R2 - The Lost Level From Sonic CD

Hm...I had the Expert version of Sonic CD, and thought I recall the songs fading to awkward silence, they did eventually loop.

 

Honestly, that cut bit from the Sonic CD ending looks NOTHING like Tidal Tempest, and I believe that was what R2 was supposed to be. A hybrid of an ancient mechanical ruin with overgrown vines.

 

I liked your post, was informative, but just going to throw a thought out there.

Now if you compare the endings animated segments with their real life counterparts, you must realize that their a loose retelling of of each stage. In design they don't look quite like they look inside of the game, but most of them feature level mechanics and one badnik found in the stage.

-In Palmtree Panic, you see Mosqui and their mechanic to drop down on their needles to pierce Sonic. You also get the basic idea it's a a tropical type stage with palmtreets and orange hills.
-In Collison Chaos, they kinda' give the wrong impression of the stage in my opinion. Above sonic you see bumpers with kissing symbols on them, you see orange skies and colorful floors, and it shows off the pinball mechanic, the random mechanical-cluttered stop-lights and the square bumpers, with Kama-Kama and his throwable slicing arms. Mechanics are right but the design leaves more of an impression of a "Rock N' Roll", or "Sin City" type of stage, or even a carnival, where the stage is much more ambient in reality.
-Quartz Quadrant shows off the gems of the stage from the cavern segments and the Sasori badnik and his ability to shoot. Now of course the gems in Quartz Quadrant don't reflect Sonic but it gets the point there's gems there across, but doesn't as much promote the "Lost Civilization/Ancient Technology" feel of the stage.
-Wacky Workbench is a fairly good adaption of it's game counterpart besides it's more blue than it's usual purple and Mecha-Bu doesn't actually appear in Wacky Workbench, but I feel like they decided that later in development, maybe in conceptual stages he was originally a Wacky Workbench enemy moved to Metallic Madness. They show off the buzzsaw (though also make him a fast runner) and show off the moving platforms (but not the fact that they spin)
-Stardust Speedway is just a loose retelling of the Metal Sonic race, making the highway hilariously skinny and a lot brighter in the battle than it actually is, but do a good way showing it's a highway stage with a bright city with trumpets spurted around it.
-Metallic Madness they show off the dark chamber fight with the Firefly Badniks, in the chambers before the boss. All things considered it recreates that scene fairly well, but taken out of context could make the stage look a lot more look like a darker Metropolis Zone.. Though actually thinking on it I guess that's what the stage actually is...

So taking ALL that into consideration and also considering that the stage never made it into final, what we can pull from the ending segment:

-In R2, you see the Sand Pincher Badnik along with the mechanic of the stage o have random collapsing sink holes. It makes the stage look like an ancient (see the moss and vegetation?) crumbling ruin, likely of a civilization thanks to the single piece of machinery.

Actually, thinking about it, and looking at these videos, I don't think R2 was scrapped but distributed elsewhere. I they handed off the ancient ruin role to Tidal Tempest, and could very much believe lots of the concepts of ruins went there, and then also maybe handed off some of the concepts to Quartz Quadrant, which is basically a vegetated ancient civilization with machinery parts. So in concept, Quartz Quadrant sounds similar to what we know of R2, while some of the assets seemed to have been moved to Tidal Tempest.

My theory on why R2 was scrapped now rests that I think the developers didn't think it differentiated enough from other stage tropes, and could save time and money to invest it's ideas elsewhere. The little we know about R2 out of context could sound like Quartz Quadrant and it's evident some of it's assets were moved to other places in the game, namely Tidal Tempest, and possibly the ruin in Wacky Workbench.

 

Yeah there are just so many possibilities.

 

Don't know ifthis was mentioned, but anyone find it odd that Tidal Tempest isn't shown off in the ending clips for Sonic CD, yet R2 (assumibly) is?

 

Yeah thats what I was saying,,

hey wait! What if......they made the animations early on, Before Tidal Tempest was conceived?
but... whatever zone appears in the video was a zone still in the planing stages that was later scrapped..

so maybe,,,, at the time the animation was produced it was already to late to add another animation, probably budgeting reasons.

 

It's more than likely that the animated sequence was made by another company, parallel to the game development -- with some model/character sheets and development sketches of the badniks and levels (which would include R2 if it wasn't scrapped at that point) as reference.

That part of the full ending is the best lead we've got.

 

Wasn't it the same company that did the SCD Scene that did the OVA?

 

I believe it was Toei Animation (the same folks who did Dragonball Z) that did the opening and closing for Sonic CD. No idea about the OVA though.

 

No idea... would have to look at the credits...haha

 

I don't know, but the R2 clips really do look similar to the Land of Darkness in the OVA. A blueish-grey hued city of darkness, with ruinic vines growing across it.. very similar to me; also proving how much of a homage that movie was to SCD.

 

Did no-one see the assembler thread regarding a cd being on sale that contained 2 scraped Sonic CD levels? That thread went quiet very very quickly...

 

Toei Animation was the company who animated Sonic CD's animation. They were also responsible for the Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, first series Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon anime.*

Now, the company that did Sonic OVA's animation was Studio Pierrot, who was responsible of producing and animating some of the the best anime ever like Yu Yu Hakusho and Bleach. They also animated Naruto, but that's beside the point.


*Fun fact: Did you know that the same director for Sonic CD's cut-scenes would go on to direct Digimon Tamers and Digimon Frontier, both of which feature psychedelic and surreal environments like Sonic CD? The more you know.

EDIT: Added URLs for proof.

 

DRX took interest in that thread quickly. We'll have to wait for him to let us know if something turned up.

 

Surely he got it. Unless someone made a much higher offer or something. Kind of confuses me why Assembler recently is posting publicly about all these prototypes he's getting, since in the past he's been reclusive about sharing anything about what he has or can get. I just hope that hasn't already given drx a huge disadvantage, since someone else surely showed interest in it after that topic was posted.

 

I'm hoping he got a hold of it, it's been about 2 weeks since that topic was made, (and later locked) I wonder if it really did have any deleted levels? Or for that matter, what about the canned Sonic 1-style special stages?

 

Yeah I guess that I was one to miss it >__<
I really hope he can grab ahold of this lost Gem.
Was about to start work on conceptual art for a totally original R2 zone
(3D Sonic CD Remix)
Guess I'm going to hold back on starting that zone now.
Especially since we may have some appropriate recourses coming to the community soon.

this is a great surprise !
Perhaps its R2, and Final fever? or maybe R2 and some other zone......
perhaps it contains that sonic 1 like special stage...

I'll be donating money if possible.

 

That reminds me of this level concept I made a few years ago. It was based on the Sonic CD (Jam) ending video. I honestly thought that Rusty Ruin was the only fitting name, and since Sonic 3D blast came later, it didn't really matter. Take a look.



The buildings and foreground are the only things really that highlight it. Now I would think that the grassy areas would be combined with the ruin areas, plus more momentum building, and of course those sand trap enemies.

 

Hey not bad. looks like it would fit CD naturally.