I know it's called Little Planet...but in most of the shots in both the opening AND ending (including the new Origins ones) it looks to me a lot like Death Egg (albeit without Eggman's face) than a planet, and only for like 3 seconds during the ending (just before Sonic stares at it/Eggman goes "Hehehehe" with a Time Stone in his hand depending on the ending) does it look like look like an actual planet. Like, what's the design logic here? Why make it look like Death Egg even if actually isn't?
It's just a metal planet due to Robotnik's take over. While there are a couple of ways I could think of to make it distinctive, that's with the benefit of hindsight on the Death Egg's existence. Basically, it's a metal orb, just like the Death Egg and Death Star, because it's a metal planet. That's the only real resemblance.
Little Planet is weird. I've always interpreted the metal sheet as some sort of abstract visualization of Eggman's takeover, it's not really an actual thing on the planet, because obviously you can see the sky in all the outdoors levels like Palmtree Panic and Stardust Speedway, so it couldn't be an actual thing in universe.
It's not just Little Planet, it's Little Planet AFTER Eggman sets foot inside and set up his generators in the past. You're seeing the bad future as opposed to the good future it normally is. Unclear if it's purely a shell with the planet inside, or if that's just what the crust looks like now. I like to believe it's the crust, and those circle dome things are on top of some of the more natural levels. I don't think the D.A. Garden is actually supposed to be the canonical depiction (you'd be hard pressed to find promotional art that uses anything other than the cutscene/title screen look) but it sure does exist.
The metal cage over the planet is literally just a visual metaphor to explain that the planet is imprisoned or whatever, I think any similarity to Death Egg/Death Star is just coincidence tbh also, since Little Planet was created and appeared first wouldn't it make more sense to say "Death Egg looks like Little Planet" instead of the other way round? lol
I hope I'm not the only one who somehow read this completely differently as a kid. I thought the Earth was drifting away at high speeds while Sonic was trapped on Little Planet. Along with the music (US version), it made me feel really sad for beating the game.
I think the Badniks aren't all just enemies to run into and hurt Sonic. Some of them have functions. Maybe Burrobot was designed to burrow and find minerals/ore to further Robotnik's plans. That being said, it's a world with giant naturally occuring metal bumper balls. Not a stretch to just imagine he nabbed a couple of those.
Could be a coincidence, could be non-coincidental. It's known that Sonic 2 and CD recycled ideas that were thrown around during the Sonic 1 development. Hence why they shared concepts like time travel (initially) and a robotic Sonic. What seems to be a proto-Death Egg can even be seen in this Japanese S1 ad, indicating that the concept predates Sonic 2. I wouldn't be surprised if both the Death Egg and the encased Little Planet were inspired by that ad, or if all three were inspired by concepts proposed during the S1 development.
I know this is not an accurate info, but when I was a kid I thought Sonic would enter to Little Planet into its bad future (intro), go back in time by freeing Amy and the planet itself, to then escape from there (ending). I also assumed time traveling happens just in Little Planet, but as today I still do not know the answer to that.
Considering SCD was developed adjacent to Sonic 2 from a split team it isn't surprising a lot of similar ideas popped up in both and implemented differently. I wouldn't be surprised if a Death Star or small planet idea was talked about early on in prerproduction and it evolved differently from there.
The Death Egg first appeared in Sonic 2, which released on November 24, 1992. Sonic CD launched almost a year later, first in Japan on September 23, 1993.
but was the Death Egg visible in the original release of Sonic 2? I thought it wasn't until Sonic 3 that we actually saw the design of it lol
The death egg (or a precursor to the death egg) also appeared in a Japanese commercial for Sonic 1. I have no idea when this aired tho
Little Planet looked like the death egg to me, i don't know why they decided to make it close to the death egg, also, here is one thing : Sonic CD and Sonic 2 were developed by different teams, but why is the slicer in CD? did the team look at a sonic 2 preview and then put it in? both of the teams wanted to make sure they arent doing the same thing.
Somehow, each team was capable of trading intel of the games. I think there was even something about Metal Sonic due to that. But I'm not sure about it, someone else here may know better.
