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

The excitement of the hunt.

 

Problem with all this: None of the animations in Sonic CD take place in any time zone except the present, even when they take place in the future in-game. For example, the race against Metal Sonic in the ending is in Stardust Speedway Present, not either future. Following the convention of every other zone in the ending, I very much doubt they're depicting Tidal Tempest *good* future in the ending, not least of which because a good number of people would have completely missed that zone entirely unless they were looking for it in-game. It'd be weird to, for example, get the bad ending to the game, and see a good future during the credits sequence.

 

I like this, this shows even more that this theory doesn't have it's place to exist, but in any case, the FMV is now confirmed to be R2.

For the theory that Dubious Depths is an early name for Tidal Tempest, one of my posts above already discredited it (the one when i say that Dubious Depths can fit the depths of a dungeon). Tidal Tempest surely had an early name but i don't think it's Dubious Depths, heck out of all the devs who worked on SCD, it's Ohshima who revealed that R2 was called Dubious Depths and i don't think Ohshima didn't do much on R2, he was the game director, not a level designer, by the way, even Mazin thinks that it is true and he tends to misremember things a lot (like me).

For even more things, Mazin specifically said: "However, I think the initial idea for the name of rd2 was Riddical Root.", the key word here is "initial", it shows that R2 did have more than 1 name (the original name was Ridicule Root but something happened which led to a name change), which fits perfectly if we take Dubious Depths as R2's second (final) name. So this debunk this bullshit that R2 only had 1 name too.

 

Didn't R1 go Salad Plain -> Palmtree Hill -> Palmtree Panic?

 

Even if Tidal Tempest isn't R2, it's entirely possible that *ideas* and concepts for art were recycled from R2 (the root theme) into other levels, such as the aforementioned comparisons to TT future, SS past, QQ past...
but it's hard to tell because almost all the stages represent past stages as overgrown or filled with plants (makes sense) or future stages as being a harmony between machine and nature.

 

So, I didn’t notice anyone posting this earlier:

People noticed, that the song „Sonic Stream” might actually be a remix of DD Good Future.



If that’s the case, we actually have a good representation of the music for Present, Bad and Good Future. I do wonder if we can find the Past too.

 

Folks... There's one thing that I'm feeling a bit peeved about this whole matter...
Some people already mentioned it here, more than once, but you didn't seem to learn, as I've seen in some of your latest tweets...

Please don't give leading questions to others!

If at best, try to ask those involved what do they think this or that detail may be related to...
That way, their answers won't be biased or guided by the question itself.
It's been a rare chance to get those devs to give us proper answers, but more times than not people simply try to validate their theories.
That's all kinds of wrong, especially for a place such as this, where many member try HARD to investigate and analyse Sonic games stuff.

Please, folks, think of the community at large and not simply of yourselves and/or your theories (regardless of how tame or wild they may be).

 

We would do well not to deal in absolutes (Debunk! Bullshit! Discredit!) when talking about matters for which we have very, very little information, and the information we do have is sometimes elusive or even contradictory (Oshima had previously said he didn't think that part of the animation was R2).

It's still worth asking how come R2 was the only stage (that we know of so far) that had two alliterative names, even before the rest of the stages did -- because now we know that from December 92 to May 93, so in a period of five months:

• R2 was scrapped;
• Names were changed to alliterative names. I have never seen references to Palmtree Hill, but who knows. Maybe we had an intermediate set of names;
• Tidal Tempest may have been brought up to speed. It raises an eyebrow that every stage had concepts by the time work on animations started except Tidal Tempest, and it'd be cool to know how early in development exactly that was;
• Crucially, the game was delayed;

It's perfectly possible for R2 to have had two names, maybe even more (Who knows how accurate is Mazin's account of Ridicule Root being the first name). But if that's the case, it had that name for very little time before being scrapped. And it doesn't automatically follow that Dubious Depths was the second name. Again, they could be misremembering, and I tend to believe Mazin more than I believe Oshima about this because, from how they talk about it, Oshima seemed to be a LOT less involved in its development.

It's also worth asking if, for example, Objects 05 and 08 weren't intended to appear in R2. Makes sense with the idea that R2 was filled with traps and the like, and I find it suspicious that they disappeared by the time 510 came to be.

EDIT: I must be clear: when I say something is "worth asking", I definitely don't mean asking the devs. I mean more asking ourselves, leaving the theories open for discussion instead of shutting them down.

 

I still think it’s plausible that Dubious Depths was actually an alternative name for Tidal Tempest, and that some subset of concepts from R2 made it to Tidal Tempest — not to suggest R2 was Tidal Tempest, rather that Tidal Tempest got leftovers from R2 ideas. Maybe those were salvaged before anything was even implemented. We already know the R2 drawing had the fan, which appears in Tidal Tempest.

