Sonic CD (2011 / Remaster) Prototypes

So how complete are the layouts of Desert Dazzle and Final Fever?

 

Final Fever is only a platform at the start of the stage plus background art, unsure about Desert Dazzle as of yet.

 

Ow

 

The game seems fairly complete here gameplay wise, it doesn't appear that the earliest build here is too much different from the Fifth review build which is only a couple months from the final build. At a glance it seems that even by 6/22 Desert Dazzle and Final Fever were long scrapped. Unless Someone wants to view the level maps and check, unfortunately that goes beyond my knowledge.
To add further, none of the US tracks are in the fifth review build, which means they were quite literally added to the game last minute.

 

I think maybe you're worried about this blowing back on them in some way? It does feel a bit different for me too, knowing the people involved a bit more rather than it just being an abstract concept of a "sega development team". All that said, Sega have been good to the fan community over the last 30 years. Taxman himself shared previously unknown information about things that were cut or altered from Sonic CD, in particular the R2 zone, presumably with permission from Sega. I don't feel like this damaging to Sega or any individuals involved.

 

These prototypes are completely fair game imo. It's not suddenly different just because you know them or have participated in the same internet groups. Anyway, these prototypes look quite interesting! Looking forward to inevitable mods that restore some prototype content.

 

The mobile engine remakes were commercial releases through SEGA, and the key figures involved refined their knowledge and skills via picking apart not only commercial game releases but also their leaked prototypes. If SEGA is cool with it, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about morally or ethically.

 

with Mania, we got info about cut items straight from the source too. for instance, the concept of the UFO chasing you after you got the emerald from the special stage, which involved an unused leftover graphic, is apparently straight from taxman.

 

Here is a video of the cut zones.

 

So just to confirm, there ARE differences in that desert dazzle layout, however minor. Most notably the past timepost, and the tiles of cacti floating in the air at 1:19 in that video. I also don't recall if the version we uncovered in the final builds had spikes placed in them or not.

Either way, this warrants further investigation.

Also, in the REMS discord, Taxman did answer some questions. Hopefully this puts a kibosh on the idea that he's upset about the prototype going public. The only thing he wasn't sure about sharing yet was... For example...

In reference to demo music for the level. (Naturally, please don't pester him about this. They may be very crude and far from something we'd be used to hearing, and it's probably not like when he had Tee Lopes making music for Mania.)

On the flip side, he said he'd look to see if still has sprites from the R9 boss to share at some point in the coming days, so that may or may not get shared. Again, please be civil. Taxman grew up in this scene knows how much we love this kind of thing, but has his own life and career to attend to.

There's a lot whole more in the chat, so I suggest people who have the time to do so please start archiving and logging it all, lest we lose a lot of valuable info.

 

Fascinating.

Desert Dazzle looks better in motion than I expected. The original pic didn't convince me, but here it looks nice.

The Dubious Depths music really doesn't fit it though. Although I guess it was just a placeholder, going from the above quote about the demo tracks. Still, Desert Dazzle obviously doesn't match the ending FMV. I really never saw the point of reimplementing R2 if it's not going to be based on the original concept.

I mean, it's not like there not being a zone between PP and CC felt like a cardinal sin in CD. The only glaring omission was the lack of a zone that matched the Dubious Depths sequence from the ending FMV (which wasn't even in the original MCD version), and this version of R2 doesn't address that. To me it just feels like an excuse for Tax to implement his take on Sand Shower, something he has been trying to do since Retro Sonic (and finally got to do in full with Mania). It would have made just as much sense to try to implement Desert Dazzle in the mobile ports of Sonic 1 or 2 IMO.

Funny coincidence how Desert Dazzle and Dubious Depths have the same initials though.

Anyways, the addition of a new zone to serve as the final boss feels more natural to me, as the original final boss has always felt rather anticlimactic, especially considering the music. However I don't get the point of making it look so garish and carnival-esque, making it clash with the final boss music even more (aside from being just an excuse to use the Crackers level art, which Tax and Stealth also tried to do with the mobile port of Sonic 2).

I think it was the right call to cut those zones TBH. Trying to shoehorn scrapped content where doesn't fit only makes things look too fangamey to me.

 

Taxman shared them hours ago y'all (he posted the mock up and a psd file that contains the full body), I would've posted them myself earlier but I've been napping for hours.

A clean mock up


Full body!


And welcome to another episode of boundary break : )

 

Here is some more information that Mr. Taxman decided to share regarding R9

The image he is referring to is the mockup that he created for R9. I’ll attach it below for context.

 

You need to look at it in a historical context. Back when Desert Dazzle was made, we essentially knew nothing about R2 other than the fact it existed.
There were two prevailing theories on what R2 was, one was correct and the other was not.

The first theory is that R2 was a desert level, based on the art of the little planet sprite.
You can see it has a cactus area to the right.


So some people believed R2 was a desert level. The second theory which ultimately proved correct is that R2 was the ruin segment in the ending cinematic.
This was proven true when Taxman posted the few leftovers of R2 he found in the files which included the Antlion badnik. Later we got more concept art and eventually even the name Dubious Depths/Ridicule Root

So Taxman went with the Desert hypothesis, and as a nod to the Sonic 2 Beta community, he made it a reimagined Sand Shower in the Sonic CD style.
Which, ngl, looks hella cool.

 

14 years ago we even used Dust Hill as the name for the mockup photo. I don't think we even had confirmation that it wasn't a hoax. It could have been from Sonic CD just as well.

Not to mention, there is basically no original concept for R2 anyway so it's impossible to create something that actually fits by virtue of being close to what the original would've been.

 

There was a lot of debate and doubt around the name Dust Hill being the actual name even in the mid 00s, despite "Dust Hill" being a popular name for it. And people already figured out even earlier that it was a mockup due to the HUD elements not even being aligned consistently (alongside everything else wrong with it) but we knew it wasn't a hoax because that same screenshot was used in various magazines from 1992 during the early promotion of Sonic 2, alongside a very similar one for HPZ with its early background.

 

Does the Desert Dazzle map show any similarities to Mirage Saloon in Sonic Mania?

I'm guessing "probably not" but it would be fun if it was.

 

I didn’t post them as they weren’t relevant but in the REMS discord, he shared that none of the gimmicks from mirage saloon were intended for desert dazzle. He also shared that any of the large empty cavities in the map were intended to be sand. Such as the following image.

Lastly, he also divulged that he had given the backgrounds to Tom (Fry I assume? Taxman doesn’t say a last name,) and Tom reinterpreted the artwork into mirage saloon.

 

There are many conceptual similarities that i didn't expect, and feel very happy to have seen them. ( in the video recently posted !! )

It looks like a very distant prototype thereof.

 

I'm aware, I was there back in the day.

But the prevalent belief was that R2 was the ruins shown in the FMV. It being the desert from the LP pic was less popular and had less evidence backing it (it could just as well have been the forest/jungle to the left of the volcano). We've also long known that the Sand Shower mockup was attributed to Sonic 2, rather than CD.

And Tax would have known that R2 was the location in the ending FMV as opposed to a desert from the antlion badniks and the concept art. He was the one who released them after being given the go ahead by Sega.

No, making R2 a desert inspired by the mockup just strikes me as akin to bringing back Sand Shower and calling it Dust Hill, or making the emerald block in S2 HPZ the Master Emerald and saying that Tails is its guardian.