Sonic 2 Development Lore

Here's a rough stage development timeline based on what we know/discussed:
• Yasuhara brainstorms ideas for Sonic's sequel, resulting in the time travel story and island map concept art.
• Concept is refined, story beats and level order is completed.
• Game begins production. Green Hill, Sand Shower, Chemical Plant, Oil Ocean, Hill Top, and Hidden Palace have rough block maps created.
• Maps are given to level artists and mockups are created from the level art. Meanwhile work begins on updating Sonic 1's engine for the sequel.
• Green Hill, Hill Top, Chemical Plant, and Hidden Palace are the first to be added in-game.
• Maps and concept art for the remaining levels are created and given to the artists. Some levels are given updated names.
• Deadline is given. It becomes apparent that the game's current scope will not be completed in time, so stages are given a "trial by fire" via test maps. Time travel story is dropped.
• Ocean Wind, Sand Shower, Rock World, Blue Ocean, and Tropical Sun are cut. Hidden Palace enters a development limbo, as its purpose as the cutscene stage for the original story is gone.
• Genocide City is cut. Parts are gutted and reused for Metropolis's third act.
• Wood is cut. Plans are made to repurpose Hidden Palace as a cutscene stage for Super Sonic.
• Sky Chase and Wing Fortress are created using the gutted remains of previously cut levels.
• Hidden Palace is finally cut.

 

Is metropolis zone act 3 repurposed from gcz? ive never seen any proof of this, mz act 3 even has early block levels maps labeled metropolis act 3. And they don't look like anything we've just found from gcz.

I belive someone in the other thread even called the quotes into question we got that info from. They seem to be two unrelated quote someone thought were connected at the time.

Edited: spelling

 

Oh, really? I know it was discussed that Wing Fortress might have reused Genocide City stuff, but I thought MZ3 reusing stuff was a thing still too. I'll snip that part out.

 

I think the consensus is more "Metropolis Zone was given a third act as a compromise for Genocide City Zone, the original three act mechanical zone, being scrapped."

 

I think this veiw point is a much better way of looking at it.

The blocked out level maps for metropolis aren't dated so we don't know if they were created together, or separately.
I'm going to go find the quotes I mentioned.

I'm just going to quote from the other thread, since I think it's relevant, though i dont think it that big of a revalation. Do the wikis still state the metropolis zone act 3 thing as fact?

 

Of course not, I was told the wikis only hold facts and are perfect.

It honestly sounds like they're describing the EHZ/HTZ type of transformation assuming Metropolis was played earlier on.

 

Maybe it doesn't make sense because the context simply isn't there in the quote or on that page of the strategy guide. Has anyone looked at the entire strategy guide? Maybe the context needed is elsewhere.

 

For those who hadn't seen it yet, Craig Stitt spoke up on the VGHF S2 Video and left a comment talking about his archives and reaction to the video itself.

His quote is as follows...

"MEMORIES!!! Or maybe more like flashbacks!! I'm Craig Stitt, the third American artist mentinoed here. Seeing the grid layouts of Tom's brought back memories. I know I kept a lot of stuff as well, but somewhere a box of art must have gotten lost, or left behind, so I don't have much from my work on Sonic 2. Even more frustration is somewhere in a landfill in Redwood City is probably a couple boxes of 3.5" disks with all my SEGA art work on it.

At least I was fortunate enought to have one of my two levels end up in the final game, Oil Ocean Zone. (although HPZ finally made it into the game, it only took a couple decades!!)

Althought seeing all the long lost Sonic stuff was fun, the thing that got me excited was seeing Jester!!! I didn't work on the game, but it was a game that held a LOT of potential, was nearly completed, and yet almost nothing of it remains (at least that I can find)."

It's clearly his account too, since he uploaded the Segapede videos from his prior work which recycled HPZ assets. It's nice to see him so happy about this uncovered material, and his comment about Jester being gone makes me even more sad we currently haven't recovered it if it was near completed.

Edit: Oh snap...

So I decided to blow up the highlights/saturation on the unknown concept art, and attempt to overlay them, and I can confirm...

The image is using the Green Hill clouds. It was hard to tell at first, but the shapes match precisely.

