Hirokazu Yasuhara revealing all kinds of Sonic development stuff

I need lessons on how to quote on a forum :specialed: so I'll just throw raw replies:

- I wasn't trying to fit Sonic 1 zones in different time zones other than present, just giving them locations if they didn't appear in these maps.

- Zones in the same place but different time zones still occupy an extensive area to allow showing different yet neighboring areas.

- My goal with the Dust Hill issue was trying to find an unified theory. Anyway, I forgot the snowy level, I might try to fit it in other moment.. About the level slots, I wasn't too happy suggesting it, but it woulnd't be that bad if they added Mystic Cave a bit later than other levels and misplaced it once they had changed the plot.

EDIT: ICEKnight replied while I was writing, so I'm adding this:
- Dust Hill as a cave and Mystic Cave as part of the Hill family makes sense to me too, but the ashen meadow sounded better and there was still another Rock World pending. Ruined Rock World could be the snowy place, as there's a mountain replacing the sandy sink. People pointing at the desert and validating it as Dust Hill still bugs me, though, so I tied all the polemic elements as well as I could.

- Marble would be between the lake and the pyramid, to fit together the greek/roman theme and the lava, which could have overflooded at the dawn of the island's ancient civilization, a bit like Pompeii.

- I located Spring Yard near Rock World but not to replace it, just searching a spot that fitted. The desert in the present and the big rock in the past are on different locations, and I used that. It's good to place it there also to leave it near Casino Night, as if it was connected to it.

- I know the vegetation from Jungle and Wood in the same forest seems odd, but Jungle takes place on the river shore and Wood has catwalks atop the trees with no ground to be seen, so there may be a suitable explanation for that all.

 

Ah, okay. Makes more sense for the S1 zones to be solely in the present, anyway, though I was pretty much on board regardless.

I can see that placement of Marble Zone fairly well. That also seems like a pretty solid position for Spring Yard.

 

Don't get me wrong, it would make sense for Dust Hill to be a burnt and devastated Emerald Hill (or something else that we can think of, derived from that name) and, depending on how you see it, it may or may not make sense for it to be a mine level under the crumbling hill but, as of now, the evidence that we do have is that Mystic Cave was called "Dust Hill" in the prototypes, and they kept doing it after rearranging the level select screen. This may or may not turn out to be correct in the end but, this is not just an assumption, it's backed up with very tangible evidence and thus it's all we have to go with for now.

The "maybe this and this happened" statements are just thin air, and old memories in interviews are usually good hints for putting the pieces together while we don't have access to the stuff they were trying to remember but, when those memories seem to conflict with what we have in front of our noses, it may also be a good thing to start discarding some possible "false alarms" that don't actually have any solid proof behind.

 

The problem is that the evidence we have even contradicts itself in some aspects so it isn't enough to go anywhere. Ignoring or discarding the parts that doesn't work in our assumptions or using the same type of evidence we refuse to use only when it matches our version is just as wrong.

Two coincidences doesn't make a truth. Unless there is definitive proof they will remain as that, coincidences. Until then trying to fill that gap will be always a theory, and not a proof.

And that is what everyone is doing here, theorize and search for clues that can be proof in the future, when we have more information. Right now we don't have enough regarding that level.

 

But how? You have to back up claims like this with something, or you'd be trying to disprove actual facts (Dust Hill is a mine level in the prototypes) with speculation.

We're theorizing because it helps connect the dots, but we can't just erase the dots that we already have to make our own fit in the picture.

 

Here's another Sonic 1 sketch:



Also, footage of Hirokazo's presentation (which is of course in Japanese) has been uploaded to youtube. Starts from about 4:50



Apparently an English version will be available soon.

 

None of the developers connected the name "Dust Hill" with Mystic Cave, and at least one of them outright rejected Mystic Cave.

 

And that's exactly the endless loop I wanted to stop, but failed to. Time to make the "Sonic 2 Origin" fan game/hack and include as many alternative routes in it as theories we can find.

 

Or, maybe now it's more like "man with half the facts in heated debate with man with same facts but different interpretations".

 

Well... There is no cave entrance in the maps. Can't be a level located under GHZ (the area is gone from the top to the sea). Other areas collapsed too (all of the past areas it seems). The developers were already introducing changes when the betas listed it in the level select (Neo Green Hill). "Dust" doesn't make too much sense for a cave, not even for Japanese people, and "Hill" has been always an outdoor troupe. And then we have the testimonies of the developers that can't be 100% accurate, but still can give us clues.

I don't say it isn't a possibility, what I say is that we don't have any definitive proof, instead the evidence is contradictory. So at least in my opinion the best is to wait. Any path can lead us to a wrong conclusion.


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I noticed something in the timeline pic, but I can't post pics. If you look the Death Egg isn't there in the normal present, appears for the first time in the past with a new mountain in the right side, dissapears in the ruined present when the text was said to mean Eggman "escaped somewhere" and it seems to come back for the past revisit with a few vertical lines that could be implying... It fell again between two mountains. Sonic & Knuckles?

Also there is a dot around where the pyramid and Metropolis should be, then it turns into what seems a cross, and dissapear or move to the mountains near Blue Lake/Woods Zone location (to the left). The dot remains there for the rest of the small drawings.

 

How does dust not make sense in a mine.

 

Dust Hill is a terrible name for Mystic Cave, but also as bad as Neo Green Hill for Aquatic Ruin, I mean... it's ruined, how can it be neo?

 

Its neo because GHZ became ruined? so Aquatic Ruin became Sonic's new home? It's green and lush. XD XD XD

 

I mean, if Aquatic Ruins were meant to be the new Green Hill, then just imagine how fucked upthe original green hill was.

 

That's what native English and Japanese speakers say. In the case of the Japanese seems it is used more for garbage or stuff from natural origin deposited or moved by air (ashes, dirt, sand, snow)...

 

While I'm personally torn with what to associate with Dust Hill (burned Green Hill, or Mystic Cave), Montblanc's friend, and I thought another member's friend LukyHRE's friend, confirmed that
??? meaning "dust" explicity does not refer to coal dust. I don't speak Japanese, nor do I know any native speakers to further clarify though.

[Edit] Well it appears that it was Master Emerald who had also done a thing on that:

 

If the plan was for the desert level shown in the mockup to undergo a palette swap to become a snow level in its second act as implied in interviews, I can see why it would be called Dust Hill. It would be referring to two types of dust, sand and snow, as someone suggested in this thread. The notion of the game having two desert zones (Sand Shower and Dust Hill) would come off as less strange in that case, as one would be a standard desert level, and the other a desert/snow hybrid level.