[GameNerd Advance]

Holy shit. Actual confirmation of Dust Hill zone's meaning?

:(

I miss the days back when Genocide City was completely ambiguous and the words "Dust Hill" would cause flamewars.

[King]

MK, on Sep 13 2008, 01:59 PM, said:

King, on Sep 13 2008, 02:57 PM, said:

Are we sure the Dust Hill mockup was fully a mockup after all?

Yes. She stated it was, and it clearly is as it fits the pattern of the other mockups. But, the art was clearly real. For all we know it was a static screenshot of the level, and then with all the sprites for Sonic and the badniks added later.

But doesn't the current findings about Dust Hill contradict what she said before about Dust Hill/Desert Zone?

[Spanner]

And this answers the question that has been asked for a long time: Is Dust Hill Zone the Desert level?
Well, thanks for taking the question to Yasuhara, 2008 is doing good, first the protos & now this.

[King]

I wonder if any of the level was programmed, if at all. Did it even make it past the planning stage? Who knows, a prototype might exist with Dust Hill actually in it.

This post has been edited by King: 13 September 2008 - 02:06 PM

[Hitaxas]

I always knew it WAS. =P
But now we have evidence!

[JetBlack]

This wins the internets. Awesome stuff :D.

[evilhamwizard]

If a prototype was created and given to press/media/magazines/etc, then they would've put pictures all over by now. If you ment in house builds, then maybe that could be true. The art for Dust Hill was definitely finished though, since I guess it was needed to create the mockup.

thx tweaker

This post has been edited by evilhamwizard: 13 September 2008 - 02:11 PM

[MK]

evilhamwizard, on Sep 13 2008, 03:10 PM, said:

If a prototype was created and given to press/media/magazines/etc, then they would've put pictures all over by now. If you ment in house builds, then maybe that could be true. The art for Dust Hill was definitely finished though, since I guess it was needed to create the mockup.

thx tweaker

Brenda Ross stated that the art for Dust Hill was completed, yes.

...

Fuck, it's so surreal being able to use the name Dust Hill.

[Rob Jinnai]

Okay, so you guys aren't going to double back on this like you did with Brenda Ross and later say "YASUHARA JUST DIDN'T REMEMEBER BECAUSE TWEAKER AND SIK SAID 'DUST HILL' AND YASUHARA JUST CALLED IT THAT." Granted, Ross did eventually admit it, but people weren't accepting it beforehand. :P

The funny thing about all of this is that with software development it can be hard to determine what is ever true. "Dust Hill" can be put in the Level Select with intent of it being there, and it just never got around to it. I mean, you have your Nick Arcade proto with the level select of "MARBLE ZONE" going to what would be Chemical Plant. I've said for years that Level Select names are ultimately irrelevant unless you can definitively tie them to their eventual final selves. As to how this great confusion happened... who really knows? Maybe the missing piece of the puzzle is something to do with Mystic Cave using guts from the very short-lived desert level? I don't know and I'm not going to speculate about it right now.

[T.Q.]

Since you guys have contact with Hirokazu Yasuhara, maybe you can ask him questions about the planning of Sonic 2, before any demos, alphas, and betas were created (e.g. storyboarding, other concept arts). Maybe we can find out what descriptive names each zones was given (e.g. skyscraper zone as Oil Ocean). Basically, a formal interview about the intial stages of Sonic 2.

[MK]

Rob Jinnai, on Sep 13 2008, 03:12 PM, said:

Okay, so you guys aren't going to double back on this like you did with Brenda Ross and later say "YASUHARA JUST DIDN'T REMEMEBER BECAUSE TWEAKER AND SIK SAID 'DUST HILL' AND YASUHARA JUST CALLED IT THAT." Granted, Ross did eventually admit it, but people weren't accepting it beforehand. :P

The funny thing about all of this is that with software development it can be hard to determine what is ever true. "Dust Hill" can be put in the Level Select with intent of it being there, and it just never got around to it. I mean, you have your Nick Arcade proto with the level select of "MARBLE ZONE" going to what would be Chemical Plant. I've said for years that Level Select names are ultimately irrelevant unless you can definitively tie them to their eventual final selves. As to how this great confusion happened... who really knows? Maybe the missing piece of the puzzle is something to do with Mystic Cave using guts from the very short-lived desert level? I don't know and I'm not going to speculate about it right now.

Well the Sonic 2 names were most likely still in development too. I /think/ Chemical Plant was referred to as Chemical Factory at some point, I'm sure the others didn't have definite names either. Emerald Hill may have been Neo Green Hill for all we know, and Aquatic Ruin was just pushed to that slot later even if the name was not intended for it, as was clearly done for Mystic Cave.

[The Taxman]

Well now we know this, I think it's pretty likely that Dust Hill did exist in a build of Sonic 2 at one point, considering Wood Zone did, which was started after the Dust Hill tiles were finished according to Brenda. Which could mean that by the Simon Wai build the looming deadline had already changed their plans for the game. Wood Zone was just a left over, waiting to be deleted, Genocide City was an empty slot never filled and Mystic Cave had moved in to Dust Hill's slot in the level select. The slot name didn't change because they obviously didn't care too much about misnamed levels at the time (Green Hill, Neo Green Hill etc)

Of course this is just late night speculation for me... :P

[Puto]

[BlazeHedgehog]

All along, I knew you guys were only trying to be logical about the whole "We don't know that Dust Hill is the desert level so let's not assume anything", but I always thought that was sort of dumb.

Feels really good to finally have this all sorted out properly. Now: What about the cacti on Little Planet?

[Sik]

Rob Jinnai, on Sep 13 2008, 05:12 PM, said:

Okay, so you guys aren't going to double back on this like you did with Brenda Ross and later say "YASUHARA JUST DIDN'T REMEMEBER BECAUSE TWEAKER AND SIK SAID 'DUST HILL' AND YASUHARA JUST CALLED IT THAT." Granted, Ross did eventually admit it, but people weren't accepting it beforehand. :P

That was the main reason for the second question, because I was unsure if the same thing happened again. Sending both pics of Mystic Cave and Dust Hill should have made it clear if it was Mystic Cave and not the desert level. And not only he said it was the Desert Level, he even pointed out a YouTube video with Esrael's recreation which nobody ever mentioned. So I don't think so this time.

T.Q., on Sep 13 2008, 05:16 PM, said:

Since you guys have contact with Hirokazu Yasuhara, maybe you can ask him questions about the planning of Sonic 2, before any demos, alphas, and betas were created (e.g. storyboarding, other concept arts). Maybe we can find out what descriptive names each zones was given (e.g. skyscraper zone as Oil Ocean). Basically, a formal interview about the intial stages of Sonic 2.

Give him a break, geese! >_>