New Sonic 2 development lore drop - Genocide/Cyber City palette and art!

Wait a minute.
That Eggman Submarine from the commercial looks oddly similar to Labyrinth Zone Boss from SMS version, but not to MD version.

I need to check other commercials, related both to Sonic 1 and 2...

 

There is also a chance that the 3 acts were made before they had decided to make every zone only 2 acts. That would place the drawings before Nick Arcade...

 

Another possibility is that EVERY zone was going to be 3 acts originally, just like Sonic 1, and they only cut it down to 2 acts later on when they realized there were too many zones for that to be feasible.

 

I think the answer is that it was already decided to scrap huge chunks of the game as originally envisioned, and the Nick Arcade and Simon Wai protos are "vertical slices" to show to the public that are put together the way they are solely so that it doesn't explode when someone looks at it funny.

this isn't a "we think", it was something explicitly said by one of the devs, it's outright on our wiki. and the Simon Wai proto proves it, because it lines up with the map pretty closely in some areas and even has mechanics from the assets posted in this thread that were scrapped in the final

actually that's something, I do wonder when the three act structure was scrapped? I also don't really know much about how Metropolis Act 3 and then the last three levels of the game are implemented given that they're exceptions to the 2 act rule the rest of the game has. Are they coded as exceptions (hacked in, etc) or is the way the level-pointing is structured allow for it, and 2 acts was just a convention the devs followed as opposed to enforced by the code itself?

If the number of acts was scrapped later, you'd think that we'd have some leftovers in the protos, but we don't. But on the other hand Cyber City was planned as 3 acts and Metropolis was implemented as 3 acts. Was it decided from the beginning and Payne just didn't hear about it?

 

That's not how this works. Even "reliable sources" get things wrong, or state things in a way that are then skewed from their original meaning. For the record, I'm not saying Tom is necessarily wrong. I'm saying we might have misunderstood things.

I can't find the quote, but as I recall and was pointed to earlier in this thread, he indicated they decided he would focus on Metropolis act 3 after Genocide City was canned. That's not the same as saying (an act of Genocide City was turned into Metropolis act 3). And if someone is able to find that quote, you can spot-check me on it.

What we have seen *so far* certainly looks to support the idea we misunderstood what happened. Maybe there were other drafts for a Genocide City layout, and that could prove the Metropolis act 3 connection. But right now, what we have puts the whole thing into question. I think a reasonable person has to have a degree of skepticism on this.

Also, our Wiki is written by people who also get things wrong from time to time. We're human.

 

It might have been scraped when time travel was. An idea I have is that it could've worked like: Act 1 = Past, Act 2 = Present, Act 3 = Future.

 

I'm certain that elements from GCZ were considered for Metropolis 3 at the very least. The Pistons. The Rhombus. Some version of fans, even. We have direct evidence of all 3 of those having ties to both zones somewhere in the history of this whole process. We've discussed it in this very thread. We have versions of the Metrpolis Pistons with Cyber City specific art assets right at the start of the thread, even if they never showed up in Yasuhara's maps.

The issue is whether or not Metropolis Act 3 was ever going to be called anything else but... Metrpololis Zone Act 3, and if it was, it was only for a very short time period, it would appear, and a build with that concept was probably never actually made. (As Metropolis 3 is already something that exists in the Simon Wai build and discarded most of the GCZ/CCZ assets).

The next question is what GCZ/CCZ concepts were recycled elsewhere either in Sonic 2 or 3, and to what degree. Again, I feel like the full design docs may hint at much more of that.

 

I believe that. Since Metropolis act 3 was done last and GCZ was scrapped, I think it's only natural they would have tried to reuse some of those GCZ concepts. The fans didn't make it in, but they probably considered making them part of MZ3.

 

It simply is the easiest assumption to make as Tom did both levels and there’s the old naka quote from sonic jams guide “Act 3 (of Metropolis Zone) was going to be a different Zone that would only appear once (one act)... We had already finished the map, and it would have been a shame to waste it, so this is what we went with.”
Basically in this case we need to know how early these maps are to know if naka could’ve been referring to a different thing.
Also if they decided to cut the fat late in development they might’ve tried to save his work first, as according to an old interview with Brenda Ross they started cutting stuff from the artists last brought on board and how far they got.

