New Sonic 2 development lore drop - Genocide/Cyber City palette and art!

Edit: Just noticed the image you attached, thought you meant the Pistons and not the Rhonbus mechanic. I always wondered what the intention of that was as even in the Simon Wait build feel notably out of placed and unfinished

 

Not all of the levels. I was looking it over, and I believe Sky Chase, Wing Fortress, and Death Egg may have been conceived after the fact to give the final game a new narrative/ending. They were not finished in the Simon Wai beta either (where Death Egg could've also been a successor/evolution of "Genocide City 2"). In fact, it may be one additional reason why they so quickly ripped off the Death Star Star Wars trope, simply because they needed new ideas and fast, and repurposed the old Sonic 1 JP movie parody commercial concept as a quick final base idea.

 

But Death Egg was not seen on the original time travel maps, which is why I ask... Was Death Egg tied to the generically named "Genocide City 2" per chance? I could see the second one being based on a domed base concept in the future if the name hadn't been officially finalized yet (and thus still a "Death Egg" of sorts, just not in space). How do we know when it was first conceptualized?

 

I don't quite understand the timeline of the life and cancellation of genocide City, look; they decided to use the art of Metropolis again, but repainted, replace some steam-punk parts with more technological ones, and even created digitizer graphics for all this. They created a WHOLE HECKIN' LAYOUT for this level, and.... just didn't insert it? Deleted? This... strange. Well, like, you don't even need to create new graphics (almost), take and repaint the old one, that's it.

Although, it is possible that at that time they already knew that they would reduce the number of levels, and they simply had nowhere to put this level (putting it right after Metropolis is not the best idea). Although it is no less strange that, apparently, they liked the level so much that they decided to make a Metropolis act 3 out of it .... nonsense.

Also, I am more and more intrigued by the prospect that Dust Hill could become just another repainted Emerald Hill ... hehe

 

But wasn't Dust Hill (Mystic Cave) already being implemented by the Simon Wai build of the game? The concept of the level feels too different from Emerald Hill for them to simply make it an asset flip and call it a day.

 

In fact, in the prototype, Simon Wai- Mystic Cave occupies a slot that belongs to Rock World, after Oil Ocean (the name also corresponds to the theme of the level), besides, Dust Hill takes place in the same place as Emerald Hill Top and they could've re-use idea with recoloured actives twice. Plus, there could be a typo in the prototypes, or just a "shuffle" of assets. Or the name could be a placeholder.

 

I just have to wonder how you were supposed to get from Neo Green Hill to Death Egg without a transition like Sky Chase or Wing Fortress. Would Eggman have launched from there and Sonic grabbed on? Or would it just go entirely unexplained?

 

I mean, in Sonic 1 we went from ruins filled with lava to the outskirts of a city to a goddamn underground water dungeon, I wouldn't doubt the assumption that they just couldn't be bothered to make a transition

 

Here's the thing about that though, if Death Egg was in space, that necessitates some kind of explanation for the transition. With Sonic 1 (and all the other vastly different locations in Sonic 2) we can safely assume that Sonic traveled via land and we just don't see his journey from zone-to-zone because there's nothing important or interesting there.

 

I think you're confused. While that diagram does mention the Death Egg, and even a "Neo Death Egg", it places them in the "Present Time is ruined" and "Future is changed again" sections respectively, rather than "The Last Battle in Space", which implies the latter was separate from them. Perhaps it was a Doomsday-esque final boss that was scrapped?

Regardless, your point stands about the Death Egg being conceived when time travel was still planned.

Plus the final levels in both Sonic 1 and 2 have transitions of sorts.

 

I have always just guessed that the big dome hidden away in the mountains was likely the Death Egg, and they wanted they player to wonder what it was for most of the game. Seems fitting.

Cyber City needs more than object art, tiles, and layout. It needs programming of the objects, presumably a unique boss, and whole background (if that wasn't done already) too. Seems simple on the surface, but there might not simply have been enough there to make it "not Metropolis".

 

So I may be stretching it here, and I'll preface with the idea that I've always considered Sonic 3k as a "Sonic 2: Scrapped levels". Looking at Flying battery and it's pallete, and similiarity to Metropolis. It also shares a similiar boss to Wing Fortress. Developers being developers, it would not shock me in the least bit if they reused what was being worked on for Cyber City as a boss, in the last minute added level being Wing Fortress. In fact, Flying Battery seems to be a combination of Wing Fortress and Metropolis in general. I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of what Wing Fortress has, may have originally been objects programmed for Cyber City. Considering how long of planning, programming, and thought go into levels. You would need to borrow a lot to come up with a new level that late in development. I'm betting a lot of stuff came from the scrapped Cyber City.

 

Also, about boss, would be funny if 2nd phase of Metropolis boss is actually deleted boss of Cyber City, lol

 

I think your idea about Aquis might be correct. Looking at symbol data leftover in the Sonic 2 Nick Arcade prototype, we can see the various labels used for both variants - note their names, seahorse and skyhorse. In particular, the labels seahorseswim, seahorsefloat, and skyhorsefly exist. Even looking at the code, seahorse interacts with the water's position, indicating that it was meant to appear underwater.

Oh, and this discovery about Genocide/Cyber City? Sweet!

 

These things only appear in Metropolis Act 3 don't they? They never struck me as particularly fitting the rest of the Zone art, although I dunno if that's just because of how they're only used in one area.

 

That steam clock is also one of the items that got redrawn for Cyber City in the earlier concept art, right?

Perhaps they made a version of the layout for Cyber City first using Metropolis graphics but then never finished redrawing them and replacing them with updated assets because of time related crunch?