Hirokazu Yasuhara revealing all kinds of Sonic development stuff

I thought this was already resolved in a thread like 10 years ago. Dust Hill is the Desert level.

Edit: @Knuklez or you could call it an evolution? For me, the way S2 ended up is perfect - I'm glad it was kept so simple.

 

And now, 10 years later, we're discussing some new info reveals that seem to contradict that affirmation.

 

Sonic 2 from the outside is simple and stands on its own very well. It seems to have the most on the cutting room floor because they seemed to have envisioned more than they could do to follow up with a massive sequel to the world sensation that was Sonic 1. So 3K collectively redeemed concepts they couldn't put into 2. I think 3K was more a testiment to the team's hard work and dedication despite the time constraints.

S2 evolved but had to get cut up and pieced together the best it could.

 

Yes I know, and connected to Green Hill. I'm not theorising, just saying that we can assume anything an early document says as definitive for the entire development since the game was rushed and it was changed way more than we thought before, especially after the time travel idea was scrapped.

 

Well, it doesn't really, since the new info suggests Dust Hill is Green Hill in a different time zone. Not Mystic Cave. But we'll agree to disagree, unless I have misunderstood you

 

What I'm wondering is where the winter level is, on here. The closest I could think of a match would be Blue Lake Zone, which is a rather awkward fit. Then again, we also have Genocide City and Dust Hill as names, so

Dust Hill definitely isn't the desert level, but my only snag with it being Mystic Cave Zone is that the level doesn't really give off the vibe of being a futuristic Green Hill in any way. Granted, maybe MCZ looked more GHZ-ish earlier on, and after the time travel concept got dropped, was reworked to stand out more as its own level.

 

The only info we have about the "winter level" is that it wasn't its own level but a mid-level palette change in the desert, which added christmas trees.

We have a desert level called Sand Shower now, which is separate from Dust Hill.

 

Honestly, the evidence seems to suggest Mystic Cave is Dust Hill Zone. I mean, I agree that it makes absolutely no sense that they called it Dust Hill Zone, so that's pretty weird. Sure, dust is underground, but the level doesn't deal with dust in any way and 'Cave Zone' or something would make more sense. Mind you, this is the team that named a level Genocide City Zone :v: .

Mind you, it's also possible Dust Hill is separate to Mystic Cave and is a level we have never seen. I think the one thing that seems likely is that 'Desert Zone' is probably 'Sand Shower'.

There's other ways I think Mystic Cave could be connected to Green Hill. What if Mystic Cave was supposed to be the caves in the hills seen in the background of Green Hill Zone? Pure speculation mind you.

In fact, I think we should be careful generally trying to tie the level art to whatever plot/time travel shenanigans Sonic Team had going on. I think it's unlikely that the artists had any idea of the art's role in the plot. In fact, Craig Stitt told me in my interview with him that Hidden Palace's art was based on geometric shapes he looked at. He didn't say it had anything to do with what Sonic Team wanted in term of plot etc:

"I wanted to do something 'crystalline' in nature. The color palette was left up to me. The crystalized look did not have anything to do with gameplay or story. All the 'power crystal' stuff came after I was no longer working on Sonic.

The big problem was creating a crystalline pattern that would repeat without looking too much like wallpaper. Also I needed to come up with a way of doing the classic Sonic loops and slides. Made even more complicated since some of them needed to have running water. I can't remember what the 'super tiles' were really called, nor do I remember how many of these 'super tiles' I was allowed, but it was not very many. Fortunately you could flip and rotate the tiles for 'free'. Back in the days of 'cartridge' based games, it was all about memory limits!

I'm trying to remember what I used for inspiration. I believe I saw a stylized painting of geometric rocks/shapes and the was 'springboard' for the general look of the gold colored rock. By far the hardest part of that level was the far background. I don't remember how many backgrounds I tried but it was a lot. Color and size limitations were REALLY tight on the background. Plus Sonic, the enemies, and everything else had to stand out. I'm never was completely happy with the background I ended up using, but I was out of time."

