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

I guess we don't. Although I think it's kinda unlikely that Sega would have gone through the trouble of tracking down old devs to borrow that art for something like that. They didn't have to have Sonic 3 concept art at that event.

Does it matter, though? Even if they did borrow it from a dev, they would have had the art from that point on.


Edit: Found the post mentioning that event:

https://forums.sonicretro.org/index...at-inspired-sonics-animations-and-more.41540/

The photos at the bottom of the first post show the art mentioned. As you can see it shows physical documents with the concept art not just for Sonic 3, but also Sonic 1. The only devs that would have had the dev material for both games are Naka and Yasuhara.

I guess they could conceivably have borrowed them from multiple devs, or (more likely) the S1 concept art could be stuff Sega had archived (especially since much of it was already released years earlier). But it still seems too much trouble for something unnecessary. You can see that the exhibition wasn't specifically about dev material, but any old material related to the classic games, including merchandising. Rather than tracking down devs for concept art, they could have filled that space with more old merchandising.

 

I've said here previously that Tom Payne's archives must still have some stuff that we have glossed over - and I think that I was right. Here's some things I noticed while looking through them again:

Spoiler: Lots of large images

1. This sketch details a set piece where Sonic runs behind a railing. The rest of the page has only doodles for Metropolis gimmicks, but there's nothing like this in that zone. But do you know where there is?
2. Here's notes on the direction of Metropolis, found on a page of gimmick concepts for the zone. It seemingly refers to the possibility of the zone being set outside, which is what I believe that these latter two sketches represent.
3. Notes on a page of Cybercide City gimmick sketches - with "make all sprites simpler" crossed over. Interestingly, the same exact folder contained sketches for tech-y tiles with notes that read "simplify", and I do not recognise all of them from Metropolis specifically.
4. This was in the folder of his non-Sonic STI work, related to a B-bomb level named Plutonia - so why is the name "Yasuhara" written there?
5. More B-bomb stuff, spikes for "Tech world" at the top right. And since Tech world supposedly was a dumping ground for unused GCZ/CCZ concepts and assets, maybe all the stuff seen on this page is somehow connected.

 

It's been a hard, long day, and seeing these things is like a balm to the soul. Thanks for still sorting it all out. I'm still learning the language, so I'm missing out on some things

 

I spent so many hours diving into these to recreate the level. Trust me, I debated a long time if they were related or not. The reason I added the lights on the bottom of the floor was to match that block in "266". I went as far as to matching the block numbers up to the tiles in Metropolis. There are many that surprisingly match. You need to convert hex to dec, and them so on and so forth. There are details on exactly what tiles replace metropolis too. I think I posted one earlier, but they all come from various spots in the documents with numbers like these. I also strongly believe an elevator of some sort was present (similar to Launch Bases) at some point.

In fact, if you look at Launch Base in Sonic 3 you will start to notice a lot of similar gimmicks. There's even a laser.

 

Also you can notice that fg has similarities with Sand Shower graphics somehow

No, really. Look at it

 

What would be the best way to ask about the Teleporter monitor and any connection to time travel in development?? I don't want to imply there's any exact truth to it!! But, i am curious about that particular sound being chosen, and the screen flashing as it does.

 

Well time travel was supposed to be a linear story element in Sonic 2 right? I don't think they had any intention of going back and forth between zones mid-level ala Sonic CD, so I think the teleporter monitor is just a teleporter monitor.

 

While the teleport monitor itself is certainly not connected to any time travel mechanics (as there were never any time travel mechanics), it doesn't mean that the sound or effect used weren't originally created for a time travel cutscene, for example.

Having said that, I doubt there's any connection. The screen most likely turns white to hide how the game has to redraw the level when the teleport monitor is used, and the sound doesn't really give a "time travel vibe" (compared to CD's, for example).

 

Considering all the information that has been stated in this thread, it's kinda hard to tell where the speculation and the actual facts are stated. They just kinda blur together.

It would be nice if all the recent info (that is 100% fact) is catalogued here so we have a nice little rundown that is easy to insert bits into the wiki in the appropriate locations and sections.

 

Hold on - so Genocide City was supposed to

• be the game's penultimate zone
• be depicted as an industrial dystopia serving as Robotnik's base of operations
• have a cutscene in Act 2 where Sonic is sent down a trapdoor
• be a water level partially

...I might have an idea why Act 3 begins inside an underwater tunnel.

Spoiler: Image

 

Something just occurred to me. Proto CNZ was pinkish/purplish, NA CPZ was pinkish/purplish, and GCZ (assets, not concept art) was purple. I see a chromatic theme running through these future time period levels.

 

Makes sense, if the idea was that Genocide City (the in-universe location, not the level set in it) covered to all of the island, and CPZ and CNZ were sectors/districts within it.

Someone brought up that the proto CNZ background even depicts buildings resembling the ones in CPZ's background, further tying them together visuals-wise.

 

Several pages back people were questioning the name "Neo green hill zone" regarding the old time travel plot, and I just wanted to chime in that I always thought the "neo" referred to "neolithic" as in the stone-age era. This is the era categorized by people building the first societies near rivers, transitioning from hunter-gatherer to the first cities.

 

Thing is that the Stone Age is divided into Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic, whose names are composed by joining the terms Paleo- (old), Meso- (middle), and Neo- (new) to the word -litos (stone), to indicate the three stages (early, middle, and late) of that age along time. So, unless there was some kind of language clash (nothing new, but also we don't have any indication that this happened), I'd see no connection not to think that Neo just means "New".

 

I don't know if this really means anything, but I find it very fascinating how the map of Angel Island seen in the Japanese instruction manual for S3 and S&K is strikingly similar to the Sonic 2 time travel maps stylistically.

 

Yeah that's how Yasuhara draws maps. Doesn't mean much.

 

That's what I thought, but it does make me wonder how early that map is as far as Sonic 3's development goes. The map obviously wasn't drawn just to be used in the manuals, as it's hard to see and covered by text in both.

Also, notice that dotted outline on top of the Death Egg?



It's pretty much identical to the ones seen on the domes.

 

Seeing how that S3 map appears to depict only Sonic 3 zones, I'd think it was drawn relatively late in development, after they decided to split the game in half.

 

I see what clearly looks like a giant pyramid next to what looks like a bunch of trees. I'd say this incorporates elements found in both halves.

 

I really don't think it's a reference to Sandopolis. There is no desert near it (in fact it's right next to a waterfall, and appears to be surrounded by a river), and it has a domed roof, like many other similar (and decidedly non-pyramid) structures scattered across the island on the same map.