I think the big question to ask is: why was the game delayed, and what specifically had to be redone, done, or otherwise changed?

 

To add to this; I'm still not convinced that the angel/Eggman statue room's assets were created merely for the sake of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it easter egg. We obviously know that they weren't created for R2, but neither Mazin or Ohshima has denied the possibility that they were designed for a whole different Round altogether (My personal theory is that they were assets for an earlier version of Stardust Speedway, as its Past is themed after Ancient Greece while the Present and the Bad Future have a giant Eggman statue).

But my point is that assets and concepts could have been moved back and forth between different Rounds, with the Antlion Badnik and its pits being concrete proof of this. Many of the answers we seek regarding R2 might have nothing to do with R2 at all.

 

Can someone link to Mazin's reply, for the sake of people who aren't logged into X?

 

https://x.com/Mazin__/status/1826052223916454376

 

TBF, wasn't Mazin previously asked if the angel statue section was created for R2, and he denied it? It doesn't look like his responses are that affected by leading answers.

Asking him if that footage depicted R2 was no different from that.

 

The most laconic confirmation ever, at this point both Mazin and Oshima must be so tired of R2 talk lol they probably roast Retro nonstop on get-togethers.

 

So you think it's a second instance of Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive)'s Labyrinth Zone, where it was supposed to be the second level, then ended up (in bits and pieces in) the fourth?

Beginning to suspect the Labyrinth Zone concept is cursed...

 

Pretty sure myself and another individual pointed this out very early in the thread. I regret being so quick to jump to that conclusion but I still believe that the tracks are similar enough to at least be inspired by whatever demo was made for the stage.

 

Information regarding R2 is so contradictory at times, that instead of solving one puzzle, we get another two. Sonic CD's development is a tale from a long time ago. That's why when we ask developers about different aspects of game's production, their answers usually start with: "I don't remember, but... / I guess... / It could have been... / I think so, but I'm not sure...". They create games and probably don't think as much about those games as we do after the release date. We play, try to find out more about secrets within those games and what happened behind the scenes.
Sometimes something like this is shared with us:


"I don't remember if we ended up using these." – says Kazuyuki Hoshino in the video (at 2:36).



"And I think we had this one, too." (at 3:14).


However, none of those designs appeared in the final game. Sprites were made for some badniks and boss.

Only Antlion remained practically unchanged in the sprite form.


Also note: "We wanted to make sure the boss designs complimented the design of the stage." (3:06).

Eggman's vehicle is blue in its original form, and has spikes in front of it. This looks consistent with that clip's colors and general theme of R2 (dangerous environment – lots of traps, enemies with huge jaws or drills).

I don't know what kind of machinery appeared in Ridicule Root. But the name implies that nature played a role there, too.

Also, did Hoshino use some Sonic 1 badniks for reference?


In any case, it's clear that he created concept art for R2, its robots, Eggman's vehicle. It would make sense to ask him about the visual part of the level.
And musical part... that's complicated. I can't think of a way to contact Masafumi Ogata. However, there is hope that SEGA would release unused music from Sonic CD: early title screen theme, "Past" mixes in CD quality. I will refrain from voicing theories about possible mixes of R2 theme or reasons of Tidal Tempest's absence in ending animation. It just makes me wonder why Round 4, literally the middle of a game with 8 Rounds would not be represented in animated form? Even later levels like Stardust Speedway and Metallic Madness are there. Anyway, it's related to another topic. I suppose Ridicule Root and Tidal Tempest are not closely related as I thought before. Maybe some ideas were reused in another form. Like in the case with that cutscene.

It didn't go as originally planned. So a similar event happened in Collision Chaos.
Rounds in Sonic CD consist of many parts: a place on the map of Little Planet -> early name –> rough sketch -> concept art -> final name –> badniks, boss -> animated version -> playable stage with graphics, music, maybe some unique sounds -> American soundtrack (not necessarily in that order). Many of those parts were already made for unused Round 2.
And people can develop ideas in many ways. For example, let's imagine there was Ohshima's map at the earliest stage of CD Sonic's production. Developers came up with "Ridicule Root" as the name for 2R. How this can be explored further? It depends on people's imagination.

It could have happened like this: "So, what do we have here? Are those things above 2R some kind of metallic fences? Let's use them. Oh, and add trees all over the place, it will be a jungle."

Then: "Below the surface we will have a dungeon. There will be ridiculously big roots. And fans to create a flow, so Sonic can float in the air. "

Screenshots from Superstars are here just to illustrate my point: how some of those parts could have looked and worked.
People from Toei saw it all as:

Creators of mods add their vision to it. In any case – the more parts we get, the more complete the picture becomes. One day we will find out what exactly was used as the basis for the animation and which ideas appeared only in the concept art.

 

My mistake then, thanks for clarification!