I never really thought about it before, but OP might have something there. I also think that what someone else said is true, that they just gave up on Lost World due to tech issues and just went "eh fuckit, just stick him in Twinkle Park, that's got water in it right?". Really would have preferred a platforming/fishing mix as well. (Assuming we absolutely HAD to have Big in the first place.) I'm also pretty sure that Windy Valley was just being used as a test map during development, and Big was never meant to go there at all. I mean, why would he? Unless there's some floating lakes in the sky like Angel Island's somewhere I guess. :v:
I really don't think that the snake pool from Lost World was to be level 1 for a couple of reasons... 1) The pool is bottomless unlike the fishing pool in every other Big stage. A hazard like this is much more suited to a later (last) level. 2) Having to fish while standing on the swimming snake would be next to impossible. This is too much for a player to deal with even on hard mode in a final level. To that right, the snake was awkward enough to deal with as Sonic; wonky camera angles and collision glitches made it too easy to slip and fall into the bottomless pit below. You more or less had to stand perfectly centered along the width of the snake platform. Big was so well... BIG that it would've been significantly harder to remain on the platform. These two factors alone make the snake pool a poor location for a first level; herculean difficulty is just out of place. On top of that, Lost World only seems to fit in Big's Story as the first place he travels to, so the only conclusion that seems sensible is that Lost World was intended to be a Big level, but they couldn't think of an appropriate place to put the fishing pool. I'm just saying that it would have made more sense to say that the developers intended to put a pool elsewhere but couldn't think of a good place. I know I've restated some thoughts from others here, but I'm more focused on my own conclusion than anything. I could be wrong, but I just don't see the snake pool as part of Big's game.
