Hirokazu Yasuhara revealing all kinds of Sonic development stuff

Wait. Have I been looking at Mystic Cave wrong for the past 25 years? I always thought the green stuff was thick vegetation..... not stone/rock:

I found some fan art from Stealth that just blew my mind:

http://stealth-logic.deviantart.com/art/Mystic-Cave-Zone-289528470

 

Yeah, green is a strange palette to choose. Some visual aids to those unconvinced.



And why so many vines/vegetation in a cave? Don't they need sunlight to live?

 

Oh thank goodness. I was just about to question everything in my life.

I always saw it as vegetation and the vines were a natural fit...but then there's this...falling rocks using the same color....and the fact that it would be nearly impossible for vegetation to grow in a dark cave:

 

I'm pretty sure they're rocks. They're probably just mossy. They must have picked that color to make the level colorful and vibrant in keeping with the art style of classic Sonic games. It's not that different from the metal structures in Oil Ocean being purple, green and orange, or the foreground area in Metropolis being green despite being made of metal as well.

As for the vines in the left picture:

They aren't growing out of the cave; they're hanging from those fence-like thingies on the ceiling. You can see that these "ceiling fences" are made out of logs tied together with vines. So I think the idea is that the people that built these thingies brought vines to the place to use them as ropes, and probably left the spare ones hanging there for when they're needed.

 

This really bothers me as any other display of rock in any of the classic games was undeniably distinguishable:





So green seems horribly (although not impossible) out of place for rock. But again, logic dictates that foliage like this cannot grow underground.

 

Endless Mine had green rocks as well, I believe.

 

Holy hell, I've thought Mystic Cave was overgrown with green vegetation since I was 10 years old. Now that I'm looking at it again, I can see it as green rock. Everything I know is WRONG. It's a strange style choice, though.

 

Hmm:





And finally Mystic Cave 8 Bit version:

 

Eh you know what else is green rock, emerald.

Green

Emerald

Green Hill, Emerald Hill

Holy shit guys the connections.




Jokes aside you could really say Mystic Cave is gemstone mine.

 

Nothing is stopping the artists from starting with vegetation and later modifying it to look a little bit more like crystal.

 

Oh my god, it looks like the Mystic Cave commentary in the Sonic Jam Strategy Guide is making an actual mention to the maps that Yasuhara unveiled!

He seems to be describing the "Now 2" map:

• The lake is the one that turns into Oil Ocean in the ruined present.
• The mountain is the actual visual representation of Rock World.
• The construction site could be the ruined dome being turned into Genocide City.
• Which would leave Dust Hill being the cave he mentions.

Do we have the original text somewhere, in case that we can get a more accurate translation out of it with our current knowledge?

 

Holy moley, Sonic 2 Beta was right the whole time.....so Dust Hill had to have been Mystic Cave from the beginning.....good for them in changing the name to something more glamorous.

 

Brilliant connection there ICEKnight! No doubt that Mystic Cave is Dust Hill. Tying Dust Hill in with Emerald Hill and Hill Top possibly led to the palette choice then; leaving emphasis on the emeralds in the mine.

A point of curiosity lingering within me still is the obscured text in the upper right corner of this map:


I have been assuming that it depicts the Ancient period, but ideally a straight image of that slide will surface. Knowing that definitively would certainly help in ordering the zones as initially intended.

 

For those that think DHZ could be a GHZ recolor I will point this again... The area where its (and HTZ) palmtrees are is gone. It turned into a hole that ends in the sea.

It also happens to Blue Lake removing vegetation, and in Metropolis showing a part of the pyramid that was underground (with a hole showing something inside).

Edit: And Ocean Wind zone. A hole round in shape too.

 

I'm still more likely to go with what the level artist said, and her boss, i.e. there was a desert level called Dust Hill Zone.

Whether it was always planned to be a desert level is up in the air, but I don't think "things being green" holds up quite as well. I'd like to think there are green rocks in Mystic Cave Zone because the zone is ~mystic~. It's not a realisitc world obeying realistic laws.


More importantly it has to be stated, because apparently this isn't obvious, that Sonic levels have appalling names. From the team that brought you "Spring Yard" and "Scrap Brain", comes "Dust Hill", the latest in a line of "Hill" levels that feature no notable hills.

 

He could very well be talking about a different map altogether. I don't even see a lake on the map, and couldn't the mountain he mentions also be one of the mountains near the back? He could also be talking about Oil Ocean zone when he says construction site. He also mentions a cave which is nowhere to be seen so I'm thinking this was a different map. Sure, an accurate translation could make more sense of it, however I don't think it's possible that Brenda Ross and Yasuhara forget that Dust Hill wasn't a desert level. There is a huge sharp line between a cave and a desert and if Dust Hill zone and Sand Shower zone were both desert levels this could certainly cause the said confusion in the interviews after so many years.

 

I can't seem to find the original scans. The wiki doesn't have them. I found some links here, but they are broken.

I did find the source of the translation there, here. There's a note left by the translator on the Mystic Cave item saying "I believe he is talking about having a wide variety of stages, and the cave is an example of how diverse they were".

Somebody here HAS to have those scans, though.

 

One thing I haven't heard anyone mention yet is that according to the map, Chemical Plant is the future version of Emerald Hill. So it was being mined out in the bad present and turned into a toxic plant afterwards.

 

The missing parts of the island are back in the future, so its possible that something that happened in the ruined future was fixed.

The buildings from Chemical Plant background seems to be where GHZ was.

 

It looks more like Chemical Plant overlaps with Oil Ocean to me, but it certainly is close to the location of Emerald Hill.