Hirokazu Yasuhara revealing all kinds of Sonic development stuff

I actually thought about that a couple days ago and completely forgot. Chemical Plant is in the same exact location. It's actually quite hilarious as Casino Night as a part of a "Bad Present" was showing some inspiration from Back to the Future Part II's alternate 1985.

 

Maybe the "Dust Hill Zone" section of the "Now 2" map is actually depicting the aftermath of the excessive mining, with half the area collapsed and an abandoned spooky mine in place.

 

I don't think the green parts of MCZ are supposed to be emeralds. I feel that they would have drawn them more angular if that were the case, like the green sections in HPZ. Gemstones are generally depicted more polygonal; the foreground in MCZ looks uneven and rounded in various sections:

Honestly, the shape of the green sections in MCZ is much closer to regular rocks than gems.
Besides, I think the idea that the whole damn cave is made of gems feels too out there, even for Sonic. At most, I would expect a gemstone cave to be depicted as having gems sticking out of the ground and walls, rather than the ground and walls themselves being giant gems :v:

Say, this is unrelated to MCZ, but here's an idea about HPZ that I wanted to throw out there: Instead of the game teleporting the player right after he collects the emeralds, it may have worked a little differently. Going by internal level order, Hidden Palace is right after Hill Top. This order is likely not random, seeing how the internal order seems to match these documents for the most part. What I'm suggesting is that despite being a secret level, it may have had a set order: Once you beat Hill Top, the game would have checked if you have all Emeralds. If yes, it would take you to HPZ, otherwise it would skip it and you would miss your chance to access Hidden Palace and unlock Super Sonic. This is supported by the fact that Olympus (speculated to be HPZ) is right next to Hill Top on the map. This would have solved the problem of HPZ being visitable in multiple time periods. It would also explain why Olympus/HPZ is only present in the map of the past.

 

Olympus doesn't seem to be HPz, which looks to be the Warp Point. Specially by the geometric pyramidal feel of the bottom of the background.

 

I secretly didn't expect anyone from Retro to jump in so I did it myself:

Dust Hill Zone

One thing I did learn while looking over what was already there - I think any ties to "Rock Zone" are purely speculation. What you're reading is that the Banper enemy was planned to appear in both, and an incorrect assumption was made that time travel worked similarly to Sonic CD (i.e. because the two stages were going to have same enemy, they were connected).

To clarify, Buzz Bombers appear in multiple stages in Sonic 1, and things are recyled in Sonic CD. Reusing badniks was a thing.



Mind you I can't read Japanese so maybe I'm totally wrong there.


If this page is wrong, fix it. I am linking the mockup to Dust Hill because that's what Hirokazu Yasuhara said it was, and I believe the lead Japanese designer over American artists.

 

Back when everyone was talking about the definition of the word "Dust" and rehashed ideas in S3 I had this idea, and now thinking it again it could also explain the missing parts of the island. What if Eggman...

http://imgur.com/a/r8Nhr

Blown away parts of the island when fighting Sonic?

 

I really don't think Dust hill has anything to do with Mystic Cave zone... It don't make any sense to me why Mystic cave would be in that location.
But I do think that the falling sand or whatever that zone was named is a better fit with mystic cave. Anyways I think things are being over assumed now.

 

The problem here is that the time chart seems to mention that Sonic travels to ancient times by activating the Hidden Palace and Hill Top is shown to be set in the past, so Sonic would have to find the palace first.

 

I seriously doubt HPZ's background is supposed to be a cue as to the place being inside a pyramid, given that its artist was given very little info about the level. He didn't even know its name:
http://forums.sega.com/showthread.php?510446-Interview-with-Craig-Stitt-the-mind-behind-Sonic-2-s-Hidden-Palace-Zone

Well, the photo doesn't show the whole text, does it? From the part we see, all we know is that Sonic activates a Hidden something to travel to the past. The following word may or may not be Palace. Unless a better photo was posted at some point and I missed it?


Anyway, this was be my 20th (and possibly last) post here. Gentlemen, it was a pleasure debating with you

 

I decided to bridge together the different timeline variations of each zone:

[Past]Hill Top -> [Present]Green Hill (Emerald Hill) -> [Ruined Present]Dust Hill (Mystic Cave) -> [Future] Chemical Plant

[Past]Tropical Plant/Olympus -> [Present]Ocean Wind -> [Ruined Present]Oil Ocean

[Past]Blue Lake -> [Present]Wood(s) -> [Future]Casino Night

[Past]Rock World -> [Present]Sand Shower -> [Ruined Present]Rock World -> [Future]Genocide City 2 (Cyber City 2)

[Present]Metropolis -> [Future] Genocide City (Cyber City)

Interestingly enough, this would mean that Emerald Hill is the only zone that had all of its timeline variants make it into the final game after the time travel storyline was dropped. One oddity of note is that Rock World shows up twice.

The biggest mystery for me is Hidden Palace and Aquatic Ruin at the moment. Hidden Palace could be Olympus (its level slot in the Wai proto, 08, supports this) and the fact that it's circled instead of boxed on the map could mean Olympus had story importance as we know Hidden Palace did. Another possibility is that Olympus had a different concept early on before being changed to Hidden Palace's cavern look. That, or Hidden Palace was the "warp point" originally and replaced Olympus once it was scrapped.

