Sonic 2 Development Lore

My best guess is at one point Eggman escapes into the past twice, but either the timeline changed further each time he did, or he escaped into a past that was further along in time than the first ancient past we traveled too (and therefor, already corrupted and more decayed)

Time travel is weird, and we're talking early 90s videogame logic here. It's already impressive they tried to put this much thought into a game that just used fade to black transitions between most zones in the end.

Also, for those who haven't seen it, there's already a hack at SHC that's using this version of the game as a foundation:
https://shc.zone/entries/contest2023/801

 

So I was taking a look at the 8-bit version of Sonic 2, not only because I genuinely enjoy that game, but also because I am convinced that it might have more answers to our questions than we think.

While we do not know how much communication there was between STI and Aspect, Green Hills and Sky High clearly corresponding to Emerald Hill and Hill Top respectively does imply that some form of release synchronicity was initially planned, potentially going all the way back to when time travel was still in consideration.

However, most people seem to ignore the rest of the zones, deeming them way too different from any of the 16-bit ones to possibly be of any help, but is that really the case?

Why does the game begin with a cave level? In particular, why with a cave level containing magma, spikes and a rather urgent and serious music track? And if the title card and said presence of magma is anything to go by, it's not just a cave, but a crater at the top of a volcano.



And the weird placement of zones doesn't end there. Scrambled Egg Zone is supposed to be Eggman's hidden fortress of evil, so why is it just a network of natural caves connected by a series of Chemical Plant -esque tubes? This is especially weird considering how the previous zone, Gimmick Mountain, is much closer to a standard Eggman base level with an entirely metallic structure, conveyor belts and other industrial gimmicks. I think this discrepancy has quite the obvious explanation, however.



Spiked ceiling, minecarts, a background consisting of rectangular cobblestone tiles and a connection to a mountain theme. Maybe the rest of you have known this connection for years, but I would not think that Gimmick Mt. originally being conceived as a future version of Under Ground would be that big of a stretch.

 

Two points on the above to take into consideration:

• From the AutoDemo and various magazine scans, we know that Green Hills Zone and Sky High Zone were originally themed much more like the original Green Hill Zone with checkerboard floors - the decision to retool them to look more like Emerald Hill Zone/Hill Top Zone was made later into development.
• From looking into the AutoDemo, it seems like the minecarts and rails weren't part of the original plans for Under Ground Zone at all; they seem to have been hastily added in to accommodate a rolling demo showing off the mechanic, and it's messed up a bunch of the block definitions for the rest of the Zone. The empty Act 3 actually contains what are presumably the original block definitions for the Zone, without the cart rails (or background!) defined - using these blocks to display the map data from Act 1 and 2 actually results in all the ground displaying correctly with no random rails etc. (except obviously for the minecart section that's been added to the start of Act 2 to accommodate the aforementioned rolling demo, which becomes broken when using these older block definitions). Bearing this in mind, it's possible the minecart/breakable spikes gimmicks were initially only planned for Gimmick Mt. Zone, before the decision was taken to include them in Under Ground Zone as well.

Bearing that in mind, communication between the teams was very little, though we can see Aspect were supplied at least some assets such as the game's main logo, and Tails' sprites for use as reference and in the title cards etc.

 

I remember hearing that the internal level order showed Green Hills Zone was originally supposed to be the first zone and Under Ground was supposed to come much later, but I can't see anything about this on the wiki.

 

The autodemo (from December '91) has an internal order that goes

Green Hills (00 - 02) > Sky High (03 - 05) > ??? (06 - 08) > Underground (09 - 0B)

So that is where that idea comes from I believe. It is mentioned at the very least on the TCRF article for the prototype. There's also the added note that of the represented zones, Green Hills makes up a lot of the pre-release material pointing to it being an early zone.

There's some other small bits that further that idea like how the difficulty of both zones (sans Act 3 of Green Hills) are substantially different with Green Hills being much easier than any zone up to that point in the final game.

