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

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by The Joebro64, Mar 19, 2023.

  1. Blastfrog

    Blastfrog

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    I'd bet we'll have some kind of an answer to this once the big document trove drops (whenever that happens). All we can really do is sit tight and wait. Well, that or speculate endlessly. :P
     
  2. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    As annoying as what I'm about to say is,

    it could be because they didn't have a purple pen in the office.


    As in, if the aim is just to show which parts are solid and which aren't, the colour might not actually matter.
     
  3. Eggomaticwaffles

    Eggomaticwaffles

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    LOL...that could absolutely be the case as well! As we've learned in the past, sometimes there's a lot LESS to these mysteries than we hoped!
     
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  4. rata

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    What are the chances that the purple is hinting night time? Similar to how Sonic 1 happens in a day and the stage palettes reflect that day progression.
     
  5. .hack//zero

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    Working on a vulkan game engine for fun. Learning Ray-Tracing.
    I mean, that is the fun part till we get real answers.
     
  6. Not to mention WFZ's laser boss fight. Maybe Cyber City was with us all along, but as WFZ and maybe Sky Chase.
     
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  7. Eggomaticwaffles

    Eggomaticwaffles

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    You do wonder if there were concerns at some point through development about there being 3-4 zones based around a similar urban, technological/mechanical trope (Chemical Plant, Metropolis, Cyber City and perhaps a 4th with Death Egg) and the worry it would start to feel too boxed in and repetitious.

    It would make a lot of sense that they cut the weakest / least developed of the bunch and repurposed many of its core elements elsewhere -- either as Metropolis Act 3, or throughout Wing Fortress. That WFZ boss fight could've easily occurred in Cyber City given the bits and pieces we know about its design.

    Wing Fortress as a zone has always felt a bit half-baked. I recall feeling this way as a kid at Christmas in 1992. The boss fight is nicely realized, but everything leading up to it feels a bit hodge podge. Broken conveyor belts, choppy level flow and its overall brevity would suggest it had a shorter development window. Of course, more might be revealed with these remaining scans, but you do wonder if the M.O. from Sonic Team was to make use of as many existing assets (from Cyber City or elsewhere) as possible in rendering this new Wing Fortress Zone replacement.

    As some others have pointed out, a good many pieces of WFZ in a different palette would make sense within the Cyber City layouts we know.
     
  8. Fadaway

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    While I have no evidence for this besides being a big Shinobi fan (The Super Shinobi aka The Revenge of Shinobi is my second fave Mega Drive game after ToeJam & Earl) and of having always suspected this as a real possibility, lots of elements from both Wing Fortress Zone and Flying Battery Zone are uncannily similar to the airship part of Super Shinobi's Round 3...including the ceiling laser boss fight. The colour palette isn't a far cry from WFZ either. Skip to about 2:33. While it still could possibility have unused content from Genocide City Zone, I hypothesise it could just be a case of it borrowing from another SEGA franchise. But, nothing definitive. Maybe a nod and a wink.
     
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  9. So funny enough, somehow our stars are aligned and I was looking at RoS yesterday morning as well (Laughing at the fact they use Batman, Spiderman, etc) while listening to the soundtrack and I noticed as well that Round 3 reminded me a LOT of Flying Battery/WFZ. I almost wonder if I nudged the Algorithm to get the videos recommended to other people on youtube. :V

    upload_2023-5-16_9-47-45.png

    Especially those Lasers as a boss. The game did come out in 1989 however, so it would've actually been the other way around.
     
  10. Fadaway

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    The music in that area does vaguely sound like Flying Battery. Or, I should say Flying Battery Zone's BGM vaguely sounds like that Yuzo Koshiro composition from that area in The Super Shinobi/The Revenge of Shinobi. Yuzo Koshiro's legacy is massive so I don't think it's a total stretch to think that T.Maeda, Sawada-san, Ogawa-san, N.Gee, Hiki, Jun Senoue (?) and anyone else who helped on FBZ's music being at least a fan.

