Newly Translated 1993 Interview with Yuji Naka Discussing Sonic 2

There was a zone that was "basically complete" but had to be cut due to memory limitations? Hmmm. The evidence that Hidden Palace was further completed than what we got in the prototypes just keeps piling up. That might explain why the latest work on the level wasn't implemented in the leaked builds -- they didn't have enough memory for it.

It may also explain why it was removed in a late build only to be partially reimplemented later. They removed it due to said limitations, then after freeing some memory they tried to add it back but there still wasn't enough space for the whole thing, leaving it incomplete.

 

Someone asked Al Nilsen on Twitter about who came up with the name Tails.

I believe someone in the forum wanted to know exactly who the person was that came up with it.

 

These translations are god's work, thank you as ever for them.

It's possible Naka simply confused things or just didn't know it could be traced back to Nilsen. However there could be other explanations - maybe he knew and thought the real answer would be boring to most Japanese readers?

Not sure if it'd be in his character to mythologise, but with this being one of his earlier interviews, maybe he wanted to drop something which sounded more intriguing...

 

The Dragon Quest V thing cracked me up!

Personally, given it's a sort of "unique" level compared to the rest, I see no reason it can't be shorter as well (i.e. the HPZ we all know actually *is* the completed version). That is of course if you put aside the fact that there's still no way to wrap the level, let alone get to the top of it, or the lack of an ending for it.

 

It's sad that they ask about Sister Sonic and there was no info. Wish we could at least get a sketch or a name.

 

This is an awesome read. Thank you!

 

Should have kept Hidden Palace and scrapped Hill Top instead... a palette-swapped Emerald Hill with some lava and a piss-easy boss.

Otherwise thanks for the translation.

 

SegaRetro has a date of 1992-12-08 for the January 1993 issue. Quickly glancing at the issue, I'm not sure where this release (?) date is sourced from, but it's standard for magazines to be released the month prior to the cover month.

Regarding Tails' name, how reliable is Al Nilsen? I know there's been some criticism of Console Wars with regard to some of Tom Kalinske's claims, and from what I recall Madeline Schroeder has said some dubious things as well. Is Nilsen considered a good egg?

 

It's hard to tell. Like most development teams, they probably had devisions with certain assets (whether that be code, graphics, music) that they were designated to work on. When the time came to produce a build, they grabbed what they wanted and compiled. Likely, they knew the odd man out and kept whatever they had from the previous collection and threw that into the new builds. It's intire deletion would have pulled a jenga piece out they weren't willing to gamble on. It's why the addition of Mew in the original Pokemon games was such a big deal. Production wise, it was such a risky move for such little potential payoff. You spend hours testing games. An addition like that last minute could have been catastrophic. It obviously payed off, but holy cow was that risky.

 

Thank you very much ... don't forget to share that "New Hideki Sato Interview on the Saturn" that you posted on Sega-16, here too... it will certainly interest some of us...

 

I didn't say it before, but thanks for all the hard work put into translating this stuff. It makes for a terrific read!

Ditto.

 

Yeah, your theory does make sense. It's still hard to say though since we don't have many builds with Hidden Palace Zone intact. It would be interesting to see how far back the zone was completed if this is the case and I wonder if we would get anything more out of this from a pre-Nick Arcade prototype.



As we can see here, Hidden Palace Zone in one of the pre-release screenshots had a different background. Was it just a mock-up, or actual gameplay? It's probably the latter, but we do have the background sprite associated with this from none other than the Nick Arcade prototype.



Maybe we'll find out more on Saturday? Hidden Palace is hosting a stream for the New Year on that day. If we don't find out more, then we can only dream until we do.

 

Legit interesting. My Nihon Falcom heart weeps over the skipped Sister Sonic mention, but also RIP for that Outrun guy.

 

Erm... Sister Sonic? Who/What's that?

 

Originally the Sega/Mega CD game Popful Mail was going to be given the Mario 2 USA treatment, and all the characters would have been replaced by Sonic characters for the western localization, with Sonic's "long lost sister" as the protagonist. After fans made a ruckus about the changes, the game came out in North America without the Sonic makeover.

 

Sister Sonic

 

Thank you for translating and sharing this!