 

Might've not worked perfectly that way, since some timezones didn't share levels.
But for levels shared between timezones, I think it could've worked out that way.
Actually, for the insane amount of levels planned at first, I think it might've been the most logical way to go at it.
Now, if they've indeed pondered on it or not, only devs with some memory of it could to enlighten us a bit ^^"

 

That idea feels like it also has some merit with some concepts such as the weird 'tsunami flood' version of the 'Ancient time' map. What on earth was that all about? It seems weird to make a map of this if it was only really going to impact one Zone in that time period. What would've caused it? Could it be something you'd trigger in one playthrough but could avoid the next?

Sonic 2's development was certainly...ambitious, regardless of how you slice it. I commend the team for trying since it seems like it had the messiest development schedule/communication methods of the bunch. It certainly makes for an interesting discussion which is why I guess I'm so hooked on just letting my mouth hang open and shout . The final product I still think is absolutely wonderful, but it seems they were planning a pretty large narrative had Time Travel not been axed.

I guess if that's the case, what was the plan with Genocide City 2 Zone? I think I could still see the 2nd version mentioned on the map being an extra Act thingy. I can't imagine them going further than 4 Acts per Zone, and I think it would allow Naka's quote to make sense (which I envision as him stating that 'We wanted this scrapped Zone to have 3 Acts, it got cut, but we really liked that 3 Act idea so we just gave it to Metropolis.')

 

Like I said, it's only a possibility. While I do think Sonic 2 having 3 acts to each zone was an idea at some point during development, I feel like it must've been extremely early in development if that were the case, before they would've even hired Tom Payne to begin with. But I don't know, there's always the chance it survived longer than we think.

 

If it was an idea, it was scrapped early enough to not have even made it to the Nick Arcade prototype, (which was May-June '92 I think), as even by that point Emerald Hill was already 2 acts with a boss.

 

One thing I wonder about is how early they planned the method for special stage entrance. We know that Sonic 1 was originally supposed to have the big rings hidden throughout the maps like they did in 3K, but that they moved it to be at the end of the stage if you got 50 rings or more due to memory constraints (which 3K must've gotten around through clever placement and swapping the data in and out as needed).

The (unused) checkpoint marker in the S2 Wai build doesn't have any method for entering the special stage, either it was planned but not implemented, or it was not planned at that time. Of course, with the final Sonic 1/CD method, there were no special stage rings in any boss level, and with most levels having only 2 acts, that means only one chance to get an emerald per zone (twice in the case of Metropolis) and no chance after Metropolis, meaning only 9 chances to get all 7 emeralds, which I imagine is what led to them letting checkpoints grant access, since that greatly increases the number of chances you have. Sonic 3K would especially not work well with the final 1/CD method, since there are bosses at the end of every single act, and also a greater chance you'll lose your 50 rings during any boss battle.

 

We do? How do we know this? I've never heard of this before.

 

Unfortunately, I am unsure of the source of the info, and a quick check on the wiki hasn't yielded anything either. I swear I remember there being speculation with some supporting evidence, or perhaps even a developer statement. Someone else may be able to confirm or deny it.

 

Yasahara showed off a Green Hill Zone layout map at the same event he showed the Sonic two maps. At the end of the middle S-loop was a special stage entrance.

I seem to recall additional evidence pertaining to the "warp" object as it relates to the giant gold ring.

 

Here you go (link):


As for the warp-big ring connection, this can be seen in the depths of the Sonic 1 prototype.

 

For such small levels, that would have been so disruptive to gameplay. I wonder how soon they changed it; the game kept intact the end of level point emblems which seem to have possibly been related to the win-jump animation that was cut. These point emblems are an oddity that no one really mentions.

 

The little chirpy things that appear out of nowhere when you jump at a certain point, right? I was mildly always curious about those myself and why they never appeared in any of the other games. I also forgot that that triumphant pose was even supposed to be a thing until you mentioned it. Unfortunately I don't exactly have time to dig through the wiki at the moment to refresh my memory on why it was cut and now it's bugging me...