Sonic CD's Mysterious Cut R2 Level Discussion - Post Origins Edition

It's hard to make out exactly what is going on in the Little Planet picture there, but instinctually it reminds me of a construction site with some clouds of pollution above. Just look at those platforms. Are they not suggestive of steel beams?

Also, I'm not sure I need to point this out, but just in case anyone hasn't noticed it...

R1 - Similar to GHZ
R2 - ?
R3 - Similar to SYZ
R4 - Similar to LZ
R5 - New concept
R6 - New concept
R7 - Similar to SLZ
R8 - Similar to SBZ

So that alone is strongly suggestive to the idea that R2 would have been similar to MZ in some ways.

 

i’m speculating, but pieces of R2 were seemingly reused in other stages, like that random statue in Wacky Workbench, which maybe is related. Also, that underground section kind of reminds me of Tidal Tempest, which had fans underwater, no? The drawing also reminds me of GHZ’s caves from the Master System version of Sonic 1.

Here’s the background of Tidal Tempest Bad future.



and here’s the fan on the right:


Again, it’s speculation, but if I had to guess, small pieces of R2 were incorporated into other stages like Tidal Tempest.

The underground portion of the R2 on-planet sketch basically looks like Tidal Tempest to me.

 

To me, it seems like totem poles of some kind. Since it's just a low-detail sketch, however, it's hard to say anything definitively. And on lava - maybe it would've been time period specific? Bad Future has lava (maybe due to Eggman mining the place to hell and back), present is dry like in the animation, good future/past has water - and in the good future it would be that rainbow water we see in the concept art. That would be a cool progression of sorts.

 

I feel the Origins concept art makes it even clearer that R2 would have been based on Marble Zone, with underground areas.

Anyway, the antlion badnik was considered for Metallic Madness after R2 was scrapped. The infamous spike pits there seem to be leftover of sandpits planned for the badnik. Some SCD prototypes even had trap doors over them that opened when you stepped on them, making it work closer to the planned sandpit gimmick.

 

Aren't all of the ending shots based heavily on the present environments? Even the ones depicting things in the boss stages, which only take place in a future, depict the present.







TIL the img upload limit per post is 10. R8-MM is green with reddish/pink details like in the present.

 

Marble Zone had blanketed clouds originally, perhaps that's what the clouds a top are showing. Also worth pointing out -- those clouds seem to be someone's penciled in notes, not part of the original image, which was printed on a printer.

Another thing to wonder about -- at their earliest stages, Sonic 2 GG and Sonic CD were part of the same project. They have vestigial weird connections, like You Can Do Anything being in both games. Sonic CD's R2 animation shows an antlion that looks similar to the boss to underground zone. Maybe Underground zone itself gives some clues about what the level was like? That pit with the fan at the bottom kind of reminds me of the pit you fall into in act 3 of Underground Zone.

 

The team at TOEI surely had concept art of stages given them by the team. Let's hope it will leak in the future, or maybe in some other Sonic collections.

 

Considering what we know, I've began mentally calling this zone Radiant Ruins. To both keep the R2, alliteration and to bring to mind the rainbows and ruins aesthetic that it seems to have had going on.

 

Isn't this a bit of a stretch, thought? I mean, we know there are similarities, but its first time I heard that CD and Sonic 2 GG were part of the same project.

I don't want to discredit what You wrote by any means, but do we have any evidence of this?

I mean, yeah - the badnik is similar, but it could be pure confidence, and sharing songs composers between games was pretty common within one company, at least I believe it was.

 

I think they meant MD, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive) was once the same game as Sonic the Hedgehog CD. Both spun off wildly from one another.

 

All 3 games were simultaneously announced as different versions of Sonic 2, handled by 3 different teams. Just like how Sonic CD took off in a wildly different direction, so did Sonic 2 8-bit. It all stems from this: https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2_CD

you can see traces in their genesis as sister projects from extremely broad concepts, like Metal Sonic being a thing. From the way we know how Sonic 1 8-bit was developed -- where very early on Yuzo Koshiro was shared broad outlines about where Sonic 1 MD was going and then they diverged, it would stand to reason that Sonic 2 8-bit followed a similar development path.

It's the same composer. Naofumi Hataya composed music for both Sonic 2 8-bit, and Sonic CD. It's why Metallic Madness Zone bad future has a bit from the game gear version of the boss theme.

Sonic 2 8-bit shares more than just a song with Sonic CD, though. All the level-art sprites of Sonic in the game, for example, are from Sonic CD, not Sonic 2 or Sonic 1.

 

The sketch certainly evokes feelings of Marble Zone, since the zone flows are generally:

1. Start on the surface
2. Descend
3. Return to the surface

 

Mazin has mentioned it was the present theme, iirc

 

Yep

https://twitter.com/mazin__/status/1446260362391678981?s=21

 

Also from Sonic Origins: https://info.sonicretro.org/images/1/12/SonicCD_MCD_Development_Amy2.png

 

I think the idea of reusing art originally intended for R2 is plausible. Has anyone from the team behind Sonic CD commented on whether there was ever level art made for R2 or not?

That page on the supposed Sonic 2 CD is chalk full of speculation and not grounded in any hard evidence. I am not aware of any developer saying definitively that Sonic CD was originally a version of Sonic 2. Anyone who did suggest Sega CD was getting a Sonic 2 port may have simple been misinformed. That's the kind of stuff we used to believe 20 years ago.

 

There's a lot of evidence of such a project existing, including from Sega Visions, SoA's own official magazine.

It was almost certainly not the Japanese-made Sonic CD though.

 

Oh, I see.
Well, maybe there is a bit of R2 in Underground Zone then. After all, ideas gets often thrown between people and get reused. Still I believe it to be more of a coincidence than anything.