It's also worth noting: "Desert Zone" is described as being the present time version of "Rock Zone", which would make "Desert Zone" Sand Shower Zone + - and Sonic Forces' Green Hill Zone is Dust Hill Zone Yes, I'm aware of that. We're discussing which of these zones (if any) would've been the winter zone. But we know that it is the mockup shown that has a winter variant, regardless of whether it's Dust Hill Zone or Sand Shower Zone. None of the zones in the same place as either of those two fit a winter scenario.
OMG ! Wow this is quite the pleasant surprise here. I really wish Sega would get the team back together to do a Sonic 2 Directors cut or something now. I wonder, what if Sonic 2 for Sega CD was planned to use unfinished ideas. Seeing these new pieces of concept art makes me hope for an interview or 2 with members from the Sonic 2 team to find out more because these new pieces of concept art conjures up so many new questions. Questions that we can only guess the answers for......Sigh
Here (three posts up from his rant): http://www.headcannon.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=123&p=546&hilit=hidden#p546
So what you're suggested is that both Brenda Ross and Yasuhara misremembered Dust Hill as being the desert level by coincidence? Thanks for the link. I don't see any official confirmation there, though? All I see is Stealth speculating that the theme was intended for cutscenes since it doesn't loop correctly (Um what? How does it loop any differently from the other level BGMs? And since when do cutscenes in Sonic 2 have their own music?), and going on a rant about how it didn't fit the pacing of his reimagined HPZ. From the sounds of it, he didn't bother asking anyone from Sonic Team or Sega about how that track would have been used.
I just saw this for the first time a few weeks ago. Although it looked awesome and rather polished to me, I totally understand where Sega/Sonic Team was coming from. They didn't want the game to look like or have any association with a Fan Hack in which recoloring is a common practice. Plus whenever Sega goes back to an existing boss, it appears that they would like to put their own twist on it, versus an exact replica of a boss (or short cut it for a small nostalgia moment...similar to what happens in Sky Sanctuary and the Sylvania Castle Boss). I do have a great appreciation of the "mechanized" cloned level parts though.
In Masato Nakamura's demo versions, all level songs loop. However, Nakamura's version of track 10 doesn't. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esMyfcVapMU It slows to a stop and ends. This was clearly not written for a level BGM. Well, the cutscenes in question were removed. All that remains is a single cutscene at the end of Wing Fortress, and the ending sequence (which does have its own music). I don't think you can say for sure that cutscenes in Sonic 2 wouldn't have had their own music, when we know most of them were removed anyway.
Oh, I see the point about the looping now that I hear Nakamura's original composition. Still, I don't buy it being intended for a cutscene, as the composition lasts 1:02. Can you see a mid-game cutscene of this type lasting that long in the classic Sonic games? The equivalent cutscenes from Sonic 3 & Knuckles in which the Chaos Emeralds get upgraded to Super Emeralds and you're granted the Hyper Sonic transformation last only a few seconds. How long could it possibly take to show a something similar, except with Super Sonic instead of Hyper and no Super Emeralds? Besides, I don't see how a melancholic sounding tune like that could fit a cutscene in which you get your awesome Super form, but I can see it being used as the BGM of a level with an ancient setting like Hidden Palace. I think it's more likely that the music was intended to loop (just like the actual in-game track), but it would have a proper end that played at some point, possibly when you become Super Sonic for the first time in HPZ and the Super Sonic theme starts playing. This is supported by the fact that the theme is perfectly loopable if you remove the end, unlike with the rest of the songs that have an end. Not to mention the fact that the implemented version of the tune in the game does loop. Think of it like how many game tracks have a beginning, and after that they loop endlessly from a specific point. In this case it would be the other way around: it would loop the whole track except for the last section as you played the level, and when you're about to get Super Sonic, it starts playing the end (well, after the current loop ends, to avoid skipping). Since the first transformation would have happened in a cutscene, they would have been able to time the sequence's length so that it lasts until the BGM stops playing to be replaced by the SS theme.
I regret ever taking that bite. The two interviews had exactly the same problem: the subject was shown a picture of the desert stage and then asked whether or not it was Dust Hill. Both of them likely recognized the picture, and the name "Dust Hill" kind of sounds familiar, so 2 + 2 = yeah, that's probably Dust Hill alright! Do you seriously think ten years after the fact, these people still remember which two words go with which picture? Brenda Ross' interview in particular is infuriating -- you can tell she's apprehensive to calling the stage anything other than "desert level", but in the end ends up shrugging her shoulders so the Sonic kids leave her alone. She probably never even heard the name "Dust Hill" the whole two weeks she was at SEGA, and we shoved it down her throat.
I always felt sonic 3's 2 player mode was based on a scrapped levels or something.. ( although I felt it was always Sonic 3 Scrapped levels lol. The lake level has both water and Oil, and Oil Ocean zone drawn on the map is located where a lake level could have been placed. And the level also has some things in common with both Oil Ocean Zone and Aquatic Ruin Zone. Note the plants hanging in the air and the oil in the screen. Also the background has some plants and mountains similar to Aquatic Ruin.
