What really was the Sound Test #10 in STH2 going to be used for?

We don't know the answer for sure but I'd say we can guess with high probability that track 10 was going to be used for Hidden Palace Zone.

Loads of levels from the prototypes have incorrect music choices. Oil Ocean uses the wrong theme in the Simon Wai build despite the fact the Oil Ocean track is actually in the build's sound test. The fact that the Simon Wai prototype uses a different theme for Hidden Palace than track 10 means absolutely nothing. That you think the Mystic Cave 2 Player theme fits the level better is completely irrelevant to whether that was ever supposed to be used.

And while the sprites are garbled for Hidden Palace in the final release, it seems pretty suspicious that it just so happens to use the only unused level theme in the entire game.

So what's more plausible? Track 10, the only unused level theme in Sonic 2, was going to be used for Hidden Palace (which was cut so late in development they had the theme finalised), or numerous levels in Sonic 2 had drastic music changes throughout development?

 

I think you're absolutely wrong. I think a better guess would be that the "What should we do with these unused tracks" question probably came up, and then a lightbulb came up and they decided to use them for 2p competition. I would have done the same thing in that position rather than waste them. Dust Hill/Desert Hill/whatever music didn't fit any of the final 2P zones, so they improvised. They probably did a final sweep through and made some changes.

I have no doubt that the wai prototype has music that, at the time, was what they saw fit for each zone. Its more apparent as they were probably struggling to decide which music fit best for Wood Zone. Person preference, I think the wai version fit it better than it did metropolis before the tweaks. But that could be because I'm used to hearing it that way.

At any rate, it's anyones guess. Only the devs truly know.

 

I know you know this, but I think the only aspect this could answer about this topic would be "when was track #10 designated to HPZ's level slot". I can't see how it could tell us the "why" when HPZ wasn't really touched for anything other than removal between the Wai and CENSOR protos. That just makes things even more confusing; knowing that HPZ was on the chopping block, why bother reassigning the track at all?

 

This is certainly a question to ask if we ever get into contact with somebody - 2P mode wasn't widely discussed during the initial half of development, and it makes you wonder if it was always the intention to only have three zones selectable.

 

If only we could find a piece of source code with the track file names... That could at least give us some hints. =\

 

I still believe the theory that track 10 was indeed going to be used for a special cut scene, especially since the demo track ends. Didn't someone mention the idea that Super Sonic was to get his powers from Hidden Palace Zone at some point in development? It wouldn't surprise me if that was the original idea, Sonic 2 8-bit has Crystal Egg as a bonus level only if you obtain all the chaos emeralds and it's the only way to get the good ending. I think the final version of Mystic Cave Zone 2 Player fits a jungle zone more than a lost palace/cave... But hidden palace did have dinosaur badniks, and the demo version of Mystic Cave 2 player does sound more prehistoric.

 

I mean, as we should all know by now, things change during development.

Someone may have had the idea for a secret, crystal cave that you would get the Super Sonic power from but then later on someone may have really liked the stage design and sought to flesh out the idea into a full stage. We don't know when the Masa demo was actually recorded, we don't know when he was given the pitch on what they needed from him. At the time in which Masa recorded, it could have still been that original concept but by the time it came to implement, the idea had progressed. Or, as the recent revelations on the Sonic 3 special stage music has made me very much aware, that the song could have been something that Masa he had kicking around for a while and repurposed. We simply don't know. What we do know is that the song loops purposefully in the final build and it was assigned to the Hidden Palace Zone slot at some point, we aren't even certain if that assignment was purposeful or not, it could have been a mistake.

We also cannot rule out that there are multiple "branches" of the Sonic 2 code and in-development builds that we have may be from one or multiple different branches of the Sonic 2 code base at different times. The final having a more progressed version of HPZ with properly working tubes and the track 10 music assignment may be the result of different code branches being brought back together at the end of the project, where as the betas may have just been cobbled together from whatever branch of the code one person was working on and was least buggy. I don't know how they were developing Mega Drive games at STI back in the early 90's, my understanding is that large parts of the "AAA" video game industry didn't start to adopt team-focused development tools like version control until late into the 1990's, so how these code branches were managed, how they were code reviewed (if at all), etc is a bit of a mystery. It is difficult to say how this would have been managed and what could have merged these hypothetical branches, it could have been manual copy-and-paste for all I know. Just something to consider.

