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

Alright thank you. I knew it was somewhere. Also I didn't mean to attack people in the fanbase who uses the word. If I was then I'm wrong and I'm sorry.

 

Keep in mind he said "I think", so clearly he wasn't sure. Brenda DID work on Wood Zone, which had concept art, so maybe he was thinking of that.

Then again, it is odd to think the artists were allowed to come up with the look of the earliest zones without having some kind of idea.

 

I would also quibble with the idea that it's a particularly sensitive word in Japan, or at least uniquely so compared to anywhere else. Part of the reason it was used as a working title for a Sonic stage is that it isn't, partly because it's not a Japanese word at all!

 

Nobody noticed that beta title screen uses different (and probably earlier) EHZ palette, so, who knows :p

Imagine if we've got this image BEFORE we know the name of zone.. oh boy

 

The main source for this theory is Craig Stitt saying that he was given no direction for Hidden Palace, which seems to be the first level created for Sonic 2 based on current information. I wouldn't be surprised if Hidden Palace not looking palace-y enough resulted in Yamaguchi drawing concept art for the level artists to get inspiration from. We know that Brenda was given concept art for at least one of her zones, possibly two. And even though we haven't seen concept art for Oil Ocean, Craig did say that he was given concrete directions for the zone's visuals.

Concept art is such a crucial part of game development that it's absurd to think that Sonic 2 didn't have any for most of its levels.

 

If I remember correctly, Craig told me that he was not given concept art for either level he worked on. He may have only been given a rough idea verbally about what the level was.

It could be that Yamaguchi only started doing concept art after Brenda's western desert, and HPZ/OOZ's awful original backgrounds did not meet his standards and he had to do those himself.

 

Nakamura was given concept art for each level that he composed for, so there must've been a piece made for Sand Shower. And if concept art for the zone existed, it would've only made sense to let Brenda take a look at it too.

But if this were the case, where did the mesas and cacti come from? My best guess is that Tom Payne was told to do enemies for a desert level without being given concept art, and the decision to retool the level to look more like the American Southwest came after the rest of the team saw his cactus bombs.

 

You mean Masato? Yasuhara was the designer.

Masa stated he was given "graphics" and screenshots, not concept art.

 

From the two interviews with Craig Stitt we have with ICEknight and Laura.

Tom Payne did have "concept art", he had a copy of Brenda's mock-up, which supports the idea that Yamaguchi didn't draw concept art for the initial zones.

 

Yup, my bad, got the names confused.

And I've never heard anyone say that he was given screenshots and "graphics" (Whatever that means in this context) for inspiration. Even Wikipedia says that he was given concept art, but that would be far from the only incorrect statement on their Sonic 2 page, if it's not true that is.

Did Tom specifically say that he had a mock-up? All I remember is him saying "I have Brenda's level", which I assumed to mean a level map. Obviously no such thing was found from his archives, though.

 

A fragment of it was found on one of his work floppys, meaning he had a copy specifically of that mock-up.

 

Oh yeah, that's where we found the tiles from.

But do we have any idea why he had it? He clearly didn't need it since he just put enemy graphics over most of it.

 

This was my guess. Concept art started being produced after level art started turning out differently from what was expected. Maybe language barrier proving to be more difficult than expected, they decided to bridge the gap with images.

 

I assume he had it and the other early mock-ups as reference material for his enemy designs at one point, before reusing that floppy later in development when those mock-ups were no longer needed.

EDIT- Craig stating he didn't know Hidden Palace's name also matches up with Brenda not knowing Sand Shower/Rock World's names. In Craig's case, Hidden Palace stuck around long enough for him to learn the name later but in Brenda's case, her levels were created and cut so early in development she never learned their names.

 

2011 documentary:

2011 soundtrack booklet:

However, in the 2021 Billboard Japan interview, he said there weren't screenshots, but rather "storyboards":

 

Huh. So conflicting reports (or most likely translation errors) over all.

"Storyboards" is especially a really strange word choice. Maybe he had mock-ups for some levels and concept art for others? I really don't know.

 

Yasuhara's drawings sort of resemble storyboards, in the sense that they depict specific situations and movements that could later be animated if someone wanted to. I guess it could have been the case that Nakamura got some of those? Alongside other stuff, I mean.

 

It's important to note that the 2021 interview is talking about when he saw Sonic for the first time, so presumably relates to the development of the original Sonic the Hedgehog rather than its sequel. I'd be wary take anything in that one as concrete evidence of what he did or didn't have when composing for Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Incidentally, some of the concept art for the first game does have a storyboard-like element to it in terms of showcasing potential gameplay, e.g. the water stage one shows Sonic's potential actions on encountering a body of water - sinking beneath to explore underwater, or skimming over the top while spinning.

Slightly unrelated, but while the latter action obviously didn't make it into the finished game, the Sonic 1 Digitizer files provided to Tom Payne for reference included not just the normal water splash, but also a second diagonal one which would fit perfectly with Sonic impacting the water surface while skimming across it at speed. Unlike the two different variations of Ball Hog which were two separate files, these two splashes coexist within one file, suggesting one wasn't simply an earlier version of the other. Makes me wonder if they ever attempted to actually implement it, or if those graphics were as far as they ever got.

 

I wonder if he was given those simplistic gameplay illustrations like the ones for Sonic 3 alongside actual screenshots, but not proper concept art, per-se.

 

If he saw "storyboards" for S1, it's possible he saw these concepts:


However, if he saw colors as he stated, and he saw "screenshots", but the game "wasn't moving" with Sonic Team having to explain to him how the game was going to be rather than him seeing it for himself, it's more likely he saw mockups like this:


So if Sonic 2 was "the same thing" as he stated, my theory is that he saw a mixture of mockups and Yamaguchi's concepts (which were actually in color this time). If that's true, then there are almost certainly songs he composed for zones that never made it into the game or the album. If there was an anniversary release of the album, perhaps Masato could include those demos as bonus material. Y'know, we COULD petition for that.

Of course, there's a flaw to this theory: if he saw Brenda's mockup, why would he compose an Egyptian desert theme? That only fuels the theory that ARZ's theme is the actual desert music meant to go with Brenda's art, unless Yamaguchi redid Brenda's background before shipping it out, which is honestly very possible.