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

Thanks again for the update. Given that, we'll just have to wait and be patient. You're doing gods work and I'm still glad your stream went well, all things considered.

In fact, when the blog post drops, I would say feel free to create a new thread with it yourself here if you'd like. That'd allow you to promote your own work to the community properly.

 

Yeah, starting a new thread more focused on the actual scans might be a good idea.

 

I'm not sure if it was finished enough for a Boss to be present but wasn't Genocide City Zone supposed to have a "Flaming Hedgehog Skull" Robotnik battle or was that just a rumor? Heard that on here decade's ago

 

Total false rumor based on the name alone.

About as legit as this image is.

 

It's on the Strategy Guide on page 100.

 

lol there's been a whole game's worth of fake Genocide Cities over the years

 

I had an idea that the day the scans are released, there should be one big act consisting of every fake GCZ made across the years as part of a fangame or hack.

 

I'd love to hear a Video Game History Hour episode on all this, if you decide to do so that is.

 

Ah, I remember that rumor! I recall the Retro Wiki listing that on one of the pages at some point, too. I believe it came from an English strategy guide for Sonic Advance 2? It's gone now, but now I wonder what the Hell it was talking about. It seems like a very strange thing to just make up and vaguely allude to.

 

Not gonna lie, unless we find actual concept art of such a boss existing for any Sonic game, I would say that the line in the Strategy Guide is complete BS. It’s not relevant to Cyber City either ways, though, as all the evidence we have points towards it either having the WFZ Boss, or, what I think is more likely, not having a Boss at all, ala SBZ.

 

Wasn't the strategy guide thing based on a misunderstanding of a (possibly slightly dodgily translated) comment about something being axed in one of the classic games due to the devs being told they shouldn't show Sonic's skeleton? Which in turn makes it likeliest the original comment was actually referencing Sonic's unused electrocution animation from Sonic CD, in which Sonic's skeleton is indeed shown.

Anyone else remember this, or has my tired morning brain just daydreamed this memory up? I can't seem to actually open said strategy guide page on my phone to double check what it says.

 

https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/unconfirmed-genocide-city-zone-rumor.345/
It was so long ago... I even wasn't born in that times :p
Seems like there written about boss, but doesn't said that it was for Sonic 2

 

I'd imagine it'd most likely have been for one of the 8-bit games myself.

 

https://tcrf.net/Knuckles'_Chaotix/Unused_Sprites

Not exactly super relevant, but I guess I'll bite.

The Chaotix unused objects page has a very weird skull sprite in it. Maybe this is the oddball item that Advance 2 page was discussing?

 

Oh god please don’t say that

 

So, about Naka's comment on Metropolis Zone Act 3:

He explicitly says 前半 (first half), a term often used to signal things that are split into two or more major parts. At first, his statement doesn't make any sense and seems to imply that the first half of an act was cut, and that half became Act 3. That is, until you realize that he probably means the game itself, so he's talking about a zone during the first half of the game. After going back and forth with a friend of mine, this is the translation I've got:

I think what tripped up the original translation were the "previous zone" and "was cut" parts. That could easily be translated as "a zone that was worked on previously, that was ultimately cut". However, he never says the zone was cut, only that act 3 of said zone was moved. I believe he means a zone that literally was meant to show up previous to Metropolis (in the context of it now being one of the last zones) during the first half of the game. Essentially, what he's saying is that a zone in the first half of the game was going to have 3 acts, the only zone to do so ("show up once"). But due to storyline changes, the concept of 3 acts was moved to Metropolis instead.

Also, he says the map was done, but "the other things" were not. In other words, the rhombuses, pistons, all that Act 3-exclusive crap, might've really been made just for Metropolis, and only the layout itself was reused.

What doesn't make sense is that if Cyber City was indeed the level with 3 acts, surely it wouldn't have been played during the first half of the game...would it?

 

Thank you for diving into this. This is good to keep on hand.

Also, I'd like to point out something that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere: if another zone's act indeed merged into Metropolis Zone, whose to say the "additional act" of Metropolis Zone didn't become act 1 or 2?

 

I don't follow.

He says the additional act was moved to be after Act 2.

 

i think you can also read this as though this level was done ahead of other levels, not necessarily just the object-less layout

 

Ah, so he does. So assuming your interpretation is correct, act 3 in fact belonged to a different zone, not 1 or 2.

It's too bad he's dealing with legal issues right now. This is the kind of thing we might be able to pose to him for inquiry. Might solidify your interpretation, or at least provide additional context to give us a clearer picture of what happened.