Waypoint put up an except from the book. I don't think this Sonic 2 concept art has been seen before:
The zone in the bottom left drawing is obviously the cut Wood Zone, but what are the other two in the bottom row? The middle one is a "generic water level" stage, and the one on the right... Silver Castle from Sonic Blast with Mystic Cave's bridges? EDIT: Just remembered there was a "Blue Lake Zone" in the Yasuhara concept documents, so nvm.
The first word at the bottom-right one says "Madness". The second word is too squeezed together for me to read it out. My best guess is "Mountain" (as in "Madness Mountain"), the first letter looks like an M. Really love the look of that concept art. The pencil outlines and the coloring make them look like screenshots of some long-lost Sonic anime.
Maybe it's "Madness Medieval"? Wasn't there a Medieval time zone in Sonic 2? The stage also looks like something you see there.
The concept art for Blue Ocean reminds me of a certain piece of promotional Western Sonic 2 art I came across again recently: Anyone else? I always thought it looked nothing like anything out of the final game.
Same here Burrobot. That image had been bothering me until the revelation of the Ocean Wind zone or Blue Lake zone.
They keep using that weird off looking Sonic title screen on merchandise, for example those blind box kidrobot figures. It's the Quartz Quadrant background thingy in Green Hill all over again.
Also, I've just noticed this: It looks like the research they did comes from the Wikipedia, only slightly reworded and with reordered sentences... And those sketches are indeed from the unused stuff in the Sonic CD Special Stage and not from Sonic 1 as they say. Oh well, at least SEGA was kind enough to send them some never before seen designs for us to see. EDIT: Also, translating "Harinezumi" ("hedgehog") as "Needlemouse" again? Oh boy.
Huh, I would expect someone who procrastinated on their college essay to make filler by rewording Wiki text, but not people who got official Sega sketches and likely has contact with the original people behind this stuff. Kind of puts a damper on the quality. If the book gets delayed yet again it will likely be under yet another guise of printing issues while they go through and rework the Wiki-lifted text, since Sonic fans don't forget :v:/> Hard to fault them for it completely since the rest of the content they have looks great, though. There must be tons more concept art, possibly including all that Oshima has shared regarding Sonic 2 recently.
Lazy wikipedia copypasters won't prevent me from buying this art book if it has that half dozen concept arts in it. Not even terrific iterations of the Sonic 1 logo, but... doesn't this feel like they are doing the same as with modern games? You know: "Hey, you like Sonic, so we will show you a wonderful Sonic world and then fill it with trash, since we don't really understand why do you like it and we just want to get your money."
But half the appeal of the art is the stuff behind it. And they know that as well. We won't just take the art and call it a day, we'll analyze it and try to piece things together. Some clarification and research would really help sell the book, but I kind of feel like they know we'll just take the art and do the rest ourselves. Doesn't ruin the book or anything (obviously), but it'd be nice if they really dove deep into the backstory behind it all. I can only hear how Sonic was a partial merging of Mickey Mouse and Felix so many more times.
I know they're playing that card, we all know that, but that kind of details are no good publicity for them. For example, I'm not getting the collector's edition because the prize gets too high compared to the standard version and they're offering just a pitiful thing in exchange for that extra money. If it hadn't so many interesting pictures, I'd never think of buying this.
The art books are being shipped later this week and next week. https://twitter.com/cookbeck/status/879382928815513604
