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

Yeah... we don't do theory-crafting here; part of what made this forum stand out back in the day was an adamant stance against "theories" and an insistence on documenting things as they are without wild mass guessing.

 

...That's news to me: I always see nonsensical speculation around here, to the point that I made this goofy image back in 2019:

 

It's the "Tails is the guardian of the Master Emerald" rule.

It's difficult to speculate here because there's nothing to see. Because apparently it takes months to release scans.

 

Crossposting from the Sonic 2 Development Lore thread, as while it's not the materials we're still waiting on here, some new sketches related to Genocide City have surfaced! These ones are sourced from a new Beep21 article featuring Sonic 2 dev materials shared by Yasushi Yamaguchi (a.k.a. Judy Totoya). These include new variants of the island map sketches which show that time period to be a little more complex than previously thought, not to mention a concrete mention of Genocide City Zone Act 3, as seen on the still-unreleased-at-present stage layouts.

 

So, I'm pretty positive that we got scammed by now. We ain't heard shit about any of this stuff, and how long has it been now?

 

Be patient. It definitely will be released in this century... probably

 

Probably just taking a while? Or forgotten about?? I dunno, I just don’t think jumping to “we got scammed” is the best thing to do.

Also, reminder that Hez is working with them, so if something happened that prevented the release of the Cyber City documents or caused a major delay in said release, we’d know.

Unless SEGA forced them to keep quiet or something.

 

Hez posted this in the Hidden Palace Discord three days ago:



This suggests to me that work is still ongoing to figure everything out. I think that at some point the scope expanded from "just dump everything we know onto a website" to "do a bunch of research, make recreations, place in its historical context, etc.", and while I'd argue none of that is necessary, I'll definitely appreciate it when it's done.

Also, even though it sucks to wait... the documents have been preserved. There's really no reason to hurry at this point.

 

Forgive, but don't forget.

 

We haven't been scammed. But I too don't understand the delay or lack of communication either. But things are being done behind the scenes.

 

I mean, they did show us real maps. I appreciate that.

The reason I've been frustrated is because low res versions of them were used as streaming fundraiser fodder, followed by a lot of silence. But I've repeated this point several times, and Frank's org is legit (and needs cash to accomplish their goals), so I can somewhat understand it.

In the real world, academic research that goes into museum exhibits is not only extremely expensive, it often has years of red tape to sort through. This type of effort goes above and beyond the usual rom dumps we're used to. This is a mass collection of materials coming straight from the sources.

My only concern now is that SEGA could actually be interfering with this, given Superstars was announced shortly after, and it's clear that unused beta concepts were used in the development of that game. Sega has never stopped us from researching beta material before, but the scope of this project seems to be bigger than normal. Frankly, if this were a Nintendo project? They'd be much more involved, and potentially even hostile to it.

On the other hand, we have the new very high res documents being shows by Judy Totoya in the other thread. I'd be very surprised if that was not in any way related to Frank's efforts either. The 2 are easily capable of communicating online, and Totoya somewhat regularly posts about his work on the game now. He's very aware of its legacy and influence and is now rather nostalgic about it.

I just wish we could get some kind of an update for transparency's sake, but if SEGA staffers and devs are in any way in contact over this (positively or negatively), it wouldn't be surprising if that's caused some of the slowdown. Preservation efforts like this are a big undertaking, and many parties could now be involved.

Again, it'd just be nice if we could have a least a bit of assurances.

 

No one's being scammed. Frank just lost his partner (co-director) for the VGHF he's running, so he's presumably doing double duties where the other half would be taking responsibilities for. All this casting aspersions is ridiculous, especially on someone has reputable as Frank.

Why don't you try running a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, working with a game development studio, a healthy marriage, a booth at a recent game show, among other things and see how much time you have scanning pieces of paper that you're only ever going to even see for 5 minutes tops anyhow? I don't recall him running on Sonic Retro's time anyhow.

