Sonic 2 Development Lore

Except after he says that, he says "...but it ended up being a cave." The implication is that it wasn't a cave before, and a "haunted house" feel would make no sense if it were outdoors. I know English isn't Naka's native language, but give him the benefit of the doubt. If Madness Mountain was drawn based on a level already in production and already having art made of it (as others were), what could it possibly be other than an early version of Mystic Cave? There aren't too many possibilities unless you think it's some unseen lost level we've never known about before.

To me, Madness Mountain being Mystic Cave has the same amount of evidence as that one part of CD's ending being R2. Even though we don't know for absolute fact whether that's the case, it's enough to make an educated guess.

 

TCRF is a wiki, someone should fix it (not me though lol)

 

Do it yourself you lazy bum

 

Laziness aside, I don’t have an account and it would be better formatted/posted by someone with a thorough understanding of the situation/information (IE: not me, who keeps glazing over all the very spartan level slot discussion in this thread because my brain half shuts off if i see code)

 

Unless by "it has the feel of a haunted house", he simply meant "it has a spooky feel".

Rock World? One of the maps has Rock World inside a mountain. Plus the Madness Mountain concept art shows windows with a pretty landscape in daytime. Hardly screams "spooky" to me.

If anything, the vibe I get from Madness Mountain is Marble Zone, rather than "ghost house".

 

If we break up the levels by their acts, then that offers a possible explanation for the level duplicates on the maps. Since the maps were meant to be a level select, it would make sense to have individual acts be selectable on them:

Spoiler: map concept order

-NOW-
Green Hill Act 1
Green Hill Act 2
Ocean Wind Act 1
Ocean Wind Act 2
Woods Act 1
Woods Act 2
Sand Shower Act 1
Sand Shower Act 2
Metropolis Act 1
Metropolis Act 2

-ANCIENT TIME-
Tropical Plant/Summer Act 1
Hill Top Act 1
Blue Lake Act 1
Rock World Act 1

-NOW 2-
Rock World Act 2
Oil Ocean Zone Act 1
Oil Ocean Zone Act 2
Dust Hill Act 1
Dust Hill Act 2

-ANCIENT TIME 2-
Tropical Plant/Summer Act 2
Hill Top Act 2
Blue Lake Act 2

-FUTURE-
Casino Night Act 1
Casino Night Act 2
Chemical Plant Act 1
Chemical Plant Act 2
Genocide City 1 Act 1
Genocide City 1 Act 2
Genocide City 2 Act 1
Genocide City 2 Act 2

Other than that, I agree with what you're saying. It seems like the map concept art was the earliest level order conceived, followed by the level order presented on the timeline concept art (which uses updated names seen on the level concept art, adds Death Egg/Neo Death Egg, and removes Genocide City 2).

 

How do we know that Genocide City 1 and 2 weren't just meant to be acts 1 and 2 of the same zone?

 

Honestly, this seems like such a black-hole of a conversation. I mean, have it by all means. But I'm not sure what we can learn from it. It's about like the R2 discussion, which was fun, but limited to what little we know. We're going around in circles here with page after page being the same thing.

Do we have a way of talking to Yasuhara? If we do, we should explore what questions to prioritize and how to most appropriately to pose said questions. Heck, I'll reach out if nobody else wants to (not that I want to, but I can).

I'll start. Here's three questions I'd really like to know answers to:

1) What's the connection between Dust Hill and Emerald Hill (if any)?

2) Rock World Zone? Was that a mountain, or something else?

3) Why are some zones apparently repeated according to the map/timeline? Examples: Hill Top; Rock World Zone?

 

Yasuhara, the poor man, acts like he's traumatized from the ordeal. Craig Stitt asked him a bunch of questions back in the day, but Yasuhara told him that his mind isn't what it used to be, and that Sonic 2 was so long ago he literally didn't remember anything. Granted, that was before the Digital Dragons 2017 presentation, but I think part of that presentation was him already being sick to death of fans asking him questions and him putting it to rest. This is the man who, when presented with the desert zone mockup, said it was Dust Hill. I don't think asking him about this is a good idea anymore.

