Hirokazu Yasuhara revealing all kinds of Sonic development stuff

If you enter '???' (dust) n google images, you get a lot of pictures of snow. I actually think Dust Hill may have been the name of the winter level!

 

And finally, (second) "Present":



And for fun (not saying I subscribe to this theory, just wanted to show what it would look like):

 

With yellow sand and ice mountains we can have the transition Brenda Ross mentioned :v:

 

Nice coloring work guys !

 

http://megaman.wikia.com/wiki/Dust_Man

 

I've worked with Japanese for over 10 years so let me just say that in normal everyday life no one refers to garbage as "dust" in Japan. They'd be more prone to use ?? (gomi) if anything. Dust is apparently only used when making clever names for some work of art like that Mega Man boss.

I definitely think there's some mistranslation going on in how they came to the word dust. I'm with IceKnight with the idea that they likely weren't referring to a desert. Everyone assumed that purely based on the idea that dust is a particle like sand. I just hope Yasuhara shares more stuff because no amount of rationalizing is going to make anything clear, it's just all too ambiguous still.

 

I still stand with my theory about Dust Hill Zone posted a few pages back. I'm also guessing that since the original Dust Hill Zone was dropped early, Mystic Cave was put in its slot because they had yet to come up with a name for it. So left it Dust Hill Zone until Mystic Cave was officially named.

 

I teach in Japan and I've had a couple people use the word "dust bin" when referring to a trash can when making an English sentence. I'm guessing some English textbooks use outdated terms like that. So perhaps that's the reason?

But yeah, when someone says ??? in any other case it's to refer to actual dust. Something old and abandoned is dusty, so maybe that's why they could have used it for mystic cave.

 

Hmm. Maybe the one of the two Rock Worlds are the snowy one? I have no idea.

What's frustrating is that only the Now map fully has arrows. The past map only has two, and the rest have none. What was the progression really supposed to be, anyway?

Honestly, this reveal raises far, far more questions than it answers. Would be lovely if Yasuhara sheds some much needed light on these holes of information.

 

If you search "Dust Landscape" in Japanese the results are both snowy mountains and desertic plains made of dirt or dried soil instead of sand.

I have a friend that speaks Japanese natively, he has family there. I'm going to ask his opinion.

 

Maybe it wasn't a transition after all. I mean, look at EHz and Hill Top. Similar art, different zones.

 

Maybe the snow level was Dust Hill and the desert level was Sand Shower. (Just a little more speculation.)

 

We have a bit of an idea thanks to the last image:

This also lines up almost perfectly with the Wai proto's internal order, assuming Rock World's past and bad present were separate zones:

This makes sense if the winter zone was planned this early on. Rock World (Present) takes place in the same time period as its counterpart, Sand Shower, justifying a palette swap and has a fair amount of distance between them order-wise.

Another theory is that Rock World (Past) is Hidden Palace. Just look at the mock-up:

Not only does the internal level slot match up, but the theme fits Rock World's concept to a tee. I can easily see the level getting re-named early on and later re-purposed for the Super Sonic "cut-scene" before getting dropped altogether.

 

Didn't the artist of Hidden Palace Zone's tileset state that he was drawing for Hidden Palace, but miscommunication meant that he drew it much rockier than intended?

Of course, foggy memories, ect.

 

I'm glad there was more evidence to imply this might be the case than I initially presented! Maybe I wasn't crazy after all :P

So much of it just seems to imply that the level we know as Hidden Palace is, at the very least, not what the original vision was. I really do believe that Rock World Zone was either occupying a level slot of an already cancelled Hidden Palace OR the original Hidden Palace was not far enough along in development to make it in time for the November release so a zone further along (Rock World) was re-named and re-framed to be the Super Sonic ascension area due to it's already-existing association with stones, minerals and gems, hence the giant emeralds.

 

Digging through this series of interviews with Craig Stitt, I found some interesting tidbits:

• He mentions the concept maps: "I would be given a paper map and some suggestions as to what the theme of the level was like. I would then rough out some ideas and show them around. "
• HPZ "was early in the game though, not at the end like a traditional 'bonus level'."
• HPZ cut due to development on other zones mechanics, and cut awfully late.
• He seems to mention Olympus as Atlantis: "I can remember a variation on the Atlantas theme that got as far as a map and some rough art, but that's all I can remember (Mark Cerny designed that one)"
• He conceptualized around the time travel theme, for a time at least: "I do remember something about there being a time-travel story line. I can remember trying to work out the details of what a forest would look like when it was greeen and healthy, then what it would look like after it had been ravaged by Robotnic. I can remember trying to come up with a good way of doing burning trees"
• He didn't appear to believe Dust Hill was the desert level: "The desert level could have been named Dust Hill. The only thing I can really remember about it was that the 'hook' for that level was lots of quicksand. Sonic would slowly sink if he wasn't fast enough or jumped wrong."

I didn't see any mention of his design for HPZ being too rocky though, in that collection at least. He certainly did mention that he disliked his own far background design however.

 

I think he was referring to the actual level maps, as in, the ones drawn in millimeter paper.

 

That's probably true since he was working on art and not on level design. Unless he was given the concepts to work with before the levels were mapped. Since he did join later in the dev cylce, it probably is more likely he had the level schematics to base his art off. My bad.

Combing through the Brenda Ross interview now, I found some correlations with what Craig Stitt was saying, and more:

• She didn't believe the Gator belonged in the desert. She also didn't work on badniks.
• She claimed twice that "Dust Hill" was likely completed, and that Woods Zone was at least halfway done, if not more.
• Sega didn't seem to care for her artwork, as evidenced by none of her work being used in the end. Craig Stitt mentioned that American art was often targeted, and that "Sometimes this was because the art wasn't working, but on other occations, I don't believe this was the case. (such as with Hidden Palace, although I never was happy with the far background)"
• She emphasized the transition from the desert with cacti to the snow-desert with pine trees.

If the desert level transitioned not from time period but from act 1 to act 2; both terrain choices would mesh with dust. If you observe the Now 2 map, it looks like Dust Hill could cover a large area. From the rocky flats up the slope of the mountain. Just a thought.

 

• 
  
  It seems like that hook was carried over to Oil Ocean Zone

 

Hmm, so perhaps Olympus was a playable level. He says some art was done for it, I would not be surprised if the Grecko-Roman pillars in ARZ were recycled from the work that had been done on it before it was cut.

I'm really hoping that someday (hopefully sooner than later) we'll get the level maps, design notes, and actual art assets. We could recreate this lost Sonic 2 very accurately.