[The MOPMASTER of the year 3000]

lets see, hill top on both sides, metroplis below, and casino night above. Looks real, but after the sonic 1 thing, need more proof.

[Quickman]

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still, the author needs spell check badly

No they don't. Every word there is correct.

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(Doctionary.com)

Ahem.

Personally, I think the rings there are a little suspicious. They're a little too random to be spilled, and they're all the perfectly round sprite, something we only ever see on the mock-ups.

This post has been edited by Quick Man: 02 February 2004 - 06:07 PM

[Guess Who]

Not to mention it could just be a S2B rom close to ours, when Mystic Cave is still referred to as "Dust Hill".

[Quickman]

I don't think so. It looks more like a beta. Our prototype is an alpha. It has the DHZ/MCZ boss, we know that much.

[ICEknight]

In this article, everything looks like the final version and the only missing things seem to be Wing Fortress and Death Egg, although they could have wanted to leave those as a surprise, like they did with Hidden Palace.

Also, this seems to be the version that appeared in one of the game guides, with the title cards already implemented (there's a known scan with the title card saying "Neo Green Hill").


Guys, it's very simple. Either face the facts when there's enough proof to back them up, or keep living in a fantasy land where Dust Hill is a desert that could have been in Sonic CD and Sonic 2 was going to have time travel.

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 02 February 2004 - 06:33 PM

[Guess Who]

Well, no one said that Dust Hill wasn't just a pointer to Mystic Cave, because DHZ might have been removed. I see no reason how Mystic Cave slightly could resemble a "Dust Hill".

[ICEknight]

They kept the name Dust Hill all the way through the development until the last beta versions, and they even programmed Mystic Cave's new-style title card to say "Dust Hill Zone", as they did with Neo Green Hill.

That means it wasn't just "a leftover from the desert", but the original title Mystic Cave was intended to have. If the name itself doesn't make sense, just blame the creative mind behind it...

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 02 February 2004 - 06:53 PM

[Irondude]

Odd, but the whole Time Travel thing in Sonic 2 is getting to be just a myth. If you ask me they are going by what SEGA told them to put.

[The MOPMASTER of the year 3000]

ICEknight, on Feb 2 2004, 05:51 PM, said:

They kept the name Dust Hill all the way through the development until the last beta versions, and they even programmed Mystic Cave's new-style title card to say "Dust Hill Zone", as they did with Neo Green Hill.

That means it wasn't just "a leftover from the desert", but the original title Mystic Cave was intended to have. If the name itself doesn't make sense, just blame the creative mind behind it...

So, now we need to study the evolution of Mystic Cave, One of the once-unimportant and rarely-mentioned zones?

[Fiz]

Well, Mystic Cave's/Dust Hill's original name was "Inside of an old lady's cooch Zone", but that name was too long and wouldn't fit on the title card. You can see why they changed it into Dust Hill later on, then to Mystic Cave because, uh, yeah, old ladies tend to be dusty and cavernous. ...god I'm being a fucking idiot tonight.

I still believe that Dust Hill was not the name intended for the desert level.

[Guess Who]

ICEknight, on Feb 2 2004, 06:51 PM, said:

They kept the name Dust Hill all the way through the development until the last beta versions, and they even programmed Mystic Cave's new-style title card to say "Dust Hill Zone", as they did with Neo Green Hill.

That means it wasn't just "a leftover from the desert", but the original title Mystic Cave was intended to have. If the name itself doesn't make sense, just blame the creative mind behind it...

Wow, how do you know this? Shocking! You must have a newer Beta! OMG HE HAZ TEH BTEAA! Anyway, how do you know that is how it is?

[ICEknight]

guess_who, on Feb 2 2004, 07:21 PM, said:

ICEknight, on Feb 2 2004, 06:51 PM, said:

They kept the name
Dust Hill all the way through the development until the
last beta versions, and they even programmed Mystic Cave's
new-style title card to say "Dust Hill Zone", as they did
with Neo Green Hill.

That means it wasn't just "a leftover from the desert", but
the original title Mystic Cave was intended to have. If the
name itself doesn't make sense, just blame the creative
mind behind it...

Wow, how do you know this? Shocking! You must have a newer
Beta! OMG HE HAZ TEH BTEAA! Anyway, how do you know that is
how it is?

I know it, because I've actually done some research instead of just assuming things that have no proof behind to back them up.

It's very simple:

-The Sonic 2 gold guide has pics from a beta with the old names in the level select, but with all the levels from the final and no scrapped levels (except from Hidden Palace).
-This level select had Wood, Genocide City and other useless crap removed, yet Dust Hill was left right there. They probably even changed its place in the menu to insert other levels, but the title itself wasn't changed since it wasn't just a leftover.
-Another pic from that same prototype shows a new-style title card with the words Neo Green Hill Zone, so the same would apply to Dust Hill.

These alone would be proof enough to make Naka scream that Dust Hill was indeed Mystic Cave's original title, but the most picky fanboys would say things like "What if they were inserting the desert again for that prototype and deleted mystic cave just to make that picture and confuse us??". Then, this EGM issue comes to the rescue.

-EGM claims the prototype to be almost complete, and it shows almost every stage that's shown in said level select menu (except for the last stages), so it's most likely the exact same prototype, if not a very similar one.
-The stages are listed in the final order and with their respective titles, in this preview. This means that the new title cards had been implemented at that point, since they noted down the Zone names while playing through the game. The order in this article would have been different had they been using the stage select menu, since the level order in there is very different.

Since they bothered to make a new "Dust Hill" title card for the caves, that discards the theory that Dust Hill was just a leftover from the desert level when it was in the level select menu.

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 02 February 2004 - 10:47 PM

[LocalH]

In other words, Dust Hill is Mystic Cave, point blank, with 99.9% probability.

Which is pretty much what many of us feel anyway. Thanks for even more solid proof, ICEknight.