Sonic 2 Development Lore

This would make a lot of sense, but I can't help but to feel that it seems a bit far-fetched.

If the developers weren't happy with how a certain level's graphics looked like, wouldn't it have been much more likely that they gave the sprite artist notes rather than a completely new and intricate piece of concept art?

Casino Night's redesign is actually a pretty poor argument to use in this situation, as its concept art only depicts the background of a slot machine, which remained pretty much unchanged through the whole redesign process. Why would the concept art depict that but not the ground tiles or the level background, which were the elements that actually needed changing?

 

I edited my post while you were writing your reply to clear things up:

 

Well, my above reply still applies to most of what you say here, so I'll probably leave it unedited. And I'm still awaiting your reply to it, as I wish to hear your thoughts on what I mentioned regarding Casino Night.

And do not take this personally, but I absolutely have to add that "None of the levels had concept art made for them before they started implementing them into the game" is an absolutely outrageous claim that makes zero sense. That isn't how game development works at all.

 

Outrageous as it is, it's the truth. The level artists weren't shown concept art for the first levels; their look was left up to them:

Source:
https://forums.sonicretro.org/index...-the-mind-behind-sonic-2s-hidden-palac.32947/

Which is likely the reason Sand Shower looked like a western desert, which is at odds with Masa's track.

They said that they deliberately left the redesigned Casino Night's look to an artist who had real life experience with casinos so that he would base it on his experience. So the look was up to him. He wouldn't have needed concept art for its general look.

As for the concept art looking like that, they might have wanted to emphasize the pinball theme.

 

Basically the infamous mockups became the concept art for these zones, more or less.

This also tracks with these (and their palette swaps) being the earliest stages added to/cut from the game, as seen in the Nick Arcade build.

EDIT: I just realized that this also explains why Brenda didn't know the name for her desert level, if Yasuhara didn't draw concept art for it when she created the art.

 

Okay, that's good proof for your claim. But I just have to explicitly say that this is the stupidest fucking way of organizing video game development that I have ever heard of. People in this thread have said that Sonic 2 ending up to be such a good game despite its rocky development was a miracle; Nah, it was not a miracle, it was a complete and utter impossibility, and yet it still was a good game somehow. Honestly, now I'm starting to wish that the game had been a disaster just so they would have realized that this is not how you're supposed to develop video games. What in the absolute hell were they thinking?

Okay, got it out of my system.

But the pinball theme was already fully emphasized by Simon Wai? Like I said, it's the one part of Casino Night that has remained consistent and unchanged throughout its entire development.

 

That document is simply listing zones that would share enemies, it doesn't have anything to do with zone counterparts.

 

Maybe that's the part of the original CNZ that they liked, so they based the concept art on it as a guide for the new artist?

As for why they didn't just show him the previously implemented Casino Night to use as a basis for the pinball sections, they might have been afraid that if they did so he might have been influenced by that CNZ's look, which they didn't approve of. So with the concept art they focused on what they wanted to keep while filtering out the "bad" parts.

 

I know that, but all the other pairs are actual counterparts, so I can't see why Hidden Palace and Oil Ocean would share enemies but not be counterparts. It'd just be a really random exception to a clearly established rule.

 

LET'S NEW ERA OF BEYTAH HACKS BEGIN!


Yeah, a bit inaccurate. I made it in one hour total :p
So funny that it fits well with already exist chunks. You need to make a very little modifications, mostly with grass.

 

I'd just like to point out that I'm strongly confident now that one of the 2 iterations of "Rock World" was supposed to be the unnamed Winter level. Not only is it odd that the zone appeared twice while the winter level was never mentioned by name, but it's in the exact same place as Sand Shower.

I'm pretty sure this has been mentioned, but I want to reiterate this theory. It doesn't mean there can't be a separate "rock themed" version of the same stage either... reusing the same assets 3 time-

... wait a damn second...



3 stages with recycled assets... all in the same place on the map...

Could this be Rock World after all!? Did Brenda explicitly confirm this WASN'T Sonic related, or did we all just assume that?

 

I think that this being a Sonic stage could be possible, but it'd require a lot of leaps in logic.

Her other Sonic 2 mockups showed Sonic himself, rings to collect, enemies, dynamic stage hazards and a HUD. This has none of those.

Even the actual tile placement isn't typical for a Sonic level, even though all the other mockups clearly attempt to imitate level design tropes from the first game.

There's a lot of unexplainable stuff in Brenda's portfolio, and we already know that other STI developers reused their scrapped Sonic 2 graphics for other projects, some of which never got beyond the conceptual stage. I really want to believe that we're looking at lost assets for either Rock World or Madness Mountain, but it just doesn't seem likely.

But this got me thinking; Do we know if Craig Stitt used any Sonic 2 assets in his Treasure Tails pitch?

 

One of Tom's documents specifically references Rock World as being a palette swap of Sand Shower. So it seems pretty clear it was the winter level.

But it does make you wonder about that other picture. It could be Sonic related. Frank said he didn't think it was Sonic-related, but he didn't say it definitively.

 

This is a Rock World from ruined present map

 

Maybe the real Rock World is the unused assets we found along the way

 

Are those the Green Hill Zone clouds in the background, or different ones entirely? To me that would give away if it's a Sonic stage or not, given those were a pre-existing asset tied to a specific IP already.

 

Someone on the Hidden Palace Discord noticed that the background mountains in that shot are from Kid Chameleon:


(I just grabbed this image off the internet but I think these are the right mountains)

I'm inclined to believe that one scene is just an example of Brenda reusing assets for her portfolio.

 

Why are some of us sure that Aquatic Ruin had water added at the last minute?

Seems the flooding ruins concept was Yamaguchi's idea from the start and only the zone name was haphazardly changed around.