 2011 re-release of Sonic CD, if that makes you feel better

Though I suppose really we ought to be using "Yasushi Yamaguchi" for the same reason we don't go around saying Bigisland, Carol Yas and YU2.

 

Well, that is his Twitter handle. Maybe Totoya is what he prefers to be called.

I mean, we don't say Masato Nakamura, we say Masa. That's his stage name.

 

This is fucking me up I've read and spelled it as Toyota for years, I can't believe I literally never noticed this

To be fair, he does still use that name all the time on things like Twitter, so he clearly likes the name. We stopped using the stage names for the others because they also stopped using them, but you can't say that about Yamaguchi.

 

Waiting for someone to pull a Mandela Effect and say 'Actually, I played Sonic 2 1000000000 times and EVERYTIME it said Toyota!!'

 

Speak for yourself.

 

Geeze... don't try searching for Sonic 2's ending or credits if you have yet to see the Sonic 2 MOVIE and don't want SPOILERS. >_<

 

Does anyone know why the nickname ‘Judy Totoya’ btw? I assumed it was a woman until I later discovered the real name was YY…