We waited decades for a playable Sonic 1 proto, what's a few months for Sonic 2 scans?

 

He didn't ask to run on Sonic Retro's time. He used unreleased material for financial leverage for his organization. That's a much different situation. It is not unreasonable to want at least some kind of information after donating to his non-profit, epsecially when they've not yet released even mid-res versions of the very maps they showed from that stream.

His organization may be non-profit, but money is still being exchanged to support this project. Anybody who ever ran a patreon or kickstarter or even a gofundme understands that once finances have been exchanged, it's not unreasonable to provide at least some level of regular communication with the community who is financing your work. His streams with this material gained several thousands of dollars. It wasn't a fortune, but it was no small amount either.

As I've said before, if legal issues surrounding this material have arisen, or could even be the reason why he cannot discuss it, then that's the situation we're in. That's why I'm at least proposing that as a potential theory, and I don't directly blame Frank for that if true, but it's not at all unreasonable for people here to be concerned.

Remember, we originally started discussing the existence of some of this material over 4 years ago. This is not just about a few months of delays.

Again, my hope at least now is that Judy Totoya is involved somehow and that would explain some of the material we've seen come out this past week.

 

Personally, I'd rather just start with the documents themselves. I worry that, if the scope has expanded to

or whatever, then there's a chance that unfounded assumptions may be presented as fact. Though maybe I'm just paranoid thanks to Hidden Palace.

 

And speaking of the level layout scans, is this really the highest-res scan we have of Act 2 so far?



Because I'm confused over the sheer amount of wasted space that the giant pit at the very beginning of the level occupies. Like, there's seemingly no reason to go into the pit other than to instantly die. I'm assuming that the little crevice at the left is supposed to be the start point, but even then there's no way to get out of there, as it's the only deep water pit with no fans.

 

I feel as if there was some kind of opening cutscene of the Act, where Sonic gets risen up an elevator like the ones in S3K's Death Egg. Otherwise, without any other info I have no clue.

 

Looks like you're supposed to start at the top with the girders, and then go down the elevator. The intended path seems to be like this:

 

I think we need to remember how CCZ1 ends - with a shaft heading upwards. I suspect the three-wide shaft was likely an area designated for the act transition from Act 1.

 

Pretty interesting.. I've never thought about this duplicates this way...

Anyway, I have 3 theories why does it exists:
1) Palette were made in times of old bg, and they wanted to make pal cycle for orange colours, but after time- they decided to use orange for fg too, without cycle.
2) Grey tubes really meant to use in Cyber City
3) As it was with Metal Sonic- they for the first made grey tubes as the base/placeholder, and referring to gradation of grey- they've made orange tubes and details.

Or maybe all of this in same time. Who knows :p

 

I was going to wait to post since I've been kind of thrown over the grills over this stuff, but I'll take the chance. The tile duplication for MZ is actually really interesting. There is one tile in particular that really is a smoking gun. it's this one.

it's block 19F. You would think its a normal pipe tile, and you would be right in Metropolis case. However, this particular one is an interesting duplicate. Why? Well, it's only used here.


in this chunk. Why this is even more interesting is, that in Act 2 of Genocide City this chunk would have been the chunk that sonic held on to while being blown upwards. Which would have likely been these chunks here

And then there is this chunk. 19A. And you can probably guess why this one is also interesting.



Yes, you guessed it.


There is a ton of evidence that this might have always been planned to be a Hill Top esq swap level. It looks like the blocks meant to be changed were already in place, and we're just missing the patch that would do it.

As far as Act 2 goes. Without showing too much, I think this is how it may have started and dealt with that part?

https://i.imgur.com/L5dBZm3.gif

https://i.imgur.com/dIiFOxY.gif


You will all get the high res level maps soon. What was said above has been true and has been a lot of the delay. I've also got the layouts converted to Sonic 2 NA format so that anyone can throw them into the ROM with whatever graphics they see fit, as no one really knows what was intended. I use these placeholders as I already had them done before the layouts were found.