Sonic 2 Development Lore

The "Original Story" Technical Files list his age as being around 18. I'm not sure when those were made though.

 

They stated that Blue Spheres was inspired by King Kai's planet.

 

The one made by SoA? I don't count that one.

 

I think he refers to the one predating the game, where there was Madonna and he had a band?

 

I think this discussion is starting to veer off-topic

 

He's actually talking about this.

 

Yeah, it was precisely that─wait a sec! It was originally written by SoJ? And translated by STI? WTFF?! :O

 

You must've got it confused with SOA's Sonic Bible.

 

Yeah, most likely. Still, my point stands that I don't take such notes as ever having been canon. Might be nitpicking, but gotta be so to me.

 

Are we even sure we got all of Nakamura’s demos? I can see them leaving out any song that didn’t make it in the game. Hidden Palace is the only exception as it’s in the sound test and everyone knows about it.

 

We were talking about it here few times. But even if they still have them- probably Nakamura won't release them (or he haven't rights for it). Same with SEGA. If only somebody will ask directly, but even so I'm not sure that they will show us unused songs (if they exists). SEGA just can say that nothing else exists, and we will be in trouble; community will be divided into two camps: Some will believe that this is true, others will be thinking that they are hiding everything from us

 

Greetings. I'm an old time lurker of this scene; in general, most of the things I've considered are out there already or don't have a strong foundation, so I'm essentially an spectator. Nonetheless I noticed something that I believe has not been commented.

I subscribed to Beep21 some weeks ago for reading Yamaguchi's full article (by the way, I've seen some confusion: next part would not come in a month, previous parts were published in intervals of 3 to 5 months), and while doing so I noticed that in the new high resolution images of the island could be seen that the labels of the zones and the arrows are not part of the drawings but stickers or pieces of paper put on top.

This is interesting because they could be toying around adding, removing and moving zones. Not saying it necessarily happened but at least the layout is not that set in stone as if it was part of the drawing.

Also, since the map for the shattered island (Medieval Time, I believe, since is the one that matches the timeline draft) is so weird with the placements of the zones and parts of the island, wanted to check if maybe could be that the parts were also cut, planned to be moved as the game progressed (imagine like in Super Mario World, when you open a new path on the map, the terrain changes). Instead I found that there's two erased parts: one is the zigurat in its original placement and the other is the temple in the leftmost part over some ground (not the same drawing as in the Ancient Time map), both seem to be in a frame.

This could be something previously drawn in pencil and later erased with rubber. Could also be a see though but it's less likely to me because the paper is actually graph paper and the grid has been lost.


Ought note too that Ancient Time map has some parts that seem to have been edited out on top, left, and bottom.


I understand I'm new here and trust must be earned, I could be just trolling with edited images: anyone can reproduce this with the original images from the article and using a gaussian difference border detection filter in Gimp. In fact, I'm quite sure that much better images can be obtained.

PS: By the way, in the Wiki the images from Yasuhara's presentation were replaced with the ones from Yamaguchi's interview, not updated using the wiki feature, thus making them have a date of 2017/2019 despite being from 2023.

 

Yknow that pyramid structure being the warp point also looks like it's taped on. In fact you can see several outlines of... oh my god WAIT A SECOND I recognize this type of crap now having worked in mundane office places before. They used an old style flatbed warm copy machine on certain bits of landscapes. THATS why it looks like so many pieces look like exact redraws and repeats. The Warp Point, the Domes in the future map... Oh my god of course they did. I feel so silly for not even thinking about this before...

EDIT: AND THATS WHY the grids are probably gone! Details get lost the more you push them through a copying machine.

 

Yes, I had initially wrote about this but tried to keep the post simple. Grid is not lost in all images, in fact, in the Present one you can see the punch holes on top

I can't completely agree on this part but there's something going on. That was my hypothesis which lead me to check this, but in fact found evidence of the opposite. You can see some pencil lines in some borders which denote the drawing may have been inked on top of it in the same paper, but the most definite fact is that you can see the grid in the Present map through the clouds and aligns with the background. What I think that they did is placing a cel on top and drawing over it, in a similar fashion of how cartoons are made.

Edit: The image that illustrated why I thought it could be a cel got cut because of file size limit.

When comparing the two future maps, the way the smoke is drawn over the picture and other parts redone is not doable using cutout pieces, it's either modifying a copy or, as said, with a cel on top. Anyway, this is not backed up by anything, so I'd like to keep the conversation on the facts.

 

Don't forget the liquid white-out and scotch tape. The idea that they sat there in an office and just had nothing but boring office tools makes this so much more funnier in my head than it deserves to be. Like someone such as Yamaguchi (Totoya) went out of their way to make these set pieces, came in with like Tiles of them on Copied paper to cut out along with a "Island map" to paste them on with glue, handed out the papers like it was a school assignment and it just became a office game of "whoever makes them look the coolest wins!"


... That being said, I PERSONALLY think saying they brought in cels of set pieces and sketching over them is giving them a little too much credit... I mean... unless they had some old school overhead projector that they overlayed the cels on while making these to begin with?



I don't know. I'm talking out of my ass now. Did they describe the process at all for making these anywhere?

 

ROCK WORLD MAY HAVE WATER????

I've looked at WaterHeight table in Sonic 2 final disasm:

Code (Text):

1. ; word_4584:
2. WaterHeight:
3.     dc.w  $600, $600    ; HPZ
4.     dc.w  $600, $600    ; Zone 9
5.     dc.w  $600, $600    ; OOZ
6.     dc.w  $600, $600    ; MCZ
7.     dc.w  $600, $600    ; CNZ
8.     dc.w  $600, $710    ; CPZ
9.     dc.w  $600, $600    ; DEZ
10.     dc.w  $410, $510    ; ARZ
11.     endif

You can see that theoretical RWZ slot (ID09) is here....
BUT we also can see that MCZ, CNZ and DEZ also here. WTF? So, we can suppose that they were experimenting with slots order. Weird that Ocean Wind, or Blue Ocean, or Tropical Sun have no water, but (hypothetical) RWZ have it.
Simon Wai proto is same:

Code (Text):

1. Water_Height_Array: ; loc_46B8: ; Water Height Array        
2.         dc.w    $600, $600, $600, $600, $600, $600, $600, $600
3.         dc.w    $600, $600, $600, $710, $600, $600, $410, $510

Maybe somebody here can explain it.

Idfk if it were known earlier.

 

There's no such value as nothing, so they had to put something. It's simply a default. They needed the table to go as far back as zone $08 for HPZ, and as far forward as $0F for ARZ. It'd be more eye-opening if it had unique values, but it doesn't.

I suppose they could have picked 0x800, but they picked a meaningful value instead probably so if water is turned on, they'd actually see something instead of spending an hour pulling their hair out wondering why the water won't turn on. And likewise, zero isn't practical at all.

Just a guess. But probably correct too.