Let's think up new Sonic zone tropes!

In my opinion, Sonic always needed more levels like Hill Top. I really liked that mountainous environment.

But for a new environment, I always thought it would be really neat to see a classic-Sonic version of a daytime city stage like Route 99 in SAdv3, hopefully with less pipes and more jumping buildings.

 

Okay, iLol'd. Had to be sigged, made me laugh so much.

This. :v:

Well hello Metal Gear Solid 3.

 

Red Zone

 

Dead Ball Zone

 

I know I'm kind of late, but this is great. Thank you for breaking the idea of formulaic zones based off generations of past titles and fan games.

 

Instantly thought of Mario Sunshine. :v:
Which I'll try to think of some zones too.


Raving Rig Zone
Marine Rust Zone
Slate Station Zone
A REAL Clock Work Zone
Aviation Arrest Zone
Timeless Castle Zone
Oasis Orient Zone
EggRail Zone


Just some

 

I guess I'll try to make some:

Cosmic Canopy Zone- a space level that morphs and shapeshifts at some parts, sometimes by switch, sometimes automatically.

Cannon Blast Zone- a mostly vertically-oriented zone, with a network of launcher/cannon objects (preferably like the ones in Lauch Base) blasting you through different parts of the stage.

Wild Rapids Zone- Sort of like Sandopolis, exept with waterslides and rock-like platforms.

Cyber Gateway Zone- Sort of a 2D Digital Dimension from Riders.

Egg Palace Zone- Castle adorned with Robotnik statues and the like. Technological threats and traps are hidden beneath the castle-like structures.

EDIT: Added descriptions to each

 

Track and Field Zone: a Zone based on various Track and Field events. Think Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, but cooler.

Winter Volcano Zone: simply a mix of an ice and lava based stage.

Hornet's Nest Zone: taking a page out of DKC2, Robotnik built this giant Hornet/Wasp/Bee robot as well as a home for it, and this home looks like the inside of a beehive or something.

 

Moria Mines Zone (Mystic cave with orcs)
Freeze Flame Zone
MySpace Zone (horribly horribly broken, bad coding, lots of flashing lights and unnecessary animation, etc)
Residential Zone, Commercial Zone, Industrial Zone

 

Biohazard zone: All of Sonic's friends, the entire menagerie from the extended universe, have been infected by a zombification virus and it is Sonic's sad duty to exterminate them all before the infection spreads - thus resulting in a franchise reset that we've been dreaming about since day dot.

Biohazard zone 2: Robotnik has finally "unlocked the mystery of life" and begun experimentation in genetic and bio-engineering. Of course, he's buggered it up and now his base is a giant angry living organism. Think R-type meets splatterhouse meets the tapeworm levels from earthworm jim.

 

Reverse Engineering zone: Sonic runs through an ever changing level. The level starts out as Green Hill Zone, and slowly the level becomes deformed by crappy palettes, odd layouts, and bad object placement. Also fluctuating speed caps and random powers being added or removed at will.

 

The Sega Zone. Sonic has to run through an environment collectively reminiscent of Golden Axe, Ristar, Vectorman, and other Megadrive Sega games, with badniks resembling the various games' protagonists.
Who, might you ask, is the boss? Who, just who, could be the grand master of this unfitting zone?

Dr. Robotnik swoops down at Sonic in his Eggmobile, in a similar fashion to the First Boss of the 8 bit Sonic 1. After taking 4 hits, the machine explodes, and who jumps out?

Why, the real boss, SEGATA SANSHIRO

 

Yellow Silver Submarine Zone
Sonic has to go through an impossibly large submarine, avoiding bomb-tossing Orbinauts and spike traps. In the second act, Eggman fills the submarine with water, making it even more dangerous.

 

That's actually a pretty good zone idea.

My contribution will be "Egg Apocalypse Zone." It will be a three-act zone combining the most lethal aspects of Scrap Brain Zone, Metropolis Zone, and Death Egg Zone, all in one hellish package. The location: inside a volcano on a small moon/planet, so it is also a lava level. At the end of each of the acts, you face a more difficult version of each game's respective final boss (sans Silver Sonic or the shielded ball thing from S&K). The first act's emphasis is on platforming over lava, the second zone's emphasis takes place deeper in the volcano and features many a conveyor belt and volcanic hazards from above, and the third act is a gravity-twisting combination of both.

Boss 1: Sonic 1's final boss features a gravity-shift gimmick that occurs at regular intervals, moving Sonic to either the floor or the ceiling. The energy balls charge and fire at higher speeds and the crushers come three at a time, but slower.