    He did the music for MS and GG Sonic 1. Could you imagine if he'd have worked on other Sonic games? It would have been a real treat but Sonic absolutely has already had a number of prodigious composers on board. The Mega Drive/Genesis Mini dedicated menu music by Koshiro-san almost sounds like a lost cassic Sonic tune and is one of my faves from him (along with music he'd worked on for the first Ys, Actraiser, the Bare Knuckles/SoR games, 7th Dragon and lots of others).
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2023
  11. Fadaway

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    Back on to Genocide City Zone, I've always wondered if the name (the original name before it was changed to Cyber City) has any correlation to the 1989 (...I think) game Genocide (X68000, PC Engine among others) and Genocide2 (1991 X68000 and later ported to/remade for the Super Famicom). Not a direct correlation but in a way the word 'Genocide' wasn't totally uncommon and made it a bit innocuous to use in a game. Just something I had bouncing around in my head a few years back. I am aware of the official version of the story from interviews or whatever but it's a thing to think about.

    In any case, I've always preferred a name like Genocide City Zone to Cyber City Zone because it sounds less generic lol.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2023
  12. HEDGESMFG

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    Genocide City has an edgy 80s charm to it that I kind of love, even if it would never fly as a final name.

    Cyber City is a slightly cliche, but still good name for the zone. I can imagine it very much making an impression on me if I was near the game's end and saw the elaborate circuit filled visuals. Something of a technological marvel more advanced than the mechanical scrap brain zone.
     
  13. Even though there's no way that Sega would allow something like Genocide City Zone in a official Sonic game, if you think about it, it does sort of fit Dr Robotnik's aim of stealing animals and turning them into robots, in a kid friendly sense. If you think about it in a really, really dark and disturbing way.

    It almost fits, weirdly enough.

    As Sonic says in Sonic Unleashed, "Gheez Eggman, simmer down!"
     
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  14. Blue Spikeball

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    Hey guys, I have do ask.

    Is there any proof or solid evidence that the final map is set in the future? Or is that just fan speculation that is incorrectly treated as fact based on the fact it's more industrialized than the other maps?
     
  15. HEDGESMFG

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  16. Eggomaticwaffles

    Eggomaticwaffles

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    Wow! That's pretty amazing to see fleshed out (albeit in broad strokes!) As others have pointed out earlier in the thread, both the round canons and handrails seem to have been repurposed for WFZ.

    I offer up this palette-corrected version of that surprisingly intricate cockpit area at the end of WFZ. A lot of this stuff would be RIGHT at home in CC. You wonder if these were leftover CC assets they threw in for the heck of it? (Because why waste good work!) Hell, maybe that 'broken' conveyor belt was a hold over as well?

    For all we know WFZ became a bit of a dumping ground for leftover assets/concepts? Perhaps more will be become clear...
     

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  17. E-122-Psi

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    Whoa wait, so they really DO have the level art officially laid out, or is this Hez's improvisation?

    There's some amusement that in one swoop we went from having near nothing of Cyber City (even its REAL NAME :P) to a more complete image of it than any of the other beta levels. :P
     
  18. Jucei

    Jucei

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    Are those elevators similar, if not identical to the ones found in Casino Night?
    On another note, will they be releasing the reconstructed level maps using Hez's tilesheets?
     
  19. saxman

    saxman

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    The timeline mentions going back to the future, as if the player had already been there. The use of the word "future" combined with the fact that everything is built up leads to the understandable conclusion that the final map is the future. But I question that somewhat. If "future" really means "beyond the present", the question I have is "which present?", because the previous map is the past. So is it simply a "now 3", or is it really the future as we would typically understand it?

    What makes all of it confusing to me is the wording choice on the timeline.

    Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, because we have known about the alternate name for Genocide City for a very long time, going back to the early 2000s if my memory is correct. But honestly, I think both names are the real names as far as I'm concerned, because it was never called "Cyber City" at any point in the game itself, and therefore was never changed beyond what some documentation suggests.

    I'm pretty sure those are the Metropolis platforms that lower when you step on them.
     
  20. Blue Spikeball

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    Technically the timeline doesn't mention traveling to the future, just that "the future is changed again":
    upload_2023-5-18_1-44-10.png

    And yes, the wording is a bit confusing and even inconsistent. It refers to the past as both "medieval time" and "ancient time", for instance.