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

I agree in the most idealistic sense. However, I think time distorts one's perspective of what/how something should and should not be. I think it can never truly be what it would have been had things played out differently. My gut tells me they would be brought on by temptations of experience and time to change direction, and we'd notice, and we'd feel cheated.

 

sonic 1 sonic 2 on switch has a ring keep mode. It makes you lose only half your rings if you are hit. You also start with 10 rings. Is there anything like that on sonic origins.

 

I feel like at least consulting with those guys and using as much resource to find out as much as possible how it ORIGINALLY was planned out would have been helpful. As shown with previous interviews, you can find out a lot.

Like Hidden Palace in the remake is fun, but it is clearly the new team's reimagining of it, not really a 'what if' of what the original game planned it to be.

 

Taxman mentioned in an interview that part of the reason he and Stealth redid Hidden Palace for Sonic 2 2013 was that Sonic Team told them that STI didn't like how the original level was panning out. We know that R2 was likely scrapped over quality concerns, so with those two pieces in mind I'd imagine a restored R2 would be in the same vein as 2013 Hidden Palace - it'd use the same aesthetics/music but the level design would be totally different.

 

R2 would have had to be really bad to be scrapped, considering that they accepted Wacky Workbench

Did they specifically say that they were unsatisfied with R2's layout tho? It could have been that the graphics weren't shaping up well so they scrapped it before even getting to the level design.

 

That's what I figured as well. I find it weird that there's little remaining of R2 assets, yet at least one time period had a music track done and ready… without the others. Does that seem slightly odd?

I don't know why, but something about it makes me think that R2 was scrapped before any real art development was done on it. I mean, if that Little Planet track were to appear as-is in Round 2... there's no remnants of, say, those unused loops like the others to go with it.

 

Where can I hear that R2 track?
Can't remember where to check.

 

D.A. Garden/Little Planet theme

 

Hey, Wacky Workbench is a work of genius. It's one of my favorite levels of all the classic games.

Personally, I don't think we have much to conclude on as far as art or level design quality. I know the indication is there was a quality problem, but quality is in the eye of the beholder. I don't think we know why nobody wants to talk about it... out of disgust, or hard feelings, or something else. It could have been a decent level (however much of it was worked on) that just didn't meet the quality they really wanted.

 

I think I may have something to share in regard to Little Planet having been R2's BGM all along. Let me first state that I'm not the first to come up with this, but it's also really old, long forgotten knowledge, probably all the way back in the Sonic Cult days and when Iceknight was still active. However, I absolutely never see it mentioned anymore, not even in the last decade.

Track 2 of Sonic the Hedgehog Remix, Techno Power Mix, is a hard techno Round medley that includes everything from R1 to R8. It is mostly comprised of Present time themes, though Palmtree Panic "B" Mix's riff makes an appearance. After the Palmtree Panic segment ends, the baseline for R2 begins, and it is used for Collision Chaos and itself.



Because of how sites like Sonic Retro and Sonic Cult changed the way I think about the game development timeline and how assets get shifted around until Beta (and possibly until the game is ready to "print"), I hedged my bets on that song being R2's theme, and a few others have theorized that at the time, too. Think about it; why would a Round medley have an otherwise hidden feature's inconsequential BGM playing in it? Nothing else in the album does this.

Also, consider other auxiliary media from about the same time, including the outsourced OP/ED animations. The special tracks made for volume one of Super Mega Drive Fan: Mega-CD Super Music Collection, were completed early in the game's production. Sonic 6290 Mix mentions up front "This is the future stage special remix for CD Sonic the Hedgehog", the game's working and possibly original intended title, given this quote by Naoto Oshima (source: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/out-of-the-blue-naoto-ohshima-speaks)

Sonic Ambient Mix starts with recorded backing chords from Tidal Tempest "G" Mix combined with environmental sounds before leading into the track. As Collision Chaos "G" Mix's portion crossfades into Metallic Madness "G" Mix, for just a moment, you can still hear CCGM continue beyond where the song would cut in the 510 prototype. This leads me to believe at the time, they must have had master recordings of each track, something they have long since lost access to, considering how clumsy the 20th Anniversary/ Origins CD music loops, as well as how much Hataya needed to mask Stardust Speedway "B" Mix fading out in the Generations arrangement, something that wouldn't be necessary if they still had access to an earlier prototype or master recordings. The redbook audio version of "Salad Plain's" past also leads me to believe that they had a lot of work done in production that ended up getting lost due to a lack of, or poor archiving standards. It's a shame, overall.

tl;dr: We had evidence of Little Planet being R2 the entire time, but it likely got taken for granted over time as Sonic the Hedgehog Remix is a rather esoteric album. Masato Nishimura only confirmed it. Also, evidence suggests that much of the side projects were done early in the game's development, which is how you get things like R2 animated in the ending before they knew it was cut, "CD Sonic the Hedgehog" and possibly the use of master tracks for stage medleys.

