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

Now that you mention it, that part always reminded me of the R2 FMV. Mainly because both have the "ruins reclaimed by nature" look, coupled with the similar color palette and atmosphere. Granted, R2 wasn't a post-apocalyptic NY

 

That's me told


(though just illustrates the point that things get lost on forums and Twitter and should be archived on the wiki)

 

It’s worth mentioning that the 6290 Mix was also in a promotional video for Sonic CD around that time. Apparently from the Sega Video Magazine:

I’ve heard about this too, however I think this has been misinterpreted. I’m assuming you mean the Bad Future track when you wrote “B” Mix right? According to the actual tweet where you may have gotten this information from, Nishimura says that “Crazy Toy Box” could be heard in the present version of the track instead:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210219145924/https://twitter.com/Mazin__/status/106945917223047169
When translated via DeepL he says:

Nishimura only mentions the bad future track because he was commenting on a trailer for the 2011 version of CD that used it. Then he mentions the fact that the present version is the one where that can be heard.
The short URL that is in the post now leads to a dead link but luckily it was saved by the Wayback Machine.
bit.ly/n3YAto = Archived page
I think that "Crazy Toy Box" can be heard right at the beginning (at 0:05) of the present track if you listen carefully.

By the way, I used the Twitter Advanced Search again to comb through any other posts where Nishimura talks about R2 and it looks like someone recently asked him about whether the angel statue was reused from R2. He responded but completely avoided answering the question by saying unrelated things much to the user's disappointment:
https://twitter.com/Mazin__/status/1545394294449909760

https://archive.ph/1LAyP
Is he just tired of getting asked this question especially since his initial post wasn't even talking about anything Sonic related? Was he just doing a little trolling? I mean if he didn't want to acknowledge this question he wouldn't have responded at all in the first place.

 

Isn't the D.A. Garden theme a little undercooked compared to other stage themes? I mean, it feels like it'd need a couple more melodies and ad-libs there to fit in with the rest. The more directly comparable theme would be Collision Chaos Good Future, which has a similar style -- and, very distinctly, has melodies on top of the ever-present synth riff, which the D.A. Garden theme doesn't have.

As-is, I feel inclined not to believe every single tune was composed, recorded and finished before everything else. But maybe that's just me.

 

I think, Crazy Toy Box was unused, because... C'mon, just listen: CTBZ...
Mad! Crazy Toy Box Zone looks too long...
About all with R2, I think it's like all about Dust Hill; we can belive in developers says, but it can be unreliable, because of the passage of years...

 

Do we know any other early zone names besides Salad Plain and Crazy Toy Box?

 

Crazy Toybox is shorter than all names in the final game. Just use a monospaced font and compare:

Crazy Toybox
Palmtree Panic
Collision Chaos
Tidal Tempest
Quartz Quadrant
Wacky Workbench
Stardust Speedway
Metallic Madness

They probably changed the name because:

• they decided to use standardize all names to use the same starting letter (PP/CC/TT etc)
• the name stopped reflecting how the final stage turned out (it's only toy-related in the Good Future)

 

@YuTwo Huh, that is some really funky gameplay. I would have reconsidered some of that footage for a teaser to build hype, perhaps time was short. Anyway, yeah I meant the bad future, and it looks like you may have been right in what Nishimura said. However, I also wonder... the present time vocoder is only saying "1, 2, 3" to the best that my ear can pick up, and I even isolated the bass out of the track just to be sure.

I can check with the "B" Mix, but even there, the only part that could possibly say "Crazy Toy Box" is the line jokingly referred to online as "grab the onions", as the the other two are from the Zero-G Datafiles disc IIRC (at least "in the mix" is).

As for the way he's acting by the end of that tweet thread, honestly, I don't envy any authors and creators of popular works, even back in the old days of email. Arguably, it comes with the territory, but I imagine it gets real old to be hounded by the digital paparazzi. It's like when the MJ sound team started to get agitated over being asked Sonic 3 questions, or further back with the western STI branch getting burnt out on being asked about Sonic 2. To be honest, even when I suggested contacted Ogata, I didn't mean that lightly, but I do trust users of this forum to be a lot more responsible when it comes to things like that. Most of the time. Some of the time.

