Fair enough, I didn't realise that. What's the source for that out of interest? I get confused with all the back and forth. In any case you probably know that's splitting hairs, it was just an example but it could have been anything
Oh, I see. That's a bit misleading though because she also claims that it was called Dust Hill, despite what she called it herself, which is what I was getting at. I'm aware of the stuff about being bombarded with emails etc etc that you also mentioned, so it's pretty weak evidence, but I still think it stands that that is one of the many possible-albeit-unlikely scenarios which led to the confusion.
The Sand Shower name should be moved from the Others category of the article to the "Desert Zone" part and listed as an early name for it at the minimum. The banper enemy concept art not only states the two zones it appeared in (desert and rock) but also states what time periods these zones were from (present and past), which means this concept art was from before the time travel concept was dropped. This piece from the time travel stuff refers to Rock World as "ロック" (rock), which confirms "Rock World" and "Rock" as one and the same. On the present map, we know that Green Hill, Wood(s), and Metropolis aren't desert levels. We can even rule out Ocean Wind thanks to concept art. That leaves Sand Shower, the level located within a desert on the map, as the sole candidate for "Desert". Sand Shower (desert) is in the present/now with Rock World (rock) in the past/ancient time for both the maps and enemy concept and were to share the banper enemy. This is pretty solid evidence that Sand Shower was, at this point in development at least, also known as "Desert Zone".
For now, until more concepts or reliable information emerges, that does seem to be the best way to do things. There just needs to be a piece of concept art for either the Desert Level or for Dust Hill.
I'm afraid to ask but, what whappened to the Sand Shower page which was already in the wiki? How does that level not deserve its own page just like Genocide City? EDIT: Anyway, just added the missing stuff to the page it now redirects to (still needs the Sand Shower name explanation, though).
It actually does make sense for the level to be named "Sand Shower Zone" based on the Banper concept art. The issue being, not everyone agrees.
As a side note, I was looking at the thread of Sonic 2 Director's Cut, a hack. I noticed there's a concept image of ravaged past that is not in the Development article of Sonic 2 in the wiki.
I think I may be the last person to notice this but, I think Banper is actually in the final game! In the original sketches banper was supposed to rise from a tunnel on the ground and act like a spring. That's exactly the same behavior of the beta crawler in Casino Night (pink CNz). So Banper became Crawler and is used in Casino Night (which I read somewhere was supposed to be the future of sand shower/which actually makes sense, since las vegas was built on a desert). Can someone confirm this last bit or am I just misremembering this?
I still say Sand Shower Zone is the desert zone we've seen, and Dust Hill Zone was another desert-like zone along the lines of "Green Hill's looking more like Dust Hill right about now", and then was scrapped and replaced with a cave level when they realised having two desert levels in the same game is a bit shit.
... I may be misremembering but wasn't one of the levels in one of the more recent Sonic games Casino Forest Zone? Is this another case of them rejigging and mashing together unused concepts?
+1 For "Dust Hill was a different zone that eventually got changed into a cave level, and the name needed to be changed to reflect that" I still have a hard time believing that a cave level concept was always named "Dust Hill", and I think it would be dishonest to insinuate that on the wiki.
At least, insinuate it is definitively proven to be the case. IMO, regardless of what one believes i plausible, there are still too many holes in our knowledge of Sonic 2's development to call anything "proven" in the factual sense.
Anyone remember the commercial that has Sonic running on desert? Does anyone think Sand Shower Zone / "Dust Hill Zone" / "Desert Hill" was meant to be based on that, somehow?
This has pretty much been my point from the get-go. I think some people are under the misconception that anyone arguing Mystic Cave isn't Dust Hill believes that Dust Hill was the sand level - not true. I don't think Mystic Cave is Dust Hill but I'm also not convinced the sand level is either.
@Black Squirrel Did you really just remove the Sand Shower name explanation and the Dust Hill name speculation paragraph from the Desert Zone section of the wiki? The mentions which were carried from the other page, sure, fine, but the explanations? You left literally no mention of Sand Shower in there, what in the world.
I love this interest in the wiki, don't get me wrong, but edits like these need to be neutral. 10 pages worth of debate suggests there is not a common answer to the name, so please do not go in and "Sand Showerise" pages, no matter how much you think you're right. There is not enough evidence for either name. It is a compromise. And bloody nicer to read. However there is one point to make because this keeps coming up: https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sket_banper.png The "Banper" sketch. We even have a translation - 砂漠ZONE, or "Sabaku Zone". There is no "Sand Shower Zone" text here.
