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Hirokazu Yasuhara revealing all kinds of Sonic development stuff

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by TimmiT, May 22, 2017.

  1. It's interesting how the levels are totally different to their other time counterparts, unlike CD. Olympus might have turned into Aquatic Ruin thinking about it, the columns in the map sorta look like the ones in ARZ.
     
  2. kazblox

    kazblox

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    Strangely, the start of the zone as seen in the original Green Hill Zone 1 sketch looks more close to the final more than it does in the CES presentations, due to the lack of that additional platform with two hills:

    Was this a later sketch or were they experimenting with the level flow?
     
  3. XCubed

    XCubed

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    The timing on this could not have been any more perfect! I'm wondering what Mania will be incorporating from this.

    What a happy day. The Sonic 2 time travel aspect was a theory full of rotten swiss cheese until today. Instead of each Zone having 3 acts and 4 timezones within each, they decided to give each area it's own zone depending on the time....very interesting. Back to work for me....then later my recreation of Green Hill Zone Act 2 music. :ssh:

    If this became reality everyone would say how much cleaner the time travel aspect was done in Sonic CD. We'd have a whole new level of fan base rivalry.
     
  4. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    This is really significant.



    Here's an obvious thing we missed - Hill Top Zone. It has dinosaurs and volcanos, and yet I don't think anyone made the connection that it might be Emerald Green Hill Zone in the past.

    I have my doubts about Hidden Palace being this "Olympus" stage though - my thinking is it was always meant to be some sort of secret ("hidden") level - something you might find in this so-called "ruined present" where there apparently aren't many other levels.

    i.e. it's the future of Olympus. And if it's true that Hidden Palace in Sonic 3 was built on Sonic 2's ideas... maybe that was Olympus. Or maybe they were going to re-do Marble Zone.


    Here's two questions:

    - Where is mystic cave?
    - What are the chances of "blue lake" becoming the Never Lake in Sonic CD?
     
  5. DigitalDuck

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    Likely a concept invented later, like Sky Chase/Wing Fortress (also not in concept art).

    I'd argue it's more likely Blue Lake became Azure Lake, and Dust Hill became Desert Palace. It would surprise me if they didn't reuse the scrapped levels in some form.
     
  6. Chainspike

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    It's likely Mystic cave wasn't even a concept yet until it quickly replaced Dust Hill. I was thinking "Blue Lake" was an inspiration for Azure Lake in Sonic 3, but that's just me.
     
  7. Devon

    Devon

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    Regarding Mystic Cave, if you look at the Sonic 2 Simon Wai proto, you can see how incomplete it was. The 1992 Tokyo Toy Show, where the proto was shown off, took place in early June 1992. The game was released in November of 1992.

    I guess before the toy show, they knew they were running out of time, so they started to come up with other concepts and stuff to replace the old concepts they had, since they wouldn't have the time to properly implement it, so Mystic Cave replaced Dust Hill and they discontinued Hidden Palace and Wood Zone and other crap.
     
  8. DigitalDuck

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    I don't think Olympus is Aquatic Ruin precisely because of its position in the data - Aquatic Ruin seems to have been tacked on the end of the list (second to last, before Sky Chase), and certainly isn't where the other zones in its era would be, so it probably postdates this concept (although you're right that the Neo Green Hill Zone would suggest that the time travel concept was still in play).

    Looking at the map again, Rock World Zone is in both the past and the (second) present. If you go around the map clockwise from the warp point, it'd be the last zone in the past, and then probably the first zone in the second present. Hidden Palace Zone was pretty rocky, too.

    I've changed my mind, I think Rock World Zone was Hidden Palace.
     
  9. JaredAFX

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    So from what I'm understanding, the Sonic 2 team also had an idea of time travel (which we knew previously but not to this degree), but instead of going to past/present/future versions of the same stage a la CD, the stages themselves were going to change depending on the era? That's very interesting. THAT'S something I'd like to see implemented (well) in a game today, it doesn't even have to be Sonic (I guess Chrono Trigger kind of already did it. Maybe that's why it's the best game ever :specialed: )
     
  10. Beltway

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    This is really incredible stuff. The time-travel stuff is very neat (and arguably opens new boundaries on what we knew before about Sonic 2's dev history), but I'm more intrigued on the pre-Sonic 1 level design sketches. The spiked see-saw is an interesting twist on branching paths, in that you could actually get injured if you're not fast enough to take the lower route. Meanwhile the collapsing log bridge, with the logs rolling down to the hidden gate, is a great example of having the player's interaction with gimmicks allude to the existence of level secrets that are hidden in plain sight. The logs being stacked together in front of the gate also looks like it's blocking access to the gate off, which (if that was the intent, I am not sure) would also be an example of the player's interaction with gimmicks affecting the existing level design / available level routes.

