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

I'd argue on the other hand that it is ultimately a creative exercise. It's not a restoration of the true view behind Sonic 2, because the budget and time constraints are part of that view: it needed to be released at that time for a reason that was agreed upon -- making a smash hit on Christmas of 92. Which it was. The detours, deletions and repurposing of material are also part of the creative process, so Sonic 2 isn't beneath its ethereal true potential. Is it due to corporate interference? Sure, but that's the mode of production in which Sonic exists in the first place, inextricably.

So as much as I find all efforts to bring that vision to life very noble and worthwhile, they will never bring a "complete" Sonic 2 to life. It will be your, or our, Sonic 2, 30+ years later. It will always be something new, that can only exist because so many people dedicated so much of their time to bring these materials together across so many years. I think facing it as a collective creative endeavor is even more beautiful than the idea of restoring something that was lost, for whatever reason that may have been.

 

Honestly, I'm just surprised that most people here don't seem to be aware of Nik Pi's Sonic 2 Archives hack. It's kind of everything that you've been asking for. https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/sonic-2-archives.41500/



Or Sonic 2 Time Quest for that matter. https://twitter.com/sonic2tq

 

Time quest is a really badass thing. Can't wait to try it!

 

There's also Sonic 2 Unlimited. We live in the golden age of Sonic 2 beta revitalizations.

 

I literally hate when in their comments section comes stupid kids and write "ROM LINK?" "LINK PLS" "LINK?" "GIVE ME ROM".

It's just... so stupid. People are working on romhack, sometimes for eternity years. People just can't be patient.


Yes, I'm hypocritical, I know

 

That's the only challenge with all of these different hacks, we've got some really cool interpretations of these stages, but they're spread out between several different projects and don't (yet) have cross compatibility. Hopefully in time, as more of these assets make it into the very versatile rsdk engine, that can change a bit.

Oh well. As stated, it's a wonderful new age of discovery. The whole retro sonic engine has essentially been open-sourced in the past 3 years, and it's led to a new age of innovation and design.

I've fallen in love with the classics all over again because of this. Some problems in superstars aside, Sonic is in a new golden age and I welcome it. Every classic era title is being revived in some capacity, even some of the most obscure and forgettable. Even the mainstream public has largely discarded the "sonic was never good" view and fully embraced a lot of the franchise's history with a good sense of humor and fun.

 

Calm down, dude. These random kids on the internet are ones you'll likely never meet.

 

i want to belive..

Only one thing you're missing: this hack has only HPZ, SSZ, WZ GCZ and winter zone of unused zones, but yeah. It still cool project. One dude even tried to steal map from these videos to his own hack, lmao. Thanks to good it was solved.

 

I have to give great respect to Time Quest, as I feel like of all the projects floating around, it's the one getting the assets to look the most like actual polished assets you would've seen on a Genesis title in 1992. Hopefully the level design and polish can live up to that standard they're establishing visually, as that can easily be the make or break for many fan projects. The other "adaptations" floating around look very good as well in their own ways.

 

I just spent several hours trying my best to clean up and color correct a still from the VHS. As I worked on this, I began to strongly suspect Brenda was working in 12-bit color, uninformed of the Mega Drive's 9-bit limitation. As meticulous as I was with this, I am not fully confident in these colors, though Sonic rather looks like he's using that strange Sonic 1 proto/final palette hybrid found in many of the Digitizer files Tom provided to the public.

If anyone else wants to tweak this for further accuracy, by all means, feel free.

Also, is it just me or are those blocks in the upper right recycled from Labyrinth?

 

They're similar, but not exactly identical.

 

Would not be the only altered Sonic 1 asset in that mockup.

And by the way, anyone remember that interview with Craig Stitt from 2001? Because I was wondering, why the hell was he working on a forest level?

When he was asked if he knew anything about the original time travel plot, he described that he had conceptualized two variants of a forest level, a green and healthy one as well as a burning one ravaged by Robotnik.

Of course we do have Wood Zone, but concept art for it was drawn by one of the Japanese artists while the actual level art was done by Brenda Ross. And there's nothing. Also, not a single concept document has ever mentioned anything about it having a ruined counterpart that's on fire.

 

Ooo but the ruined future map does show most of the island on fire. Craig could have just had AIZ cryptomnesia but on the other hand it certainly wouldn't be the first unfinished concept reused for 3&K. The Wood/Blue Lake area isn't on fire here but the left side of the island is, which is usually referred to as Green Hill or Hill Top on the other maps.

 

I brought it up earlier:

On the first visit to the past, you would go to Tropical Sun. Following that, the Death Egg would launch and the island's volcano erupted. Since S3's Angel Island reused Tropical Sun's concept art and general theme, perhaps the act 2 on fire was also a carryover. The volcano erupting could've happened after act 1 with act 2 being on fire, or there was some sort of cutscene following act 2 before going to the ruined present.

Funny enough, if Craig did work on Tropical Sun and we assume Mark's "atlantis theme" level was Blue Ocean, then that's two more cut levels from the western side of the dev team.

 

And it means that somewhere can be assets....right?

 

The fact that we haven't seen a lick of evidence for Ocean Wind and Tropical Sun having any work done on them is interesting to me. At least GCZ and BLZ had their assets repurposed elsewhere and have some kind of concept art or sketches (apart from Yamaguchi's originals). Even the Winter zone has a mockup and (likely) the music. But those two zones have absolutely nothing.

 

Well, any concepts or ideas for them almost certainly coalesced right back into Emerald Hill (which is just an evolved form of troplical based on the green hill trope), though again, there probably wasn't much.

 

At least, this idea was there.
EDIT: And with water at the bottom, and spikes underneath...

 

Yeah, the most significant work on them was likely the rough maps Yasuhara drew and gave to the level artists.

 

There is also the EHZ 2P music, and someone mentioned that the 2P results music sounds tropical.

That's two songs that might have been composed for Tropical Sun and Ocean Wind.