Hirokazu Yasuhara revealing all kinds of Sonic development stuff

Yet one more possibility: we know that had Genocide City not been cut, it would've been renamed Cyber City, because the Japanese portion of the dev team didn't know what that word meant. It's not the only time something like this happened, either. Get Blue Sphere was almost called Get Blue Balls until a westerner pointed out their blunder. I'm thinking the sequence of events went like this:

-Someone comes up with the idea of a mine level called Dust Hill.
-The zone is designed and artwork is made.
-Some westerner on the dev team goes "You know, as cool as this level is, the name really doesn't fit."
-The person they spoke to said "OK, we'll come up with a better name later."
-Not having a new name yet, they leave "Dust Hill" there as a placeholder.
-Someone comes up with the name "Mystic Cave" and "Dust Hill" is phased out.

 

To me, that seems to be the case. But we can't prove that.

 

In the event of Mystic Cave coinciding with Rock World instead of it being Dust Hill, which I won't rule at as a possibility, I'd be more inclined to believe the past Rock World/Mystic cave as a zone we have never seen. I don't really see the connection between Rock World past and Wood Zone. Wood Zone appears more in line as a past Casino Night when comparing the Now map to the presumed Future map. That said, when comparing the Now 2 map with the presumed Ancient map, Rock World certainly does look forested.

Speculation: If Mystic Cave was Rock World bad present, perhaps Rock World past was an unhinhabitated cave? As in with no mine shafts, pullies, etc.

[Edit] I also could see it as Rock World ancient - Woods zone present - Rock World/MC bad present - Casino Night future.

 

I took a crack at the zone order using the above info compared to the Wai proto's internal order:

00: Green Hill | Green Hill/Emerald Hill
01: Ocean Wind | BLANK (plays Emerald Hill BGM)
02: Woods | Wood
03: Sand Shower | BLANK (plays Oil Ocean BGM)
04: Metropolis | Metropolis
05: Tropical Plant | Metropolis Act 3
06: Blue Lake | BLANK (plays 2P Emerald Hill BGM) (Wing Fortress in final)
07: Hill Top | Hill Top
08: Rock World (Past) | Hidden Palace (plays 2P Mystic Cave BGM)
09: Rock World (Present) | BLANK (plays Sky Chase BGM)
0A: Oil Ocean | Oil Ocean (plays 2P Casino Night BGM)
0B: Dust Hill | Dust Hill/Mystic Cave
0C: Casino Night | Casino Night
0D: Chemical Plant | Chemical Plant
0E: Genocide City | Genocide City (plays Chemical Plant BGM) (Death Egg in final)
0F: Genocide City 2/Neo Death Egg | Aquatic Ruin
10: Death Egg | Death Egg (no music) (Sky Chase in final)

The trickiest area is slots 08 and 09, since we don't know for sure if Rock World really was split into 2 zones or if Olympus was an actual stage and not a cutscene. If Olympus was an actual stage, it would've been in either of these 2 slots. I'm also assuming Genocide City 2 was going to be Neo Death Egg considering it follows Genocide City 1 and shares the same time period.

If Rock World was indeed originally 2 separate zones for each time period, then the folks pointing out Hidden Palace's similar concept to Rock World might've been onto something.
EDIT: Purely speculation here, but Rock Work Zone (Present) could've been the winter zone. Heck, the Sky Chase music does fit an ice level well. And it took place in the same time period as its counterpart, Sand Shower, justifying a palette swap.

 

That's why I said it 'can have' no 'it has'. We can't take two pieces of evidence and say nothing happened in between, that's theorising too. And more if one contradicts info from another.

And this happens for not downloading the ROM and checking it by myself :v:

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Edit: It could be possible that the revisited Zones were actually Act 2? Like you complete the first Act of Hill Top, continue to Rock World, and later in the game visit Hill Top on its second Act.

I remember in an interview that Genocide City/Cyber City was going to be a single Act Zone but it was recycled into Metropolis Act 3. But in the map there is two GCZ/CCZ.

 

I wonder if the reason why they cut the act count to 2 was so that revisiting the past zones wouldn't feel so redundant...

 

Yasuhara was the one that had the level-specific concept art, too (multiple S2 pieces in this picture of his desk):



Here's to hoping he tweets (or otherwise releases) them!

 

Wow, the spinning spiky logs were such an old idea? Neat!

 

A possible reason for this is because the map is an early idea of how things were going to work. It's very likely that the time travel concept was already scrapped by the Simon Wai prototype as many things just do not add up. The exclusion of Mystic Cave, Aquatic Ruin, and Hidden Palace (a very early level) makes me think that this map can't exactly be heavily relied on.

 

I wonder if he has any concept art of the newly revealed scrapped levels? Interesting stuff either way!

 

What we do have is contradictory information. If we only look at what we have we get no answers at all; theorising is required in order to get a solid theory.

I do think that the information we have more-or-less solidifies Sand Shower Zone as "the desert zone" that was being talked about; developers are hazy on the name "Dust Hill Zone", but seem pretty solid in their knowledge of the desert zone, and all the information they've given about it matches up to Sand Shower.

I'm not sure the information we have solidifies Mystic Cave Zone as "Dust Hill Zone". Once again, developers are hazy on the name "Dust Hill Zone", which doesn't make sense if that was the name for it right up until the latest betas, and they've actively rejected that name for Mystic Cave. We still need more information to confirm or deny this, and all we can do is theorise.

 

Regarding the Dust Hill Zone name. I'll take a try at it. Probably wrong, but my theory.

Going back to the Sonic Jam Strategy Guide for Mystic Cave Zone:

Some pics of Obake Yashiki's:




I know that "Hill" Zones are usually outside, but what if "Dust" is referring to dusty old houses/structures? I could see a Zone where you are outside some of the Zone and enter the "haunted house" part(s). The music does have a kinda spooky vibe to it.
Again, that's one of my theories.

 

So, while not supported by any documents, can we assume that Dust Hill and Neo Green Hill co-existed in the same time period at some point? Dust Hill is the old abandoned Green Hill and Sonic's animal friends fled to Neo Green Hill?

So why is there a 'Death Egg' and 'Neo Death Egg' Just past and future Death Eggs?

 

No, we can't.

Dust Hill exists in the ruined present; it's not "the old abandoned Green Hill" as much as it is "the old abandoned Hill Top".

Neo Green Hill is more likely to exist in the future, possibly in a good future map not shown.

 

Maybe it's referring to the original one that can be seen in the mountains and the newly constructed ones ("Neo Death Eggs"?) in the future cities.

 

Can the blue-highlited text be read?

 

Hey, doesn't the first line say "EGGMAN" in English?

 

Was it ever confirmed that the Genocide/Cyber City assets were recycled for The Machine in Sonic Spinball? Which then led to speculation that other assets, like stuff from Rock zone, ended up in Toxic Caves etc?