    Yasuhara really knows / knew his stuff in terms of keeping the level design interactive and engaging, hopefully he has more sketches of those to share.
     
  11. steveswede

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    In all honesty the only indication that time travel is happening is through cutscenes. As cool as it sounds, Sonic CD is the better of the two as it's dynamic. Alpha Sonic 2 time travel is linear by the looks of it.

    Also I hope we get some proper pictures of these for archiving.
     
  12. Jassbec

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    This got me thinking, could it be that Sonic 2 SMS/GG was influenced by this state of Sonic 2's development?
    There's a few connections that could be made such as Blue Lake = Aqua Lake, Rock World = Underground, the inclusion of Green Hill, etc.
    Might be a bit of a stretch though.

    Tpot from the Overture Team pointed out that if you overlap all of the locations on the same map they kind of fit the level order, even resembling the final order, which suggests to me they might have still used the map for reference to some extent even later in development. I'm gonna quote what he said.
    [​IMG]

    "With this map, I took name tags from some of the zones from the 4 time periods and put them all on one map.
    This shows that the order of the zones in the final game, still make sense.

    Olympus is like an ancient rome city surrounded by water.
    Aquatic ruins is like ancient rome ruins in the middle of a lake or river.
    So it makes sense that Aquatic Ruins are the ruins of Olympus.

    Now Mystic Cave isn't on these maps, and has no similar zones.
    But it was added closer to the end of the development, way after these maps would have been made.
    But I have many reasons why Mystic Cave would be the thick forest area around Warp Point (Which is clearly hidden palace).
    1. Mystic Cave's 2P music was intended for Hidden Palace
    2. In the Sonic 2 Manual it refers to Mystic Cave as a forest
    3. The boss of Mystic Cave is a drill, that same Sonic 2 Manual says that Eggman is "digging for Chaos Emeralds"
    4. The Taxman remake of Sonic 2 has Hidden Palace accessible from Mystic Cave
    5. Mystic Cave has kind of a "supernatural" theme, it's like a weird mystical underground forest"


    Fascinating stuff regardless though, for real.
     
  13. Knucklez

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    So from what we've known from the Protos and now what we see with these sketches, correct me if I'm wrong but could they have intended to bring back GHZ? Cause it seems an awful lot like it considering how long they kept it around during development. And the similarities to the 8-bit S1 map are pretty close.

    Wouldn't that mean Sonic 2 would've been set on South Island again, but rather in other areas on another side of it (also across time)? It's obviously been Westside Island since release but still, just a thought.
     
  14. Montblanc

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    But it's not in the "bad future" map, and it wouldn't make too much sense when the rest of the Zones around are based in technology and cities, while ARZ has clean water and lots of vegetation. Wait, the maps mention a lake, and Olympus is surrounded by water.

    By the way... What about Winter Zone?
     
  15. Now I don't think this has confirmed yet, but how were we able to time-travel? Via Chaos Emeralds? Remember Naka said that if you accumulated all seven emeralds you'll be teleported to HPZ. Was that also how to go back in time?
     
  16. DigitalDuck

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    I don't see how that follows on from what I said at all.

    I never said Aquatic Ruin was on the future map. I said I don't think any of the levels shown are Aquatic Ruin, with it being something that was thought up after these concepts were drawn (e.g. maybe they had the idea that after defeating Eggman in Genocide City, you destroy his time machine and the world reverts to a good future, Neo Green Hill).

    Given that the rest of the zones work roughly in order, it doesn't make sense that Olympus was put in after all the others. It also wouldn't make sense to call a zone that's in an earlier time period and a different place than Green Hill Zone, "Neo Green Hill Zone".
     
  17. Mastered Realm

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    Oh MY GOD. So traveling to hidden palace would be the way he time travelled.

    He touched the emerald, and a cutscene followed..

    Geez!
     
  18. Montblanc

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    Sorry, I misread what you wrote about the level order and mixed it up with the list Black Squirrel posted before where Neo Green Hill (0F) should be in the bad future timeline.
     
  19. Yeah, that makes sense. Redrawn to fit S3's art style.

    Sega should really do a dump of all Sonic proto artwork, that would be a treasure trove of wonder
     
  20. GeneHF

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