New Sonic 2 development lore drop - Genocide/Cyber City palette and art!

Yup, it was a Sonic 3 original unlike what we previously thought. Brenda stated that Sand Shower was designed with Rock World's palette change in mind, with Tom's documents also confirming the two were in development at the same time.

 

Phoenix Rie?

 

Yeah. If it had been originally made for the S2 winter level, I imagine they would have released it along with the rest of the S2 concept art.

In addition, it would have been weird for them make concept art for the winter level rather than Sand Shower, which was supposed to be the "main" counterpart from the regular present. It would be like producing concept art for Hill Top instead of Emerald Hill.

 

That would have been the late Reiko Kodama if I'm not mistaken.

 

and to give context to this too, Nick Arcade was already using modified sprites from Sonic 1, as opposed to straight Sonic 1 sprites. The sprites were not finalized until the August build. So Brenda's mockups were quite possibly made very, very, very early, given that Nick Arcade is basically a Sonic 1 ROMhack at that point.

 

I don't think that this is enough proof to dismiss it as purely Sonic 3 concept art. We still don't have clean scans of the Sandopolis and Death Egg images either, even though both were edits of Sonic 2 concept art too. Besides, Mazin still has that binder full of Sonic CD concepts, and we know that all of it wasn't released in Origins, even though some new pages were. Sega not releasing stuff isn't proof of anything.

And as for the second point, it relies entirely on the assumption that we have seen all of these level concepts. For all we know, there very well could be concept art for Emerald Hill, Hill Top and Sand Shower. We do have concept art for both Metropolis and its variant, Genocide City, after all. Hell, most of us assumed that we had all of the maps when Yasuhara first showed them in 2017, and then Yamaguchi came out of nowhere six years later to give us that burning future map with GCZ Act 3.

 

I'm sure Sega has S3 concept art they haven't released. But S2? It would be weird for them to handpick concept art for the earliest levels worked on to keep private for seemingly no reason. Moreover, everything points to Brenda's Sand Shower level art being created early in development, before they started making the concept art for the zones.

Based on that, I think it's fair to assume that no Sand Shower concept art exists, as they wouldn't have made concept art for it after its level art was done (unless said art was deemed unsatisfactory).

Sure, we have concept art for Genocide City. But we also have for Metropolis. They didn't skip Metroplis over for its future counterpart. Pretty unlikely that they would have skipped Sand Shower and made concept art for the winter counterpart only, especially considering they already had level art for both.

 

I don't see why keeping Sonic 2 concept art in private would be any weirder than doing the same for Sonic 3 or CD.

Yeah, Brenda did make the Sand Shower graphics early in development, that seems to be the case. I just don't think that it's any proof of there not being concept art for the winter level. Like Black Squirrel noted, Tom Payne created enemies for a "Rock zone" that wouldn't really fit a winter level, so maybe the Sand Shower assets were created before a snowy Rock World was even conceptualized?

 

Brenda stated that the Sand Shower level art was specifically created with the intention that it would be palette swapped into a winter level.

So yeah. They had plans for the winter zone since the beginning (or at least before Brenda drew the SSZ graphics).

Why would they make concept art for the winter zone after they had the graphics for it?

 

I think it's fair to say that Yamaguchi has shared all of the Sonic 2 level concept arts at this point. What would be the point of withholding concept art for stuff like Hill Top, Emerald Hill, or Chemical Plant after sharing the maps, documents detailing changes made to the maps, and all of the scrapped levels?

Based on the documents and interviews we have, everything points to no concept art being made for the earliest developed levels. Instead, it seems that the mock-ups were created to serve the same general purpose.

EDIT- To break it down we have the concept art for:
-Ocean Wind
-Wood (Secret Jungle)
-Metropolis
-Tropical Sun
-Blue Ocean
-Dust Hill (Madness Mountain)
-Casino Night
-Genocide City (Cyber City)
-Neo Green Hill (Emerald Isle)
-Death Egg

We don't have concept art for:
-Green Hill
-Sand Shower
-Hill Top
-Rock World
-Oil Ocean
-Hidden Palace
-Chemical Plant
Which coincidentally were the first levels developed. Additionally, all of these except Oil Ocean and Chemical Plant have mock-ups.

 

Huh
I missed the moment when page about S2 unused levels on tcrf turned into page about unused S2 plot.
https://tcrf.net/Prerelease:Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2_(Genesis)/Scrapped_Zones

Also page on Russian language still uses outdated information, I think I have to translate it by myself!

Sonic 3 concepts that are redrawings of S2 stuff? I guess we have all of them. Death Egg already in the web. What was used for sandopolis?
*After video watching*
Ohh.. there is a lot of stuff that I haven't seen before or that I can remember.. where do you see Sansopolis?
TCRF says there are unseen before MCZ concept but where is the proof???
https://tcrf.net/Prerelease:Sonic_the_Hedgehog_3/Concept_Art#Level_Concept_Art

 

Oh yeah, she did say that indeed. A snowy palette swap was always intended according to her.

I guess all of this level concept art just bothers me in general. We assume that it was done relatively late because Craig Stitt never got any for Hidden Palace, but isn't Aquatic Ruin an early level too? It has concept art, which resembles the final level's graphics almost 1:1 at that.

And how about Tom Payne's levels? There's concept art for both, yet not a single reference to either was found among his documents.

It's just very confusing.

Madness Mountain, it's recolored yellow.

 

It's not just Craig's account. It's also the fact the concept art uses more updated zone names (Cyber City), Brenda's desert zone art was at odds with Masa's music, and none of the Nick Arcade proto's zones have known concept art.

As for ARZ, it was in the Simon Wai prototype but not the Nick Arcade proto. The concept art would have been created between the two prototypes.

 

I think it's sort of as you alluded to earlier, how concept art wasn't created for zones that already materialized. It might also be the case he just didn't get around to creating the concepts for certain others either due to competing priorities, or he trusted zone artists at times to just "get it right".

If we go back to my music/zone order theory, final songs 02-04 are EHZ, HPZ, and SSZ. Those are likely THE first zones worked on, and as you stated, have no concept art.

Song 05 (MTZ) has concept art.

Song 06 (HTZ) does not.

Song 07 (ARZ) does.

Song 08 (OOZ) does not.

Song 09 (CNZ) does.

Song 0A (??)

Song 0B (??)

Song 0C (TSZ) does.

Song 0D (RWZ) does not (or does??)

Song 0E (CPZ) does not.

Song 0F (??)

...

Point is, it gets very checkered. So I don't know it's entirely as simple as concept art being all the later zones. Either that, or my song order theory isn't 100% correct.

 

Actually, Chemical Plant had a mockup too.

 

Keep in mind though, that mockup is likely after Nick Arcade.

 

The buildings aren't pink, it's almost certainly post Nick Arcade unless something weird was going on (not an impossibility)

 

Speaking of mockups, @RankoChan claimed Hill Top has a mockup. Does it? I know there's the one screenshot in Sega Visions showing the green seesaw ball, but for the life of me, I can't find a single scan of it.

 

Those aren't mockups.