This is something I think about a lot, as I've had it in my head that this was repurposed music for a really long time. It's a bit hard to reconcile because it doesn't quite feel like a full song like Collision Chaos and Tidal Tempest. Ogata's other work, however, Wacky Workbench, would be comparable. WW is essentially a (Detroit?) techno/house track and that's all there is to it, which might be why fans gravitate towards the "P" Mix instead. I'm only stating this because at least precedent exists in one way or another. Only one guy knows for sure, though.

And since it was brought up, I think the round names were changed simply because they came across as really Nintendo or generic platformery, like out of Zool or something, and didn't have the "cool sound" that I imagine was expected after Sonic the Hedgehog. That said, I am curious about the rest, namely the previous name for Collision Chaos.

 

Huh, you're right. The Wacky Workbench music is a little less sophisticated than the rest. I'd say the Good Future is even less so than the D.A. Garden theme itself. So it might as well be the final version. I was going to bring up how it wraps for the loop in a strange place, but everything in Sonic CD does that.

 

There used to be a list of early level names (albeit, not as early as Salad Plain and Crazy Toybox) that had names like Final Fever (no, I'm not talking about the port), Stardust Zone, etc. I can't find this anywhere. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Not 100% sure how this helps the R2 discussion other than it provides an insight into how some things were named.

 

I wonder if the current iteration of D.A Garden's theme was changed from when it was going to be utilized for R2.
If we're to assume R2 took place largely underground based on the Origin's development map for CD, then the bird noises present in the song would be out of place; you wouldn't normally find birds underground lol. Perhaps there was another iteration of the song when it was used for R2 without the bird noises and ambience?

 

I imagine it would only have had parts underground like Marble Zone, which it was inspired by.

 

The first part could've been in a forest, with you eventually going underground.

The underground forest trope is a thing too.

It's also possible the bird noises were added later once it became the theme of Little Planet.

 

This. This is exactly what I was thinking: What if the whistling theramin and stuff was just for the underground R2 (as maybe the forest theme hadn't been decided yet), and the bird sounds were just added to the beginning of the track after it was being repurposed into D.A. Garden?

To add to this, not many of the other tracks have "beginning of track SFX". There's one level theme with factory sirens near the beginning, but that's really it.

 

Oh...
I thought, it written separately, lol
I agree with the fact that it was removed because of these reasons

I don't sure...
If was something officially- we would have known. Maybe it was mistake/hoax/or something?
Also, Final Fever aperance in D.A. Garden

 

Final Fever is the official name for the Final boss track in the DA Garden.

 

I think it's long-forgotten knowledge, because I don't see even a hint of this on the Retro wiki. But there was at least one magazine that printed the zone names, except the names were just a little different, and they weren't alliterative. Palmtree Hill might have been another? It's possible I'm wrong about Final Fever though.

Unfortunately, I can't do a web search without a litany of Sonic Mania, CD remake, Generations -- among others -- popping up. I bet there's an oldbie that knows exactly what I'm referring to.

Whether those names are correct or not, I of course could never confirm that as we don't have prototypes with those names. But they definitely existed in print!

 

I know TV Tropes had (maybe still does) a listing about Palmtree Hill. I can only find a reference to there being a list at one point, not the original list. Says the list was a post on a forum, which was probably Sonic Area 51? The fact Dust Hill is thrown in makes it seem like it could have just been fake.

Palmtree Hill Zone(Palmtree Panic)
Chaos Collision Zone(same name, but 'chaos' and 'collision' are switched around)
Dust Hill Zone(Quartz Quadrant?)
Star Dust Zone(Stardust Speedway)
Metallic Workbench(Wacky Workbench/Metallic Madness)
End Zone - Final Boss(Metallic Madness)

https://www.angelfire.com/retro/mecha_sally/database/videogames/secrets/s2secret.html

 

Someone brought this up in a server and well......
Seems like the secret room has nothing to do with R2 what's so ever : O
https://twitter.com/vertekins/status/1547774932230098944?s=20&t=tMIaqEiB80J31cLWzaiYSA

 

Though I will note on the Retro Wiki, it states the concept art for the Eggman face chaining little Planet next to Never Lake is said to be the background for the final boss. Was there ever any elaboration if that was meant to be about Final Fever?