 

I'm curious, is there any possibility there are more Masa demo tunes than have been released? Like, stuff that wasn't even implemented in the game at any point. I wonder if there are more level themes, since the existing selection is not enough to cover the original 18 zone plan (unless they intended to outright reuse tracks for multiple levels, but that doesn't seem right).

Wai beta uses the CPZ theme for Cyber City, MTZ for wood, etc, but is it possible Masa wrote unique themes for these levels? We know CNZ 2P was meant for OOZ, MCZ 2P for HPZ, and presumably OOZ theme would have been the desert level (it's the obvious fit). EHZ 2P doesn't even sound like a level theme, it sounds more fitting of a results or menu screen of some kind: it's very simple and short, also just not nearly energetic or atmospheric enough to fit a proper stage, IMO. People like to say it works with Wood zone, but I don't really agree, it's a pretty dark level.

 

I agree with this 100 percent. I never thought of the EHZ 2p being some sort of results screen. It does have way to happy of a pitch to be something like wood zone. I always wondered if it may have been the original song for Sky Chase. Then Sky Chases theme would have been a winter themed level?

 

Oh absolutely - we just got a batch of unused sprites from Tom Payne, and it's exactly the same for music - loads of work-in-progress content is left on the cutting room floor. It's how Michael Jackson was able to release albums after he died.

Whether you'll see any of it is a different story. Masato Nakamura has been producing music for 30 years and is probably well past the old Sonic 1 and 2 days. But clearly someone still owns the original demos since they made an album out of them, so idk.

 

No, the only arabian-themed level is Oil Ocean.

On the other hand, Aquatic Ruin's theme has that western movie thing which was reused for Sonic Mania's Mirage Salloon.

 

This. All day long! There is absolutely no proof to the contrary. I still don't get why this keeps coming up when we've settled this 15+ years ago.

What we do know is that somehow a cobbled mess became the most renowned Sonic game of all time. This proves how much thought and ideas were poured into such a critical title. While some music was shuffled around, most was purposeful. One certainty was Aquatic Ruin's (Neo Green Hill) Music. The music was made for an American “Western” desert, highly influenced by southwestern history. In the end, Dust Hill was cut, what became Aquatic Ruin was finished and didn't have its own music, so it was a match made in 16-bit heaven, then this perpetuates into accidental nostalgia known as Sylvania Castle Act 2.

I felt like Tee Lopes course corrected quite successfully here. Act 1 however gave homage to Sky Chase....which was an easy borrow from the winter zone.

 

The very first thing I posted on Area 51's board back in the day was a suggestion that Hill Top's music could have fitted a Western desert stage with its hillbilly vibe - a theory that pretty much got me a bunch of "LOL" replies :p

 

The levels on the Simon Wai prototypes sometimes have the wrong names. Does anyone still believe Mystic Cave was supposed to be called Dust Hill?

Don't know why the music tracks must have been the original tracks for each level.

Again, a baseless theory.

 

You guys are throwing around a lot of speculation as fact. “Obviously this song was made for a snow level” “Clearly they swapped the music because X level was scrapped”
None of that has any proof and you really shouldn't act like it does.

 

Level slots were level slots. Guessing they canned DHZ early and used the slot for MCZ. Music has a ton to do with getting a feel for a level. A name in a level select screen, along with non-working title cards, probably were at the bottom of the totem poll.

 

There was a theory floated here many years ago that I've always taken to, and that's that Sonic 2 originally had a Cameltry-esque special stage just like Sonic 1, and Song 10 was originally intended for that. I believe the theory was based on the fact they had the a similar tempo and chorus structure?

 

That really actually makes a TON of sense. Especially since they probably tossed the idea around for bonus stages similar to Sonic 3. Seemingly a lot of ideas were reused for Sonic 3k it looks like.

 

There's an analysis of this somewhere in this board, but I believe it was posted before Nakamura's demo, which has an obvious ending to the tune (suggesting it wasn't originally intended to loop).

Might always be worth checking through the Dreams Come True back catalogue to see if anything similar comes up.

 

Let's throw some more wanton baseless speculation into the broth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKaTNcmiBPg

Starting at around 0:50, sure sounds enough like track #10, doesn't it? We all know Sonic Team likes taking "inspiration" from Ghibli, maybe they asked Masa to do the same.