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

I think it will be. I've spent some time looking at our low res maps and the levels are honestly quite detailed, with some good branching pathways and interesting mechanics.

Obviously, it will be a difficult level, but it's very much a Yasuhara design, with all of his clever ideas and strengths still implemented. Most obstacles appear telegraphed and avoidable, with branching pathways, and only portions of the level are underwater, which can mostly avoided in act 2's case.

It's closer to Sonic 1's design than Sonic 2, but that's what makes it so interesting. These maps show almost a bridge of sorts between the 2 styles. There's less speed and more exploration than Sonic 2, but it's not quite as frustrating looking as a late game Sonic 1 stage could be, nor as convoluted and non-linear as Sonic CD could be. Not as many death pits as I've seen in either Star Light or Scrap Brain, and less obstacles than either.

The 1992 era of Sonic is an interesting one to study, as the early development of both Sonic 2 (and later Sonic CD) show us that a proper "sequel" to Sonic 1 was not yet entirely defined. This is a direct look inside that era, before the franchise became much more of what we knew it to be from 1993 onward, during the early peak of its popularity. So much of what we truly know as "classic Sonic" was being defined in 1992.

 

To clear up some apparent confusion spreading around other places, the engine I have been using to play around with these maps uses the same format as Sonic 2 for level layouts. Which means, they can be slapped into a Sonic 2 disassembly fairly quick. They do not, however, match up with any chunks found in any prototypes. So you will have to do one of the following;
You will need to remap Metropolis Zones chunk order and hand create a few missing chunks. The level map very obviously uses chunks that were remapped/redone during the development process.

Your second option is to shift around the values in the maps to match Metropolis Zones chunk order. This option will still require you to either fabricate together the missing unique tiles, or fit existing chunks from metropolis in a best effort kind of way.

Your third option would be to import the chunk map I have provided in the past and modify as you see fit. I have not gone this far, so this would need to be imported with tools/by hand yourself. I can provide the asesprite files I have used for easy modifying so that you can throw your own graphics in as you see fit.

All options are fairly tedious. The reason I used the engine I had, was that it just happened to conveniently align with this project as I was fiddling with a way to use assets from the Sonic 2 disassembly in a fan engine. This allowed me to skip the tedious part of art limitations/collusion array issues as all I had to really worry about was the level/128x128 tiles/object maps.

I will provide these maps to save anyone the time of converting the numbers over from a picture.

With all that being said and to not spoil anything, the level plays surprisingly well. I'd had taken it over Wing Fortress if that is any consolation.

 

Nice, this'll definitely help modders and hackers who seek to give their own spin on this zone.

And this might be a dumb question, but what exactly did you do as far as enemies are concerned? The documents might tell which enemies belonged to this zone, but surely there was no way to know their exact placement. And that has me wondering, did you put any enemies in the level at all? And if you did, how did you place them around?

 

https://gamehistory.org/sonic-2s-lost-stages-revealed/

The new article states that the blog should be updated with source material documents being released after the video premiere.


"We’re happy to help contribute to this today not only with this documentary, but with a treasure trove of scanned documents!

As there are surprises debuting in the video, this blog post is a work-in-progress which will be updated later today with more context, and with links to download the source material referenced in the video."

 

Glad the stuff is finally being released. And thank you Hez for your work in giving us the ability to see it realized.
I was very worried that this stuff was just going to get pushed to the wayside and forgotten about as what happened years ago, so I apologize if that concern came out as whining, if you ever read this RedEye. Thank you both again for your work on this.

 

Some of my earlier frustration has added to that mess as well, but at the end of the day it looks like we're getting something that's as close to a new rom discovery as could be made, without actually being a lost rom.

I hope people here can help amplify news of this once it all drops. There are players all over the world who love Sonic 2, but have almost no idea this is coming. My hope is some of the mainstream press can catch on after the material/recreation drops. A few mainstream news articles discussing this, or at least articles on bigger sonic news sites, would be very cool.

And I certainly hope Tom Payne himself is happy with how this situation has finally turned out. People here often think developers just forget everything they ever worked on after decades, but that's often just not true. Many still have strong feelings about it. I myself can remember many details about fangame projects I worked on as far back as 20-25 years ago in pretty extensive detail (though it helps to have relevant material in front of me to remember bits and pieces of it).

 

Watching the history stream… THERE’S PIXEL ART FROM BRENDA ROSS/COOK SHOWING THE WINTER ZONE!!!

 

The moment they specified Brenda Ross (Cook) I KNEW something was going to happen, all time great find

 

That's it? That's the winter zone? THAT WAS JUST A BUNCH OF TREES!
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR, SONIC BETRAYED US!

 

It was really cool to both see the original desert zone mock up and to see the little animation it had

 

So glad this is finally public and that it can finally be discussed now!
Shoutouts to everyone involved who made seeing this image possible!

 

We're all excited, I know I am, but this is still the Genocide City thread.

It's about time we scour through those documents.

 

Tom papers https://archive.org/details/tom-payne-papers

Brenda portfolio

Domesday stuff still uploading

 

I'm so happy we can finally see how ugly the winter level actually looks. The desert level looks fine I guess, but I can totally see why the winter version got cut

 

Thank you, Frank.

I hope the broader game press picks up on your work with this and gives you the recognition you deserve for these incredible efforts.

I'll do what I can to promote this across other communities when I have the time.

 

https://archive.org/details/tom-payne-papers
https://archive.org/details/brenda_cook_video_game_art

Better late than never - if someone wants to beat me to the mirror, speak now or forever hold your peace.

 

Here is a mirror, along with extra's I've done (along with some others I can't remember)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rAC0ZkAgkFJZUNcu5EB0jMvZXYo6iwOZ?usp=sharing

I did not clean up my abandoned Sonic engine project in case someone decides to play around with it, so everything outside of Genocide City and Metropolis are just me playing around.

The .bin files of Genocide City are in the Nick Arcade format, so you will need to convert at your own will. The palettes are labeled from what document they came from. I tried.

 

At least it lines up with what was known previously, in that it's more or less a palette swap of Sand Shower ala Emerald Hill/Hill Top. Had it gone further in production I imagine the art would've been refined like other zones. I think the christmas trees have some charm though.

 

cool thanks for the support, glad I could bring some joy to your life.