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

Not adding much, but the motif you're thinking of is "Entrance of the Gladiators." It's not 1 to 1, but it definitely has the same feel.

 

Yep. Carnival Night leans harder into the feel too.

 

It was stated in a tweet I posted earlier that the early death egg full zone concept was not planned to recycle Chemical Plant tiles/assets. That too was probably a last second decision done for time limitation reasons.

Although it is interesting that all of the original Death Egg tilesets are also found in the Chemical Plant 128 pixel tiles.



Can anyone extract all the chunks from Simon Wai/Nick Arcade's Proto and see if any of the death egg unique tile chunks were still there? It'd be interesting to see if those chunks were originally developed for CPZ as is, or were implemented late in the game?

And the final map, below here for comparison

 

they aren't there as of simon wai, the tiles were changed in the august pre beta along with the addition of DEZ.

 

Please clarify: August alpha, or September pre-beta?

 

whoops I got the date wrong, my bad. I meant the september pre beta. And it might be worth noting that I used a VRAM viewer to see what tiles CPZ loaded, I haven't combed through the ROM. Does anyone know what type of compression the level art used throughout each proto? Nick Arcade and Simon Wai use Nemesis al la sonic 1 but I don't know when they switched to Kosinski. I might have a stab at going through the actual ROM, someone has looked through it all before no doubt but it'd be stupid to assume we haven't missed anything or something wasn't documented properly.

 

We still want maps and tilesets for all the later Sonic 2 prototypes.

 

I'll see what I can do! :p although I do gotta revise for exams :/

 

It's due COB today. Better get crackin'.

 

Longtime oldbie 'lurker' here -- but having been in the fandom since 2001 (with the old SSRG) I can't tell you how exciting it is to come across such conclusive findings on Cyber City. Not to mention how those early map and time travel concepts directly relate to those levels (and music tracks) we eventually wound up with in the Alpha and Beta development stages of Sonic 2. While I imagine more will become clear, it will be interesting to see whether any (other) elements of the aborted CC wind up in WFZ -- or Metropolis Act 3 for that matter.

Given how arguably rushed/incomplete WFZ was, you do wonder if any other elements (even the boss battle) might have originally come from Cyber City? I've always thought the cockpit area after the boss fight (with all the lights and mechanics tiles) felt like a lot of detailed work for such a benign section of the level. Might any of this stuff been leftover sprites from CC? I guess we'll know more soon!

 

I agree with this as a plausible idea, but don't want to draw conclusions without better evidence. So far, the few sprite sheets we have from CCZ/GCZ don't fully match this style, and neither does stuff from the machine or B-Bomb.

I do think the potential connections between the stage are interesting. And I'm confident like many here that elements and gimmicks from it were recycled elsewhere (beyond just B-Bomb and Spinball), including all the way into S3's Death Egg... but again, I want to study the final release of materials before we make any big conclusions. I'd also prefer if we could find out any potential info on an official zone artist for Wing Fortress (if such a credit even exists). At minimum, someone had to modify Tom Payne's assets if elements were recycled, as he has never mentioned this idea himself.

 

I'm actually still more apt to believe that Wing Fortress is actually Death Egg, and the Death Egg we see is the last minute thrown together part in order to make up for Genocide City.

 

I think there's something to the idea that Cyber City was selling itself as a tighter follow-up to Scrap Brain Zone than even Chemical Plant was, and certainly a more challenging stage. The whole "energy weapon and platforms while Robotnik is behind a big laser" idea certainly seems well in line with the sort of Eggman encounter concepts in Scrap Brain Zone, and, hell, the final boss of Sonic 1 SMS practically was that. If anything the shock was probably that there still was another level to be had after Cyber City, which of course would have been Death Egg.

 

Well, is the process still alive, or new Genocide city material want to become a lost media?

 

The song does have a dangerous and risky feeling to it, like very do or die, and we know that Cyber was originally called Genocide City because they wanted a dangerous sounding name. It sounds very eerie and intimidating. Reading some comments online, it seems like the full song makes some people feel nervous and uncomfortable, and at worst nauseous. It feels fitting for a fake-out final zone, but the nauseating feeling might be why they used it for the space-theme zone, even if it was for 3 seconds.

 

Yes. Frank's a busy guy and he's taking the time to do this properly. It's been a 20+ year wait, what's a few more days?

 

The graphics used for the Death Egg docking station at the very end of the WFZ cutscene, could've been intended for use in the fully realised Death Egg.

 

You hit the nail on the head. I can assure you there's more coming soon.

 

30+ years, honestly if we count the 1992 initial game release dates.

 

What a time to be alive in this community! A big Thank You to all people who put time and effort into this research.

I wonder if we ever uncover enough data for romhackers, to create a "what could have been" Sonic 2 experience. I would personally love to see the time travel one.