Both of the big clouds to the right of those 2 are a flipped mirror of the 2 on the left as well. I should note that it would be very, very odd to use sonic 1 assets she never drew herself in a mockup for a non-sonic related SEGA game. Impossible? No. But much more improbable. That makes the chances of this image being related to Sonic 2's development a good bit higher.

 

I spoke with Craig recently. He just moved to another state and has all of his stuff in boxes. While he doesn't have a majority of the stuff he used for Sonic 2, he claimed to still have a developer's journal that he kept while he was at STI and also at Insomniac. Theoretically, if he finds it, we would be able to pinpoint the exact day that HPZ was cut along with other info.

 

Yeah I'm starting to think that this is her go at Olympus. The foreground tiles look strikingly close to that mysterious Parthenon building that isn't at all in the final game. Could still be Rock World or whatever though.

 

Speaking of... I was curious about the whole "medieval era" thing and took at look at the source, a screengrab of Yasuhara's presentation.

There was no medieval era. This slide shows a very rough translation of one of the story/level order docs, with medieval simply used as a translation for the past map.

 

The Jester portion of Brenda's video caught my attention because I remember seeing those sprites before. I saved two GIFs I found of the main character on an online web portfolio from one of the designers who worked on Jester. I can't remember whose website I got them from but I remember that the GIF with the arches was integrated into the design of the header portion of the web page. Also, I know Unseen64 has background and object sprites from the game but not these. It seems one of the GIFs is missing a frame of animation. The other one has it but its enlarged and dithered. Go figure...

 

Couple of days late on this but I just got recommended the video on YouTube...

That sand shower animation!!! Seeing the flowers/cactus move like that was so cool and surprising.

All these years later and people are still uncovering stuff from this game, amazing.

 

Good catch. Always thought "back to ancient time" didn't sound right.

 

That's what most of us have been suspecting for a while now, though it is odd that it uses two different words to refer to the past, "Medieval" and "Ancient".

I'm gonna be completely honest, I still don't think that this means anything. Since tiles from the Sand Shower mockup are definitely reused here, maybe she took its sky too, misremembering it to be her own artwork.

 

It's difficult to say for sure. Could Olympus have started out as this concept for a cutscene, then gotten revamped into EIZ/NGHZ/ARZ after this concept was rejected? Since no mockup with Sonic was ever made for this image to be public shared, I'm guessing this was only an internal concept art that wasn't being considered for very long before most of her work (save wood zone) got scrapped.

Still, I believe the evidence that this piece is sonic related is now stronger than not. Only the mountains, moon, stars, bricks, and the middle floor title are never before seen assets. Everything else is 100% recycled from her other sonic work. Unused? Yes, but it doesn't fit the style of the other projects in her portfolio either.

We can't say for sure unless she's willing to talk to frank about it in the upcoming interview (and given how the last ones went, it's best we don't be pushy), but I want to at least point out the connections to her sonic work are stronger than some might suspect.

 

Perhaps you forgot that SSZ uses Labyrinth art, of which this image also uses. I'm still on the fence. I think there's a 50% chance it's related to work she did for Sonic 2, though she has never once mentioned it in any of the past interviews we did with her.

 

I wish we could ask the artists to describe how the objects were intended to work in Cyber City—like the green tubes and ceiling/wall conveyers.

 

The Jester portion of Brenda's video caught my attention because I remember downloading those sprites on an online web portfolio from one of the designers who worked on Jester.

I can't remember whose website I got them from but these are the unedited GIFs and the file date says I downloaded them on 10/10/16 if that helps. I do remember that the GIF with the arches was integrated with the design of the header portion of the web page. Also, I know Unseen64 has background and object sprites from the game but not these. It seems one of the GIFs is missing a frame of animation. The other one has it but its enlarged and dithered. Go figure...

 

This is exactly why I'm still not convinced. The Sonic assets in that temple mock-up would only mean anything if you assume that Sand Shower and the winter zone were genuinely meant to reuse a significant amount of assets from Sonic 1 levels. Not to mention that the mountains are still from Kid Chameleon, a game that both entered development and released much earlier than Sonic 2.

And as for the mock-up's style not matching her other projects? That's because it most likely isn't from any "project", but rather a simple showcase of her work. The scene that the mock-up presents isn't the main draw there, but rather the assets that it's composited from.