About the only Sonic 2 dev we can conceivably ask answers from is Yasushi Yamaguchi. I'm wondering if he has copies of his zone artworks somewhere that we haven't seen, like EHZ and CPZ. If he had a complete collection, that would give us a good idea of how many zones were truly planned and actively being worked on, rather than dreamed up, and which zones they were. We could also ask for confirmation on what Tom Payne claimed the artworks were for, and if they were truly intended for Masa to compose to (which he may not know the answer to, but it wouldn't hurt to ask).

Honestly, this is the kind of subject I'd expect a novel to be written about.

If he meant that, he would've said it. Why would he use that wording specifically? There are plenty of other examples of things to describe something spooky. Again, I know English isn't his first language, but when he says "the feeling of a haunted house", I see no reason not to assume he doesn't mean an interior. Because how the hell are you going to achieve the feeling of a haunted house, if it's outside, where there's no sense of being trapped?

The map shows Rock World involves a mountain, not that it's inside a mountain. Besides, even if it was inside a mountain, that's not conclusive evidence. The ice level would've probably taken place on a snowy mountain.

While we can't know for sure if this artwork was repurposed from Sonic 2, it does line up with what Brenda Ross described she made for the ice level, which was Christmas trees. So it could just as easily fit there. Also, Madness Mountain not being "spooky enough" and being too similar to Marble Zone are both great reasons why the theme would've been changed to a cave in the first place.

Sonic 2 has 17 level slots. There is no reason to assume, therefore, that there weren't 17 levels planned for the game, that Madness Mountain wasn't one of them, and that Yamaguchi did not make artwork for each and every one. Let's count how many Yamaguchi artworks we have for each zone, and then narrow it down to what Madness Mountain could possibly represent. The zones that don't have a confirmed Yamaguchi artwork are in bold.

Not a lot of options, are there?

For it to be Rock World (or any other level that was cut), you would need to fit it into here somewhere. But where? You only have 3 options, really:

1. The second Unused. Highly unlikely, seeing as it was far enough along in development to have music assigned to it which anyone could tell was meant for a hot desert sun. All evidence, including a mockup composed of assets that must have existed at some point, points to it being a desert stage.
2. The third Unused. Again: highly unlikely, seeing as it was far enough along in development to have music assigned to it which anyone could tell was meant for a snowy, Christmassy environment. Despite not being confirmed, there's a good chance that artwork up above is an original Yamaguchi piece for an ice level, so there is a strong argument to be made that this slot was meant for said ice level.
   
3. Mystic Cave.

 

Even if you assume that he meant the level involved interiors based on his non-conclusive wording, EHZ isn't all outdoor. It has cave sections. As does HTZ.

And what do you know? MCZ is a cave.

What's more likely: That the counterpart to EHZ and HTZ was always meant to be a natural area either fully or partially set in a cave like them? Or that it was at some point some kind of dungeon (Madness Mountain) like you're theorizing, before becoming a cave?

Especially considering what the Dust Hill area in the map looks like:


I dunno about you, but I don't see anything resembling an artificial structure. All I see is a bunch of boulders and rocks.

Not all levels depicted in concept art are listed in the timeline document or the maps. The former lists 17 different zones, which coincides with the 17 level slots, but doesn't include Secret Isle.

 

We are not talking about the damn maps. The thing about Rock World being in a mountain is an irrelevant red herring. It doesn't matter. I only brought that up to say that even if it did matter, it wouldn't mean much.

We have already established that the artwork drawn by Yamaguchi was drawn up long after Yasuhara's maps and timeline, and that the maps/timeline were SO early, they were outdated even before the Nick Arcade build. Yamaguchi's art was drawn up for levels that were already in production and already having level art made for them. In other words, they are for levels that were in production for the final game, and would have taken up a slot in the final game, not whatever Yasuhara dreamed up in his head. Yasuhara's concepts are not relevant here. What IS relevant is the levels and their order for the final game, and by process of elimination for which level the artwork could represent, the only logical conclusion can be that yes, Madness Mountain started as a dungeon and became Mystic Cave.

 

I mean. We know that Dust Hill was planned as early as these maps, and it's depicted in them. So I would say they're relevant to the subject of DHZ/MCZ.

But even if we ignore them. How do you figure that Yamaguchi's concept art was drawn after work on the zones and their level art had started? That sounds completely backwards to me. Concept art is supposed to come first to illustrate a concept and serve as a basis, hence why it's called that. It would be redundant to produce level concept art after the level art was made.