Boss 2: The giant Eggman mech's repertoire of attacks is now reinforced by eye-lasers that fire in a fashion similar to Sandopolis Zone Act 2's boss, and his jetpack's bombs can now fire forward.

Boss 3: The first phase routinely sprouts spikes from its crushing fingers in a consistent pattern, so the player must take care what fingers they attack. The second phase's flamethrower now has multiple attack patterns which must be avoided, and the window of opportunity for attacking the laser is shorter, as its charge time and the time it takes to close the chestplate have been decreased. (There is no "Eggman chase sequence" at the end of this boss).

EDIT: You see, now, melding old tropes to make new tropes is the wave of the future, yes it is. (...Actually the trope is "techno-volcano," I'm just an uncreative little fuck and have to describe all the hazards by referring to old level tropes.)

 

Coming at this from a storyfag point of view, I'd like to see Zones that have some continuity behind them. FOR EXAMPLE:

Crater Plains Zone
"What happened to the moon Eggman blews up in SA2?!" you might scream, with much nerd-raeg and mashing of teeth. Here's one answer. I imagine a wide, open, American-Great-Plains style level (basicly SatBK's Titanic Plain, but yellow rather than green), with sparse pockets of trees here and there, and the occasional MASSIVE CRATER dug out of the landscape from where pieces of the moon smashed into the ground. There could be Ayers-Rock-style giant meteor fragments stuck in the ground. For extra points, the wide-open-sky could actually have the broken moon hanging on the horizon, chunks of blasted planetary shrapnel orbiting behind it. The Acts could turn from day to night, making the moon more prominent until you can even see the red glow of its still-exposed core. Bonus points if one of the Acts puts Sonic in the middle of a meteor shower.

Meteor City Zone
Variation on the same idea; it's essentially an abandoned modern city, again with the broken moon hanging prominently in the sky and a huge meteor crater glimpsed in the background to drive home the point of WHY it's abandoned. This would essentially be the ruined-New-York from the OVA... plus meteor showers. I'm thinking of the opening scene from Deep Impact where you get fireball showers raining down and carving paths through the centres of buildings. While Sonic's trying to climb them.

Shipwreck Savanna Zone
Seem to have things-falling-from-the-sky-messing-the-landscape-up on my mind today. Inspired by this pic of the Aral Sea (below), I'm thinking of a Zone where we find out "What happened to all those Egg Fleet ships you (and Metal Overlord) pwnt towards the end of Sonic Heroes? The answer: smashed down in various upside-down, nose-first wreckage piles amidst a savanna somewhere. The level would be a lot of open-plain sprinting, punctuated by dashing inside the ship-ruins. However, given that they're crashed and wrecked in strange orientations, you'll often find yourself running on ceilings or walls, leaping up bulkheads and dashing to avoid explosions from the fragile fuel tanks your progress inevitably dislodges.

<div align='center'>

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, SHIP BEACHES YOU!</div>

 

Strawberry Fields Zone
Penny Lane Zone
:v:


Nuclear Madness Zone: A nuclear plant ruin, where plants and animals suffered mutations because of the radioactive substances

Medieval Zone: Eggman built a secret hideout into an old Castle, filling it with traps and armored badniks equipped with swords, spears, crossbows and all kind of related weapons of that time

Mountain Zone: A high altitude level, where you have bridges and platforms to help you to get through it...anyway, watch your step, you never know when the floor under your feet will fall

 

Sounds sort of like one of my ideas...

This one is a little out there but here goes:

Psuedo Special Zone:

A Zone that replicates a combination of some of the different parts of the Special Zone we've seen so far. First, you begin with the "falling" one from Advance, and then land in the Heroes one. That one eventually changes to the one from Sonic 2/Rush, and you dodge the bombs and the like, through dips and curves and such. You spin and fly off that one and fall into the one from S1 and play it pinball-style. Next you fall out of that one, into "Blue Sphere", which is represented as a large planet-type area. You weave in and out between the bumpers and red spheres, which hurt you, and also use the springs to access platforming sections/ shortcuts. Perhaps collecting a small amount of Blue Spheres will allow you to reach another platforming area that takes you to the next part, which is basically a flat plane area like from CD/Advance 2, for the boss fight. Said area will have fans, dash pads and traps like in CD to increase the difficulty of the boss. The boss is simple: Robotnik rides his normal pod but has 5-6 "UFO"-like structures spinning around it horizontally, shooting pillars of energy down from each at quick intervals. To defeat it, you must wait for it to rush forward and lean toward you, or bounce to a higher area to try to hit it from above.

 

I didn't read all the thread, sry

 

It's alright, you expanded on the idea a little more anyway.