Sonic 2 Development Lore

I can picture Sonic and Eggman going to the past separately. Sonic kicks Eggman's ass at Metropolis, Eggman escapes to the past in his time machine. To give chase Sonic travels to the pyramid (Hidden Shrine?) next to Metropolis and activates a mystical mechanism there to send himself to the past. He arrives some time after Eggman has set up and started conquering the past.

They presumably use the same methods in most eras. Eggman leaves by time machine, Sonic revisits the pyramid to go after him.

The fact that dome thingie in the mountains (the Death Egg? or perhaps the base where it's being built?) is in the original present, yet you can see an earlier version of it in the past, also suggests that Eggy had already time traveled before the story began.

I imagine they would have used S3K-esque cutscenes and a South Island map ala S1SMS to show what was going on.

 

The mention of Sonic 1 SMS is a good comparison; it would be an effective and quick way to visually convey to the player what's going on in the story, without any need for dialogue.

 

Aquatic Ruin’s Greco-Roman-inspired graphics make it the only thing that looks like an “Olympus” to me. Also, Olympus is in the water on the map. Aquatic Ruin also is not a zone name featured in the maps. It’s possible a lot of these early level concepts and names were abandoned early on, but little bits and pieces were well-liked and found themselves in other levels.

Given that Sonic 3&K reused concepts from 2, I wouldn’t be surprised if the time travel looked something like the transition from S&K’s Hidden Palace to Sky Sanctuary using those teleporation orbs. Pure speculation, of course.

EDIT: On that note, Marble Garden looks like an Olympus honestly. High altitudes and temples.

EDIT: Blue Lake has virtually the same name as the 2-p level from Sonic 3, Azure Lake.

Still speculation, but… well.
I think more and more that Sonic 3 was really formed more from Sonic 2 cut concepts than I thought, especially looking at the new Cyber City maps.

 

The only places on the maps that look like they could be Emerald Isle/Aquatic Ruin to me are Olympus and the past version of Rock World.

I was going to say that Aquatic Ruin feels too unremarkable to be Olympus, being just another zone in the final game. But it had certain peculiarities to it, like being the second to last level in the internal order, or being called Neo Green Hill in the Simon Wai proto. Could it be that there were special plans for it at some point? Plus the ARZ background kind of matches Olympus' placement on the map. And Olympus is in the middle of a lake, matching the "Emerald Isle" name.

 

That would explain its placement in the level order, that had always confused me. Like, why place Aquatic Ruin next to levels like Genocide City and Death Egg?

 

This is a battle storm for NES.
What if somewhen was planed genesis port and that ROM image was just a leftover?

 

There are a hundred top-down shooters and flight sims that look like that image. It had to be one of the easiest games to make back then.

 

It honestly seemed like a mess and like a different game altogether. Lots of ambitious ideas. I think you’re right that a LOT of streamlining happened during development and they were able to slap the game together into a mostly cohesive story using level design and ideas. It would have been laughable against Sonic CD otherwise.

 

Well, I and my friend Toxic Foxtrot have recreated a sheet with early Tails' design with Sonic 1 palette:

Spoiler: BIG AND UGLY!

If it was planed to look like this, I can understand, why some Tom Payne badniks has extra 3rd red colour.

 

I don't think there is much evidence to say when the time travel concept was dropped. As far as we know, it wasn't going to be a gameplay mechanic at all, but a plot point.

I'd guess they dropped it when they realized that they wouldn't have enough time to implement the cutscenes, maps, and enough zones to fill all eras.

 

Also I think there would have been more bosses. If you look at the maps and the assumed circut we have, you see that Sonic goes twice to the past, Hill Top being on both. So either you would have to do 4 zones of Hill Top (not consequentially), or do one act on each past. I don't think that the act 1 would be bossless in that case, cos you always get a to finish the zone. Sky Chase doesn't count cos it's not part of the time travel storyline.
By the way, only asking this cos I lost the trail on the other thread... have the ciber city scans been published or not yet?

 

Speaking of bosses does anybody else feel that the Metropolis boss doesn't feel like it belongs in Metropolis at all? It feels so futuristic. These random Dr Robotnik cloning-like eggs circling around him and a giant laser beam. You'd think that the boss of that zone would be more factory based or Steampunk like.

 

Unfortunately, not yet, no. I’m hoping we get them soon enough; maybe at least a few more to hold us over could be neat.

 

It’s definitely an outlier for the game. Every other boss has some sort of gimmick or loose link to the theme of the level. Metropolis’ however doesn’t link at all. With those little “egg” capsules that turn into those floating balloon things… it seems more like a sky or space level theme. It also fires a laser that looks and sounds just like the one from Wing Fortress. Perhaps at some point they were considered and swapped?

 

I'm going to focus on the game's music for a moment. I thought of making this a separate thread, but decided it might be best to keep it here.

I have always been curious about the order of the songs in Sonic 2, going all the way back to my Sonic ROM hacking days. The order seems somewhat random. But I feel nothing is an accident. I have analyzed them in the past with no conclusions drawn.