So Green Hill Zone was going to be transformed into "Dust Hill Zone" thanks to Eggman's meddling with time? That sounds conceptually similar to the sandy Green Hill in Sonic Forces.
I bet that Rock World Zone In the picture labeled "Now 2" could be Sonic 3's endless mine zone. and who knows Mystic cave may have been rock world Zone from the other picture ( I cant see what the picture label says cause its cut off). There were 2 Rock world zones named. Also the graphics match Sonic 2's art style more so than Sonic 3s art style for all of the split screen stages.
Wasn't Super Sonic something they added almost at the end of the development? I remember reading that the player was going to be teleported there to obtain this transformation, but due the lack of time they left the ability unexplained. Perhaps they intended to repurpose the level (that would explain the music change) from a full stage to a simple cutscene. What I really want to know is what is that "hidden" thing the pic says it was neccesary to activate in order to do a time travel. That can tell us if HPZ has something to do with it or not.
I'm quite certain he's not misremembering, because I definitely remember that being said somewhere. Might not have been Naka, but I definitely have read that somewhere before. Though I guess it's possible I heard it from someone on Retro or some other forum, too. Can't seem to figure out where I'm remembering it from. But at the very least he didn't just make it up on the spot, I think.
Balloon park? maybe its based on a version of Carnival night from Sonic 3? lol that one does not seem to fit with sonic 2 at all lol Or perhaps maybe another Scrapped Sonic 2 idea that was thought of another time but not shown in any concept art that we have seen? We may never know, and hell I'm kinda shooting in the dark here , this is all speculation! To Further elaborate on my speculative idea that the Sonic 3's 2 player levels could be based on the sonic 2 Scrapped stages. Below In the picture, the side wall bumpers found in Chrome Gadget zone look like they came from Metropolis Zone from the final build of Sonic 2. So Chrome Gadget zone may have been one version of Genocide City which is in the same location as Metropolis Zone on the map... I also noticed that Both Chrome Gadget and Metropolis Zone both have green and gold colors. It looks to me like, umm Chrome Gadget is a version of MZ that is under construction. MZ also has a wall in the background, which could represent sonic being inside the dome as shown on the map.
The S3 team did use S2 concept art during the S3 level development process, so this theory may not be too far off.
I really have my doubts that Mystic Cave was invented that late into development - while the name might not have been finalised, it seems really odd to me that the level wouldn't exist in some form somewhere. In the Wai prototype, which I'm pretty sure is the first time it was ever seen or mentioned, the level is... "mostly" done. There was a theory that the team put loads of traps at the beginning of the stage to show them off/test them, but uh... it actually has assets. And its own theme tune... not to mention two acts with different layouts. Constrast this with say, Casino Night, which is mentioned in these slides and is completely broken in the Wai build. Obviously it's not definitive as Hidden Palace didn't go anywhere, but I'd say Mystic Cave was probably started before Casino Night at the very least. Maybe even things like Wood Zone. Stages that we can guarantee were rushed into the game towards the end are Sky Chase, Wing Fortress and Death Egg. Death Egg is reusing assets from Chemical Plant and is extremely short. Sky Chase is pretty much empty, and Wing Fortress is... uniquely unpolished and simplistic in its design. It wouldn't take much time to create the latter - the ship itself is one solid colour and there's only one route, and as you can see in the final build, there are non-functioning conveyors and a bit with hooks which serves little purpose at all. Mystic Cave, by contrast, has some of the best art in the game. ... but then it doesn't really look much like a forest either, so I'm not sure what it was meant to be. Rock Zone? ....dunno. p.s. I think the Sonic 3 competition stages are a red herring - they're similar to ideas seen in Sonic 2, but so are many Sonic 3&K stages. Most sandy deserts kind-of look the same.
Good lord, 19 years after we first discover the proto, this changes nearly everything we knew about the game's development. Clearly this explains why so much content was cut and changed. Almost the entire design process for the game was completely changed; when you take that into context, it's actually surprising that as much survived as it did. Someone, someday, needs to create a hack that makes 'this' version of Sonic 2 somehow.
Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but what if "Olympus" is Aquatic Ruin Zone? Or it turned into that eventually? Wasn't it called Neo Green Hill or something at one point?
Something's bugging me. I remembered this post from 2008, and: Where's Cyber City? Wasn't that name included in a sketch, and somehow became accepted as the proper name for Genocide City? Saxman discovered something about the pattern load cues in Wood Zone, where the level explicitly told the game to load Tails' life icon instead of Sonic's. This was a big argument supporting the idea that Wood Zone was an alternate timezone... but these concept art say otherwise. Wood Zone was in the present. Man, nearly then years had passed from that post, and we are still finding new stuff.