Neo Green Hill/Aquatic Ruin was likely designed after the time travel story was dropped, possibly re-using art from Blue Lake, Olympus's original concept, and/or Tropical Plant. This is because its level slot in the Wai proto (0F) probably belonged to Genocide City 2 originally and is far removed from the rest of the past zones.

EDIT:

I'd help out, but I'm having some difficulty logging in to the wiki. Do I need to create a separate account for it? Its been awhile since I've edited anything.

The maps shown by Hirokazu Yasuhara directly confirm the time travel connection between Rock World ("rock") Zone and Sand Shower ("desert") Zone.

 

The Chemical Plant commentary in Sonic Jam said it was supposed to be level 10 when they had 18 levels planned. If you count everything on the four maps we got and exclude the duplicate Warp Zone entry, that's 18 levels. This may very well be all that was ever planned.

If anything this reveals only one or two levels per era were produced to the point of being playable between Nick Arcade and Simon Wai. How coincidental eight of them became final Sonic 2 levels with Sky Chase/Wing Fortress as a connector to Death Egg.

As far as Dust Hill goes: at that point they would have had Green Hill, Hill Top, Dust Hill, and Neo Green Hill for level names. Since there wouldn't be other levels to pad it out or a narrative to show time travel, they were renamed.

 

So are you guys say that after all these years, the desert mock up image was actually named Sand Shower, not Dust Hill? EVERYTHING I KNOW IS A LIE!!!

 

This makes me feel like Sonic 3 was something of a "do-over", reusing concepts that were planned for Sonic 2 that they wanted to do but didn't have the chance to. Maybe not time travel in particular, but the whole cutscene-heavy, telling a story thing was not a new idea for the series, as it turns out.

Sonic 1 feels even more distinct and unique now. They were going for a much simpler, somewhat different world, it seems, with the band, his girlfriend, some kind of demon enemy. They cut the background story details out of the game and filled it back in in a completely different way when following up with sequels.

On the subject of Sonic 3, I'm surprised no one has mentioned how they seem to be designed as parallels to the single player levels. Azure lake has a mountainous skyline, and tar you can sink in: Marble Garden. Balloon Park: obviously Carnival Night. Desert Palace: Sandopolis. Chrome Gadget: Flying Battery. Endless Mine: Lava Reef.

 

Why can't we just agree that Mystic Cave is Rock Zone? It's made out of rocks, for crying out loud. (And even if you think they're gemstones, the name still works somewhat.)

 

Because there's no actual proof to back up that claim.

At this point, the tangible evidence we have points towards Mystic Cave being Dust Hill. From the proof we have, what exactly makes you think otherwise? Have you spotted a contradiction somewhere?

 

I just do not believe it is possible that Brenda Ross and Yasuhara forget that Dust Hill was not a desert level like the mockup. There is a really big difference between Mystic Cave zone and the desert mockup and if Dust Hill zone and Sand Shower zone were both desert levels this could certainly cause the "confusion" in the interviews after so many years.

And...last post. Sonic Retro has a good community though it looks like I wasn't supposed to be part of it. Back to the TCRF I guess.

 

So I guess Aquatic Ruin was going to be the new Green Hill. The map has a GHZ name, the title screen (to be updated) says so, and has green vegetation.

 

Considering the game is about time travel, a Neo Green Hill zone would make sense to exist in the same game as Green Hill Zone

 

Regarding Yasuhara:

• Thanks to 2017 Yasuhara, we now know that Dust Hill, Sand Shower and Rock World zone were three different levels.
• Yuji Naka also mentioned in the Sonic Jam guide that Mystic Cave was in the original maps they drew of the island, and mentioned a cave and a mountain when describing the levels in said map.
• The "Rock World Zone" has a mountain drawn as its unique "ruined present" landmark.
• All the prototypes with non-final level names call Mystic Cave "Dust Hill". Even when the Level Select was rearranged, they kept giving it that name.

So if we stick to what we actually have, the result of putting the current pieces together seems to be that Mystic Cave was most likely that "Dust Hill" level in the "Now 2" map.

It's entirely possible that, when 2008 Yasuhara was contacted just for that quick question, he didn't remember the 10 year old thing and googled the level's name. After all, his first reply was a very generic "it was a scrapped level" kind of response with no mention to a desert, a cave or any specific detail whatsoever.

Now he has located some of the actual stuff that he was trying to remember back then and is sharing it with us. I think these are the kind of things that should take precedence when documenting all this stuff.


Regarding Brenda:

Please remember that Brenda said this in the very last attempt at asking her about the subject:



Why did she say that "Dust Hill" was the desert's name when being asked, then? We know that it's the answer that could be found all over the internet by then (and as of today), so she probably believed it to be the correct answer. Thing is, she had personally never used that name before.



I think it's important to keep in mind that the "Dust Hill is a desert" confusion started because somebody we don't even know just didn't seem to like it being the prototype name of Mystic Cave and wanted it to be the name of the desert. With no evidence at all to back it up, just like that.

 

The problem is that none of maps show a neo GHZ, only Hill Top and Dust Hill, so at that time they already had taken a decision that contradicts the map.

We know by prior and posterior evidence that it wasn't going to be the case, but with Dust Hill we don't have anything between the map creation and the first beta with the stage select pointing to Mystic Cave and Aquatic Ruin. So at that point the map wasn't reliable anymore.

It's why I keep saying that we can't make connections so easily between two very distant periods of time in a project that suffered so many changes.

Edit: grammar and some clarification.