Dust Hill and Mystic Cave Discussion 2019

Actually, I never thought of dust to be a pulverized ground that was destroyed bits at a time. I only thought dust like fine particles. Maybe the Japanese developers were thinking of a term to use to describe the hill in its broken status. So maybe they thought to "turn something into dust" (e.g. pulverization) would be a great description to give the condition of the hill in the bad present.

So yeah, not "dust" like particles, but "dust" like the act of pulverization. Sure, it could be a stretch.

I'll also never forget that time it was discovered that Sonic Crackers was actually supposed to be Sonic Clackers. And that the "L" and "R" sounds the same in Japanese speech.

 

Let's not worry about it, okay? ICEknight is correct.
Anyhow, i'm just wondering what secrets could be hiding in the ROM.

 

That's probably a good guess, it could be what they were going for. It's just, MCZ never struck me as remotely related to EHZ, since it looks so visually different from the cave sections in EHZ and HTZ.

 

So hey, why has the new Dust Hill page being reverted to the usual fan fiction fest again, exactly?

 

This was exactly my thought. Of course, this is all just speculation, but it's fun to try and figure out what the team may have been thinking when coming up with these names. Another good example is "Genocide City" being thought of simply being dangerous sounding in english by the Japanese side of the team.

Seconding this. If it's the name, just have the page called Desert Zone. It's pretty clear it had nothing to do with Dust Hill at this point, even if you don't agree that Dust Hill was simply an early name for Mystic Cave.

 

Blimey, already??
It's been confirmed that Dust Hill was the old name for Mystic Cave.

Similarly, the page for Sand Shower Zone has been suggested to be merged with the Sonic 2 scrapped levels page.
The reason it was taken out of that page, and separated into its own page, was because of that exact new information.
I've reverted the edits.

Anyhow...
On the topic of newly found unused graphics, I quite like the old moving block design, but I understand that it was likely too small to be reasonably used. It's also strange that the Sky Chase badniks and Clucker are present in the graphics. I wonder if they have unused objects assigned to them...

 

The problem with that interview is that it was done in 2008, 16 years after the games development, during a time where everyone on the internet was labeling the desert zone as Dust Hill. They even lead into the interview by asking if Dust Hill was the desert level and linking photos of it to him. Who's to say Yasuhara didn't remember and thought "yeah, that sounds about right" at the time? It wasn't until recently that the man himself rediscovered documents that directly contradicted that claim by labeling the dust and desert levels as separate, in addition to the evidence seen in the recent prototypes.

Sorry, but I feel that the evidence we have now far outweighs this interview that was done over a decade after the fact.

 

I think it's time for new interviews and proper sourcing of information. Using an old forum thread from 2008 with a dead link and a youtube video that links to a romhack? Sketch.
Edit: The dead link was for the Desert mockup image that everyone and their mom has seen since forever ago.

 

Actually, we've already been talking about that in this very topic and came to the conclusion that the wiki should be edited, which was the reason why that page was changed.

And it already is.

 

Please don’t go and interview people randomly...

 

Also, I believe that some actual professional stuff might be going on behind the scenes already, so... yeah, let's just be patient.

 

Why would I interview someone when I can't speak Japanese? I need a translator for that.

 

Because the Sonic fanbase has a history of constantly badgering the hell out of the devs.

 

I’ve been lurking on this and the other recent announcements. I can’t believe that 15 years after I first started lurking I’m still being captivated by the games and the community. This is the best online community ever.

I wanted to post something that I think strengthens the time travel relationship between HTZ > EHZ > MCZ.

In EHZ the hills in the mid-distance have gaping holes in them. I’m not aware of many - or at least we’ll known - natural landscapes that look this way in real life, and the only places I can come up with are places were large industrial mining has or is beginning to take place.

Mystic Cave Zone is clearly a mine with tracks and boxes of materials, and the boss is Robotnik’s drilling machine.

My understanding of this is that Robotnik would have been mining to create his Death Egg. Other zones may have shown the general decay in to his other bases, such as Wood Zone to Metropolis, etc.

 

The Dust Hill debate almost warrants its own thread by now

 

Stop flooding the current Sonic 2 prototype threads with this [honestly, in my opinion, pointless] debate and move it here.

 

Alright, WELL... As far as I'm concerned, the lid on this debate got blown off back in this topic a few weeks ago, before the new prototypes even showed up: https://forums.sonicretro.org/index...-10-in-sth2-going-to-be-used-for.38565/page-9

As I said earlier in that topic, it's possible that Dust Hill was floated as a name for the desert level based on two shaky recollective accounts, but it was definitely being used as a prototype name for Mystic Cave, which we have overwhelming evidence of at this point.

 

Yes, was around that time, early 2000s.

You know what, I won't care about level names anymore. Green Hill and Blue Lake are decriptive names about places, but Ocean Wind and Tropical Sun are nouns.
Anyway, Gimmick Mt. is set in a factory inside a mountain. Dust Hill was set inside a hill, with mine rails. Some abandoned mines in the US are dusty, I've seen them, and Sonic 2 was more western.

If I make a game some day, I will have a level named Sweet Injustice Zone, because I speak spanish and I have a limited grasp of english, and I snort time-travel powder now.

That Dust Hill debate is a flamewar now.

 

Do we, though? As far as I'm aware isn't the only proof that Mystic Cave = Dust Hill the fact that the level select and title cards are confused between the two in some builds? I wouldn't call that definitive proof of anything. With them cutting levels and adding them and reordering things there's any number of reasons that could be the case.

Also, this:
https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/the-truth-about-dust-hill-zone.12023/