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

I've been thinking about Sonic The Hedgehog Movie (1996). It borrows a lot of stuff from Mega Drive trilogy and Sonic CD. Opening of that game is a direct inspiration for some scenes. I wonder if ending was also used as a basis for some places? City, covered in roots (Sonic OVA), Antlion segment (Sonic CD)... Could it be possible that video game concept art was handed over to both animation studios?
If that was the case, Toei interpreted it in one way, OVA team saw it in a different way.
Another question – why does music for R2 exist? I suppose composers of Sonic CD were making music early in game's development. It's like with Sonic 1, when Masato Nakamura composed music using concept art and descriptions as sources of inspiration.
And we know by now that Dubious Depths existed only on paper. And it seems compositions were made for this level as well as for all other levels. However, like with Sonic 2, when stages were cut, tracks for them were repurposed. What was supposed to play in Hidden Palace ended up playing in 2-player mode of Mystic Cave.
Something similar happened to Dubious Depths music. Developers found a place for it in D.A. Garden mode. If "Past" and "Future" mixes of the song existed, there was no point in including them in the game. Round 2 didn't make it into Sonic CD and space on CD was limited.
As I wrote earlier, composers could have worked the same way as Nakamura. That is, using artwork for reference. We see that themes for stages were divided in half between Naofumi Hataya and Masafumi Ogata. If they composed music for in-game locations chronologically, it would go like this:

Hataya: Round 1 – Salad Plain (Present, Past, Future)

Ogata: Round 2 – Ridicule Root (Present, Past, Future)

and so on...

Their job was to compose the soundtrack. Whether or not it was going to be used in its entirety, that's a decision made by game's director and development team.
It's like with Sonic 3, when so many people were hired to create sound. But a large part of music eventually was not even used (Brad Buxer team's compositions). Forty one tracks by that team and only a handful of them in the final version. C. Cirocco Jones (Scirocco) was credited in the game, but his contributions (levels 2 & 3 – "The Water") are clearly missing from Sonic 3.
So, I think "Past" and "Future" versions of R2 are there somewhere, just like Brad and company's recordings. Looks like Ogata did not know that they didn't include R2 in Sonic CD. So he remixed it in medley of levels. Also, Dubious Depths theme is referenced in other parts of Sonic The Hedgehog – Remix album.
Yes, I know it's a lot of text and no pictures. So, here is a slideshow of sorts to illustrate some of my points.

 

So uh, I think the mystery of the music of DD is finally solved, some folks I know, Makasina555 and Giganto were poking around with the metadata of the audio tracks in the 2011 version, and they found that all of the JP tracks span from 1 - 44 with Palmtree Panic's music being tracks 1 - 4, and Collison Chaos present being tracks 9 - 12. Everything else continues this numbering scheme (TT is 13 - 16, QQ is 17 - 20, WW is 21 - 24, SS is 25 - 28, and MM is 29 - 32), as you may have noticed CC's track is not listed are track 5, 6, 7, and 8, which means that Dubious Depths did have all four tracks finished and they probably are in Sega's archives in some form, either as raw unedited songs similar to how the songs are in SCD's 510 build, or as rough mixes, and it's known what became of track 5, it became track 42 (Little Planet). Though there are tracks that don't have any, Final Fever and the time attack theme, though it could be that Mr. Whitehead wasn't sent FF, and the time attack theme was custom, I'd say those were tracks he added himself due to the lack of metadata.

 

If it's the 2011 version, I have doubts over whether this accurately reflects the status of the 1993 version.

 

Normally, such remakes/remasters (depending on who developed them) could hide goodies for the fanbase.
However, without proper confirmation and credible evidence, everything should taken with a grain of sand...

 

Right, I was thinking about that as well after posting, but didn't mention it at the time due to my excitement. I do recommend looking into this though, as it's a bit of an oddity.
Makasina has a video about this finding as well, going into detail about it.

 

I curious to know why Sega or Wavemaster haven't released the original CDDA versions of the past music already...

I mean, there had been opportunities to do so in official soundtrack releases, such as that recent vinyl one. I definitely put down money for a complete edition with unused mixes, tracks and such.

I'd be also curious as to the composers thoughts on having to be forced to compress their CDDA work onto the sound chip when the work was meant for Redbook.

 

Knowing Sega, either A) their archives are such a mess that they can't easily find the tracks, or B) they're not in there at all.

 

This bit of info from the 2011 remake is still a neat find! It might lend some credibility to the idea that Sega might have the tracks for Dubious Depths tucked away somewhere, but that really all hinges on if the track metadata was Taxman's doing or not. Final Fever not having any seems to lend credibility to the former since I know there was an idea to revamp the final boss that was also rejected. That track not having any metadata might have something to do with the planned track switching depending on player progress.

I also don't see why the tracks couldn't have been shared through some sort of cheat to extend the sound test range or something if Sega did have them and did allow access to them for the remake at some point.

 

It's hard for me to believe that 1 year later the community is still so engaged in this mystery, it's really good to see the fans' persistence in relation to this, I remember when this subject also left me extremely intrigued and I also discussed it (I've already lost my hope that my theory about Brand New World / Time Attack theme will be confirmed as true in the future haha XD) it's still very interesting even for me, I really don't think anything visual related to this level will be ever discovered (and apparently it hasn't), but I hope we can at least get to hear the other versions of R2's thrme, good work on the latest discoveries !