Today, I do so once again. There's of course speculation involved in certain aspects of this. But I think I found some interesting things that may hint at a development timeline...



In the image, I have listed all the Sonic 2 final sound test values, along with the zones each song is associated with in both the final and prototypes. I took it a step further and noted when each zone first appeared (as far as we know), as well as who worked on each zone (which is incomplete).

The first thing that pops out at me is songs 02, 03, and 04 correspond to prototype stages Green Hill, Hidden Palace, and Sand Shower. All three of these were represented by those early mock-ups!

The second thing I noticed was the corresponding prototype stages for songs 02 through 05 were all worked by different people.

The third thing I noticed was Wood Zone (which uses Metropolis music) is listed after Sand Shower, and prototype Oil Ocean is listed after prototype Hidden Palace. Likewise, Casino Night is listed after Green Hill.

When you combine these things, it almost suggests these songs are listed in the sound test in the order that the zones in which the songs were originally assigned to were worked.

Could that mean Tropical Sun and/or Rock World were also worked on at some point? Genocide City also shares Chemical Plant music, and we know it was worked after the first two acts of Metropolis. It's also confusing that Death Egg is listed where it is. Perhaps that lends some evidence that the music we know as the Death Egg Zone theme was in fact intended for something else?

Of course I can't prove these aren't mere coincidences. Some points made here may even be seen as stretches. But I think there's enough evidence here that makes it a plausible explanation for the song order. And the reverse effect is we get a possible glimpse of a timeline in which things occurred.

 

Here's my thoughts on Bosses that always seemed strange or stuck out.

Wing Fortress Zone Boss
We know that Wing Fortress wasn't originally part of the game until the big scramble and cuts happened. IIRC we have decent proof that the Bosses were more than likely coded before most of anything else. It wouldn't take much to rig the bosses up to be somewhere else. This could originally be Metropolis Zone's boss (Before it got turned into 3 acts n stuff) or it could've been GCZ2's Boss, keeping in mind there was going to be *two* Genocide city zones...

Metropolis Zone Boss
I agree with what was mentioned earlier, this is kind of a futuristic looking boss and doesn't fully fit Metropolis. It was most likely recycled from one of the scrapped zones. GCZ1?

Flying Battery Zone's Act 2 Boss 1:
Ok so here's the part where I'm gonna get slingshots fired at me, but hear me out... Programmers are lazy at times, and nothing really ever truly gets unused. Everything gets reworked from other ideas or retrofitted into others if the code is laying around mostly finished...

Something that never made sense to me is this boss in Sonic & Knuckles. As far as I'm aware there was no crazy amount of scrapped zones from Sonic 3K (Correct me if I'm wrong). The mysteries are less in comparison and I firmly believe Sonic 3 was really a rallying of all the leftover ideas from the first couple of games into one final blowout. Flying Battery sticks out in that it has 3 bosses instead of 2 and was originally slated to be in the Sonic 3 side (meaning most of the code was already done for the zone).

This sticks out. And frankly, never made sense. Flying Battery in general feels like an extension of Sonic 2 designs, always has. That boss in particular feels like a strong brother to Wing Fortress Zone's boss. And I wouldn't be surprised considering the "concept art" for Flying Battery is just reused from Metropolis [Turned from saying Metropolis into "The Interior of a blimp"]. I firmly believe this boss is originally from Sonic 2's development... but I don't know where it would fit.

 

This may sound crazy and is just a random stab in the dark, but Wood/ Secret Jungle Zone? It grabs on to something and spins around, like a spider-monkey on a tree. Also it shoots out fire, which burns trees.

 

I agree and I had about five different versions of how to interpret the map. I went with the one I posted because Hill Top's position is pretty stable, Tropical Plant definitely comes directly before it, and we have no idea about the rest of the map.

The alternative is that there's an extra present zone (or was Metropolis always intended to fill two slots after all?) or, more likely, the IDs were assigned based on a level order after the maps but before the timeline concept.

Either way, it doesn't change much - just add an extra (Past Zone) before Rock World Zone (Present) that's not attached to anything.

 

Nice! Y'know, I never thought much about the order of the tracks in the sound test but now that I see it laid out like this and after reading the part I bolded-out, it touches upon a thought that I've had rattling around my head the past few days, regarding that 2-Player Results track which I've seen mentioned a few times. A few suspected that it itself was a zone track and while not impossible, I just don't buy it as that. If anything, (just as I think I stated with that mystery Sonic 3&K track) I can see it as being the backdrop to an opening cutscene/monologue — like what the MD version of Sonic 3D did, just maybe in the style of the ending cut scenes. If the order of the tracks is anything to actually go by, that'd certainly explain why that one was first. This is not meant to be a theory by any means so ya'll please don't kill me lol, just a "what if" thought I guess...?

 

Oh I meant the one random boss where the laser comes down and fires 5-6 times before eggman runs away... But now that you mention it, Boss 2 of FBZ Act 2 would fit a jungle theme perfectly!