So reviewing some of the music placement in Sonic 2 started to get me to question things. Clearly in the beta, 2P mystic cave zone was meant for Hidden palace zone. Fine, it works very well. 2P Casino night zone was meant for Oil Ocean zone, I'm cool with that. It sounds FAR better than Dust Hills music. That being said, Oil Oceans music was CLEARLY set for Dust Hill zone. Fine, it more than works for that. Hidden Palace's "Final" music seems to be meant more as a transitional, cut scene, or something like that. The demo tapes show it was the only track to have an actual end instead of a loop. I'll buy that. What I have a problem with is....2P Emerald Hill. Where the hell was that meant to go? Was it Wood Zones tune? It just doesn't fit to me. Any ideas?
After listening to it for a bit, I think that it would have fit with Wood Zone perfectly, to be honest. I see no other zone where it could possibly fit in.
Casino Night 2P -> Oil Ocean Oil Ocean -> Dust Hill Mystic Cave 2P -> Wood Hidden Palace -> Hidden Palace Either Emerald Hill 2P or Sky Chase could be used for the snowy level. Dunno what the other would be used for. Naka says there were plans for about 18 zones, but even counting the all the canned stages we know of, the number doesn't even come close.
In the Simon Wai beta, there's an empty level slot (which eventually became the Wing Fortress Zone) that can be accessed with a Game Genie code. For whatever reason, the two-player Emerald Hill theme was set to that Zone, even though the final Wing Fortress song was in the sound test.
Mystic Cave's 2p music is a good fit for Hidden Palace. It definitely feels right in StealthTax's version of HP. As for Casino Night's 2p music in Oil Ocean. Seems like a strange choice. Doesn't fit the feel of Oil Ocean at all. I agree with Oil Ocean's track being a better fit for Dust Hill than Mystic Cave 1p. I guess Emerald Hill's 2p music could suit the snowy level "Winter zone". Mind you it could also fit nicely in Wood zone.
I never knew Casino Night 2P was originally for Oil Ocean. I thought it was for Cyber City or something. Then again, what other music would've been used for Dust Hill if not Oil Ocean's. As for Emerald Hill 2P, I feel it's a safe bet it would've been used for Wood Zone, even if the music for Metropolis Zone was used for that level in the Simon Wai prototype.
And nobody does... I don't know why all of a sudden speculation is being treated as the real deal, again. As for Oil Ocean's music belonging to Dust Hill at one point, somebody explain to me how does an arabian song fit a western desert. Even Aquatic Ruin's would have been a better fit.
Nakamura was basically given one or two words describing each stage, I wouldn't be surprised if all he got for Dust Hill was "a desert". This was really nobody's fault, with Sonic 2's tight schedule, the level art and music was developed in tandem, so the ideas weren't fleshed out at the time. Oil Ocean is a perfect fit for a desert stage like Sandopolis, it just happened that the graphics artist went in a completely different direction. (Neither knew that, though!)
Well that's the thing, it's a beta. A pretty buggy ass, incomplete beta. Much like the Nick Arcade alpha, I'm sure the music slots were not quite right yet. Some tracks might not have been finalized yet, Mystic Cave was still called Dust Hill, Green Hill and Neo Green Hill zone were things. I don't think any of the songs in that version can be considered intended songs, probably more just along the lines of placeholders. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Death Egg Zone use like the ring sounds in it? Anyway, what I'm more curious about is why they made the changes to the songs they did. The tempo changed for many of them, as well as the instrumentation.
Ill go with that, but at the same time then that means HPZ's wasn't final....I guess? It's just weird in general. I've never found a right spot for 2P EHZ. On that note too...Metropolis' music really fits Wood Zone in the beta, but with its revision it fits a machine type level more.
HPZ is a funny one. At least for the mobile Sonic 2, they just decided to use Mystic Cave 2P because they thought it fit better, and I'll admit it kinda does. It of course doesn't help that while HPZ was one of the first levels put in the game, it seems like it was only worked on once and then completely forgotten until they were like "oh shit this ships tomorrow, ummm scrap the whole thing."
The Nick Arcade build's music tracks and music driver are byte-for-byte identical to Sonic 1, they didn't touch it at all. Although I don't believe that the intended tracks for each zone were set in the Wai build, I'm sure SEGA knew what songs were for which zone as soon as Dreams Come True composed Sonic 2's OST. They must have given DCT some idea of what kind of zone they were composing music for. They didn't put the right ones in every zone yet because they were too focused on getting the zones done (or scrapped in some cases.) And yes, I can clearly hear ring sounds in Death Egg's music in the beta. Many of the slower tracks in the beta were probably sped up to fit the fast-paced gameplay of a Sonic game. The only way we'll know for sure though is if we asked Nakamura or maybe the sound programmer. The fact that Wood Zone and Metropolis share music as well as similar gimmicks, such as the tunnels and conveyor belts ties to the old theory that WZ was MZ's past back when Sonic 2 was going to have time travel. This could also explain why the zone was scrapped so quickly with very little work done on it. Of course, that's all speculation, and Brenda Ross didn't seem to remember anything about it either. The last time they even touched HPZ was before the mappings on the monitors were changed, so Sonic 1UPs from S1 appeared as Tails 1UPs, a la Nick Arcade GHZ. That mappings change was already made by the NA build, and the Tails 1UP remained unchanged along with the rest of the object and ring layout in the final, indicating that the garbled mess HPZ is by far the oldest remnant of very, very early builds that still remains in the final ROM. Regarding the music in HPZ, if you consider that the unused level select icon for HPZ was put in very late in development, after the zone was scrapped, the same could very well be the case with the music. Music track #10 was likely set to HPZ when SEGA got around to putting the right music tracks in place for each zone.
I always thought 2p Mystic Cave was absolutely perfect for Dust Hill, and track#10 perfect for Hidden Palace... although I do realize I'm opening a can of worms here :v:
I remember posting on the old Area51 message board back in 2000 that I thought Hill Top's music was originally intended for Dust Hill. .......and got laughed out the place :p
It's also interesting to hear his original demo recording: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aojiXGnnBm8[/youtube]
By the way, 2P Casino Night has a drum intro suspiciously similar to Spring Yard's. Coincidence? You decide! ('cause we're not getting any official explanation anytime soon)
Oh have some fun. I kind of miss speculation threads. Causes no harm. But anywhos, 2P EHZ still bothers me a lot. Also, HPZ's track that actually ends is really still odd to me. I guess we'll never know.
Emerald Hill 2p makes perfect sense to me as Wood Zone. It has a bright cheesy type of melody much like Jungle Zone. Seems like a correlation in theme and intention.