Of course, he was pretty confused about the role of the Chaos Emeralds in the story, soo :v:

 

What does this have to do with anything said?

How do you explain why Hidden Palace (scrapped by now) is listed on the level select in Beta 4 then?

Have you forgotten what ideas and concept art are?

Mystic Cave looks absolutely nothing like Green Hill. It doesn't even bare any resemblance to the underground Green Hill zone sections in the MS/GG version.

Mid-level palette change? Where does this information come from?

 

It seems weird to put in snow in a level that's called "Sand Shower". Like sure, you have weird names like Genocide City but that can be chalked up to awkward translation.

That's a fair point Laura, though it's strange that the artists weren't told anything about the plot when doing the level art...that seems like something you'd wanna make clear to make the time travel plotline make sense. Maybe the artists didn't actually start doing the levels until after the idea was dropped?

 

Trying to use some common sense here Mystic Cave as Dust Hill makes no bloody sense at all. The name itself is more than enough evidence for me. You even have the dried up Green Hill Zone backdrop in the mock ups.

'Dust' as in dried up, scorched land. It's pretty obvious to me. Not dust as in human skin & shit you clean with a hoover and find in a cave. Can you even get dust in a cave? I though it was just moist slime and gunk. Never heard of a cave being dry, unless it's in a DESERT :v:

 

This thread is starting to feel like "man with half the facts in heated debate with man with none of the facts".

I wanna chime in and say all the concept art here is really inspiring. It's certainly interesting in terms of learning more about Sonic 2's development history, but it's also really cool to look at and study on its own.

 

I don't know what's so confusing about Dust hill , and all the debate ,If you look on the Map labeled "now 2", and look at the environment compared to all the other maps, than Dunst hill is on the map with all the bad broken looking stuff, and in the same location as green hill and hill top lol Who knows what dust hill may have looked like. We can only guess, that it may have been the screen shown in magazines so many years back and try to make a connection. But I think that until we get some kind of proof from one of the team members, than we are Crap out of luck.

So I think right now, a lot of us are going back and forth, and on and on, It's kinda going no where. Because a lot of what is being said is purely conjecture. But hey at least we know that Dust hill existed at one point.
I think that we should all leave it at that for now until the next drop of info appears,,,,maybe 10 years from now,,, if at all lol ( Sad Face)

Maybe some of you are getting dust hill and sand Shower zone confused? Sand shower is in the rock zone location, Rock zone sounds like mystic cave zone, ( but than again I'm guessing like the rest of you on that aspect)

Alsoooo....Something that caught my eye, If you look at the "now" picture we have desert sand ( where the sand shower label is), and than in "now 2" there is a mountain on top of the sand ( where it says rock world) lol ( a mountain grew out of the sand ? I guess eggman caused some kind of weird stuff to happen XD XD XD)

 

Is this coming up now because of Sonic Forces?

 

So some of you guys are going to outright ignore the facts we're learning from these and previously revealed internal documents and I guess any future ones, okay, point taken.

 

There are pyramids on the map...maybe its possible that there were two desert levels, though that would be silly.

I wish that we had more information, because at this point there are a lot of details that we can't know for sure.

 

Don't take it to heart, we just have different viewpoints on the evidence. I'm not trying to dig you out, I just thought the whole Mystic/Dust thing was solved.

Wasn't the conclusion in the old thread that the names just got swapped out or moved in the level select screen, and that's where the magazines got their names from?

 

That wouldn't explain why they kept the name Dust Hill when they reworked the Level Select screen after Simon Wai's prototype... And assuming that such thing happened would be, well, assuming. =\

 

Don't forget that Hidden Palace zone was still there too.

 

Yes it was. And it led to the actual level, which we know was scrapped very late in development.

What's your point exactly? Please explain.