 

Forgive my bad musical ear but What’s the time stamp we looking for where r2 begins ?
3:44ish?

 

One thing I had forgotten - Collision Chaos's present theme is in the v.002 prototype, being used on the unfinished time trial screen. So progress on R3's music too.

Though part of me thinks the soundtrack was just waiting for a "game" to exist. Very little seems to have been changed across all our prototypes, which suggests it wasn't being actively worked on while the levels were being constructed.

I don't believe the D.A. Garden theme was designed for an actual level, although it exists in the 510 prototype so the music does pre-date the screen.

 

Slightly earlier, at 3:18. Pretty much exactly after the Palmtree Panic bit ends, and before Collision Chaos begins at 3:57.

 

Masato Nishimura revealed that the music used for D.A. Garden was composed for R2.
https://twitter.com/Mazin__/status/136837158827851777

 

I agree with this statement and forgot to mention it earlier. According to Masato Nishimura, Wacky Workbench "B" Mix still has a vocoder saying "Crazy Toy Box" in it, which suggests the music was made very early in the process, and possibly never recomposed. Apparently all the music was recorded at Being's professional studio (https://shmuplations.com/soniccd/). If they had a limited amount of sessions, this might explain why the soundtrack seems like it was one of the first things finished, in that they only had so much time afforded to them to get it done. I do wonder, however, if this accounts for part of the reason any master versions of the music haven't been preserved. I'd hate to consider it, as it seems especially careless (well, too late for that), but maybe they left demos, WIPs and project files behind at the studio without thinking they were important, only the final deliverable. It was a different time in game development, after all.

Regardless, IF (and I do mean IF) there were ever any compositions for the second round's other time periods, considering where things currently stand, they would likely only exist in some build of the game we (or SEGA, apparently) don't have. Maybe Ogata might have more information, but I have no idea if he has any online presence, and even if he did, I imagine the answers he'd give would be just as mum as everyone else's.

After seeing the new concept art of Little Planet from Sonic Origins, if the area for 2R was indeed in the midst of what looks like a forest above ground, it's possible the stage was a jungle/forest ruins, which is the bond that sells the aural aesthetic of the composition. Sure, it also fits as a generic representation for Little Planet in a bonus feature, but knowing that it possibly took place in a forest setting above ground accounts for why you have birds chirping and a jungle rhythm as the song wraps up. Maybe it would have looked something like the Emerald Isle concept art for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in the present time period. It also matches up with the overgrowth in the animated ED scene (though you can always make the case that overgrown ruins are a classic trope in spite of that).

 

Tried my hand at picking out the tracks used, and linking to them directly for convenience. Didn't get everything, but all eight rounds are accounted for somewhere.

The left column is the Techno Power Mix, the right column is the corresponding CD track.

 

I was kind of thinking a jungle or forest too when I listened to D.A. Garden once more. The birds chirping really suggest a nature setting. But moreover, a rain forest has water falls, as well as rainbows. And ruins can be commonly associated with such a setting.

Also, we could see about reaching out to the studio to see if they have any Sonic CD content they can share with us. Might not be able/willing to, but you never know.

 

Seconded, this is 100% the vibe I get from D.A. Garden. There's something in the percussion that makes it feel "organic", and that synth lead (a theramin?) is... I'm not going to word this well, but that sustained whistling sound at that pitch... I'd imagine most people would describe it as "haunted house", but I've also heard it used as a "tree level" motif in other games, just with different instruments. Its use here makes it sound a little foreboding, which would be fitting if the stage was part forest/part underground ruins.

 

I always thought the "Land of Darkness" from Sonic's OVA is a good representation of what R2 "feel" of bad future could be like.

By Land of darkness I mean the metropolitan city ruins.