 

So uh...wasn't the Beep21 article supposed to be a multi-part series? I thought this would be a weekly thing. Is it monthly?

 

Here's "Sonic Panic", a promotional VHS handed out in Japan for those who had preordered Sonic 2.



Now, I don't speak Japanese so I cannot tell if it contains any meaningful insight into the questions we've been having. However, the tape begins with a short, dialogue-free skit of Mario and Luigi being terrorized by Sonic and Tails, and what's playing in its background is... a completely original music track that perfectly matches the style and instrumentation of the game's soundtrack?

I very much oppose skipping into conclusions, but I find it hard to believe that they would've composed this just for a random promo VHS only given to a very small amount of people.

EDIT: There's more similar sounding music in the rest of the video, and a composer is credited at 01:36 with their name written in katakana.

 

Auto translator subtitles *exists*

Also, I don't think that music is from Sonic 2. Sounds... not like Sonic 2, lol. It feels like just regular SMD-esque music.

 

The music credits just read "Dreams Come True (Masato Nakamura)", so nothing out of the ordinary here!

 

Good thinking. I can see them recycling some unused S2 music for that video so that it wouldn't go to waste. Especially considering that it doesn't really fit that sequence they used it on.

Nice, that enforces it. Not just because of Nakamura, but also because I really doubt they would have hired him just to compose a song for a silly short sequence in a promo VHS.

 

But as far as I can tell (and I can't tell much), that narration is merely listing the credentials of the game, citing "genius programmer Yuji Naka" a few seconds before. It seems not to refer to the tape, but to the game itself. The music could be from anywhere: Dreams Come True itself was an extremely popular band at the time, so its music style was not exactly uncommon. It might as well have been sourced and licensed from a music bank -- just like you would do today.

Then again, my comprehension of Japanese amounts to seeing shapes in clouds here and there, so I don't know what the whole thing is about.

 

It just seems like generic promo advertisement music to me. It sounds a little bit like Sonic 2 music, but that could just be the MIDI instrumentation. It's lacking a second part to the song that "completes" the melody (something most if not all Sonic 2 songs have), so I feel like it was made specifically for this.

 

Reminds me a bit of some of the music used for the TV spots for Sonic 1, especially the ragtime-inspired tune that comes in before the interview with Naka.

I'm with you that I'm not convinced they're by Nakamura based on the information provided.

 

That's just stock music composed on 80s syths. That kind of music was common for promo videos in that era, and it matches the low budget stock sound style of all the rest of the music used in the video.

Don't let the synth instruments fool you. That's just what was popular at that time, while also being cheap and easy to make and license. The style of composition is more or less the same as what you hear in the rest of the video.

 

Eh, to me it sounds a bit like Sonic 2's special stage music. That might just be me going crazy, but I swear I can hear those similarities.

 

Nah that doesn't sound anything like Sonic 2 music. It doesn't even sound like Masa's demos. I think it's just stock music they happened to have.

 

Yeah, y'all are probably right. And now that I think of it, I can't even imagine any place in the game where a song like that would fit.

But anyways, here's a neat detail I noticed while looking at Yasuhara's maps. Like, the future island is almost entirely covered by this massive city, right?



Because in the background art of both CPZ and Alpha CNZ, both of which were meant to be future zones, you can see identical-looking rectangular skyscrapers with red lights on top.




This obviously isn't a very big deal, but I just thought it was interesting.

 

I think the idea is that Genocide/Cyber City occupies the whole island, and CPZ and CNZ are regions within it. Hence why GCZ has more acts than other zones, and they're scattered throughout the island.

 

Is it literally a city though? I always thought GCZ was just the name of Eggman's facilities. The city seen in CPZ and CNZ look like a normal metropolis where people actually live.

I always thought the city was some kind of luxurious resort for humanity Eggman made, to distract them while he commits war crimes in the background.

 

On that sense, calling the whole future alpha island "Metropolis Zone" could be more fitting, I guess.