Sonic CD's Mysterious Cut R2 Level Discussion - Post Origins Edition

I can definitely see why they changed "Radical Root". Ugh.

 

Woof, "Radical Root" definitely sounds like an early name lmao

 

I try not to send many questions: ask them only if he replies to a previous question.

 

A theory: maybe they started to make alliterative names, beginning from "Round 2"? Like: "Look, we have R2, let's make a name with 2 R's here, Riddical Roots, for example" (roots can be seen in extended animation from Sonic CD – when hedgehog runs into the Antlion trap).
So, the idea was cool, and they changed Salad Plain to Palmtree Panic and Crazy Toy Box to Wacky Workbench. Then revised R2, the level which they named in an alliterative way first, and gave it another name.

 

I find it amusing that Mazin knows its about R2 as-well hahaha
Here is a link to the tweet for those curious.
https://twitter.com/Mazin__/status/1618078319739809798

Getting a second person to back up Ohshima pretty much removes any doubt I may have had while dwelling on this for a few days. I will say that phrasing the question the way this person did was very leading and wish they would have asked it differently.

 

That art on the top right looks like an improvement of some not-so-great pixel art I made a LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. I wish I could find the original. i might've posted it on retro somewhere.

 

For Sonic CD's 30th Anniversary in September of this year? There is hope we'll get more info on its development by then.

Maybe there were some roots as obstacles. Sonic Mania Team used dangerous plants in Stardust Speedway – a reused idea from early Sonic CD?

 

True I suppose - even though we know not all of the stages had alliterative names at one time, I guess that doesn't mean one or more of them couldn't have been alliterative from the start. Without seeing design docs with actual stage names from the Salad Plain era, it's impossible to know either way.

I don't see why they'd remix it personally - in theory nobody outside the development team would know it was originally a track for a stage.

Re: the birds, the Little Planet map concept art shown in Origins depicts a forest with some machinery as the first part of the stage before it goes underground, which would fit very well with the bird song at the start of the track. Plus, it's pacy enough to work during gameplay once the main melody kicks in, and that melody would work well with a mysterious vibe suitable for both a forest or exploring underground ruins. Interestingly, the actual forest seems it may have been added in pencil over the top of the original map, suggesting the idea for the stage's setting may have changed slightly after the map had already been drawn. Alternatively, I suppose it could just mean that whoever drew the map didn't make it clear enough the first section was supposed to be a forest, and had to go back and make a correction later on.

 

https://twitter.com/Mazin__/status/1618163967633010691?t=pLwLfvoi-ayZB8I3GOhHjw&s=19
Ridicule Root

 

All thanks to N. Ohshima – he said he would look it up…

…and so he did!
Prior to that, we did not have a name for R2. But now, there are two names!

Special thanks to @PimpUigi for suggesting a way to confirm the authenticity of the original message.
I should have thought beforehand about providing a proof, it’s no wonder many people doubted initially, making jokes about “dubious” nature of that post. Of course, it’s better to present any piece of information with something that can prove its validity. For example, if I say: “There is a prototype of Sonic 2 in my collection”, some demonstration is needed:

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It’s wonderful to learn new facts related to video game development. I hope we will be able to discover the depths of knowledge about making of Sonic games…

…and get to the roots of many secrets!

(here’s another unused level idea, this time from Sonic 2 – and it also has a name with alliteration: Madness Mountain, which looks to me like something from Prince of Persia (1989)):

 

Hmmm. R2-D2. 2 R's and 2 D's. Ridicule Root and Dubious Depths.

 

R2

Now make it better.

 

Well, my friend, Pacca the satyr also have made mockup of this zone..

Spoiler: Image

Hope that I'll get enough skills to recreate it in MCD version

 

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There's concept art of viaducts with rainbow waterfalls, and since it was basically a Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive) port and Marble Zone is the second Round it's a fair conclusion.

 

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...as well as an overground forest canopy drawn on top of what was printed. R2 isn't just the cave system, it's the whole pie slice between R1 and R3.

 

The idea of SCD borrowing from S2 is interesting, not the least considering how S2 was supposed to have time travel too at some point. It's hard to imagine the teams not communicating ever under no circumstances whatsoever, considering how the team was split.

Still, it's an idea that we should use with caution -- along with the idea that SCD level themes are just S1 level themes on steroids. Granted, it seems pretty obvious looking at them, but using that piece of common sense as a springboard to other conclusions (not to mention, about something as daunting as R2) is risky at best, especially because we don't know for sure if that's a) true b) on purpose c) happened for the reasons we might believe it happened.

 

if this was the case, the majority of Wikipedia wouldn't exist. Interviews, written accounts by third parties, and, yes, twitter posts by creators are considered valid sources by most people because quite often that's all we're going to get. Forever. My head hurts thinking of trying to, say, write an article about a band by the standard of "even the smallest shred of doubt" when no one's writing shit down (why would they) and all we have are people recounting stories to an interviewer quite possibly years later.

Yes it would be preferable if we had the documents themselves, but even these can be misconstrued by Retro fans. how many times have we had slides/scans of some development doodle and it turned out to be something completely different when explained by Yasuhara or whatever? and then there's also that especially back then, things tend to change in development a lot, faster than any hard copies of documentation can be accurate to, so there's often documentation that contradicts each other. The lack of discrete version control and the necessity of physical test copies muddies this even further; today we have the luxury of Github timestamping everything but they didn't have that back then making CD. Quite possibly every programmer had a different build of their own with whatever bit they were implementing into it, and this would result in contradictory builds if they were burned onto a cartridge and leaked.