 

I will say there are several very obvious mechanical similarities between Sandopolis and Mystic Cave (lots of grabbing onto ropes and vines and all).

Obviously if MCZ was designed to have a structure more like Sandopolis 2, it wouldn't have been as well-suited to the 2P mode. I like what we ended up with.

 

I had posted an interview with Tom Payne earlier in the thread, where it seemed to imply that the art that the artists did was being interpreted by Yamaguchi, not the other way around.

Seems I may have jumped the gun a bit though, since elsewhere in the interview he implies it IS the other way around.

So...I'm guessing Yamaguchi's art came before any actual level art was done. But even if that were the case, it was still drawn with the intention of the level artists to begin their work, so I don't see why Yamaguchi would've drawn up a level that wasn't intended for immediate production, rather than something on the drawing board.

 

There is definitely some proof for what you are saying - especially with the recent discoveries of pixel art we are somewhat certain belongs to Genocide City.

To date, the only levels we have seen in the Yamaguchi art that definitely have not had discovered pixel art as well are Ocean Wind, Tropical Sun and Blue Ocean. Everything else has art of it, or is speculated to have evolved into something which does have art; Madness Mountain, as previously suggested, might be an early concept that evolved into Mystic Cave, and Emerald Isle might just be Aquatic Ruin.

Thinking back to those maps even, I can’t think of a level name or implied level theme which “Emerald Isle” would match up with that isn’t already taken; it wouldn’t surprise me if Emerald Isle was conceptualised after the map stage after all.

Looking back at this reminded me of how broken slot $10 was in the prototypes prior to the September Pre-Beta; Perhaps that slot was implemented around that time to accomodate both Aquatic Ruin and Death Egg? I suggest that Death Egg originally occupied slot $0F, and that $10 simply didn’t exist.

 

Playing S2 SW beta I noticed that 2nd line of debug data is DAMN HEX TIMER

Probably it was noticed earlier, so let's go to concpiracy:

Tails sprites was created based on Sonic's S1 sprites.

His walking sprites looks like S1 walking patterns, and he hasn't so smooth walking as beta sprites.

Also in Sonic 2 manual I found this:

Can it be concept for Tails' sitting?
It's looks like Sonic sprite!

Also, would be funny to make sprites in concepts style

 

(Apologies if this is considered off-topic or is actively diverging from the Yamaguchi art discussion.)

What document was this from? That actually sounds really interesting to me.

I was considering initially posting this in the 'Other' Knowledge forum thread, but perhaps this is a more appropriate thread to ask this:



Do we know what the heck these little spinning 'green things' in Oil Ocean's tiles are? I haven't seen much discussion about them at all and can't think of a logical 'real world' application for them. I'm kinda wondering if they would potentially be a leftover from the idea of Oil Ocean somehow corresponding to Hidden Palace?

Assuming the idea of Oil Ocean being a 'future' to Hidden Palace is correct (at least REALLY early on), I'm wondering if this was meant to be like little harvested Emerald pieces or something.

 

I'm not quite sure, but I think I've seen something similar to these next to the rails at a train station or at the airport. Or was it at a construction site? Or maybe a mixture of everything? I can't remember. I imagine they work like bird stickers against bird strikes. Only for people or forklift drivers. Or maybe birds. I really don't know.

They remind me of when I was with my dad on his truck.

 

The 1 and 2 are located before Zone, indicating they are part of the name. Additionally no other zones are marked with numbers for their acts, even the duplicates, strongly suggesting they were seperate zones. The idea might have been similiar to Sonic 1's Final Zone, which followed directly from Scrap Brain. Regardless, it didn't stick around long since it was removed in the timeline concept art.

Yeah, it seems that the levels/level order was updated again after the timeline concept art and that the level concept arts were then created before production on the levels began. I wouldn't be surprised if the Neo Green Hill name/level originated from a later version of the time travel story concept, especially since the team weirdly ignored using updated names and instead stuck with early names during development (Genocide instead of Cyber, Wood instead of Secret Jungle, Neo Green Hill instead of Emerald Isle, Dust Hill instead of Madness Mountain, etc). Makes me wonder if Chemical Factory was actually a later name for Chemical Plant and they just stuck with the original.

 

Hum.. what if Neo Green Hill was alternative name for Dust Hill....?