This is a discussion thread dedicated to the other R2, Desert Dazzle. While the community has been given far more info about this R2 than the one made back in 1993 (Dubious Depths), there's still some stuff that remains unanswered. Before I get into that I'm going to do a recap of what's known so far, in case there's people who are new to Retro who don't know the story: In 2011, Christian Whitehead (more known as The Taxman around these parts) was given the opportunity to remake Sonic CD with his Retro Engine. Among just remaking the cult classic, Mr. Whitehead decided to make an additional round to the game that would've replaced the at the time mysterious R2 (Dubious Depths). This replacement was known as Desert Dazzle, a desert stage inspired by Sonic 2's cut zone Sand Shower (At the time misidentified as Dust Hill). Whitehead had started making a test layout for the stage around the time SEGA told him that he wasn't allowed to add anything new that was made by him, and had to scrap the Round plus the other addition, the 'True Final Boss' CW had planned, Final Fever, a Death Egg Robot-like mech that would've been encountered by getting all of the Time Stones and would've been defeated by time traveling, using the SCD Track of the same name as the stage's song. Thought keep in mind that Desert Dazzle was dropped first. The leftovers of Desert Dazzle & Final Fever stayed in the game at launch, although they barely functioned, with Desert Dazzle just being a test stage for lack of a better wording with no enemies and Final Fever being just graphics. The two were scraped from the files upon further mobile updates, although the Blip PC and Console releases still have them to this very day to my knowledge since Blip never updated the 2011 version. As far as I know they're in Origins too since the Origins version of CD is based on Blip's PC and Console versions. On the official release side, Desert Dazzle was turned into a mockup that could be found in the Sound Test of the final release. By putting in PCM:32 and DA:8, you'd get Desert Dazzle's mockup (While FF does have a mockup image as well, I can't find info that it was available in the sound test). As the years went by people found a way to access Desert Dazzle by hacking SCD 2011, forcing the stage to load. Early attempts (one of which linked by SR user You-Are-Pwned) have the round flashing due to people hacking it into Palmtree Panic's slot, with Little Planet playing in the background due to not having any other song to load. Later on in Nov. 2012, Mr. Whitehead mentioned that he made demo music tracks for Desert Dazzle (although the wiki oddly implies that he made one, saying track instead of tracks, more on that later). These demos were made before Whitehead and the team managed to both the original JP/EU soundtrack and Soundtrack for North America. Meaning if CD was ever truly expanded he says: Afterward info on Desert Dazzle stopped being uploaded by Whitehead, later in 2017 Desert Dazzle would breathe new life in a way, as some of its graphics were reworked into Mirage Saloon Zone for Sonic Mania. That's all that's known for now, now comes the real meat of the discussion in my opinion. The Unanswered Questions The part that I've been wanting to talk about since about 2019 or so. The stuff about Desert Dazzle that's been left unanswered (and unreleased) for 14 years. 1. Whitehead mentions that he had made demo tracks for DD, not a track like the wiki says, tracks, as in multiple. This implies he made more than one demo song for it. How many did he make? 2. While CW mentions he made demo songs, he never posted them as far as I know. Does he still have them? If so, would he be willing to post them or have someone post them on his behalf? 3. If there are demo tracks for the other time zones (whether it just be 2 or all 4), does that mean that there may be concept art for these time zones? 4. Mr. Whitehead had found all of Dubious Depths's enemies and boss while he was developing CD 2011, was he planning to use them for Desert Dazzle or was an original set of enemies and a boss planned? With that out of the way, I do have some speculation to share, while listening to Sonic Mania's soundtrack, I noticed that MSZ Act 2 (Rogue's Gallery) had an ending that looped at 2:10, almost like CD's PCM loops. Now this is more likely to be Tee's style for Sonic music, but there was a thought that popped up in my brain, did CW give Tee Lopes the Desert Dazzle Demos to turn into the Mirage Saloon music? It's more than likely not true, but it's something I thought was interesting to note and could hopefully lead to something. I think that's all I have to say for the moment, feel free to reply, speculate, and insert your thoughts if I'm on to something or that I'm 14 years too late to talk about all this.
Considering Tee Lopes is known to have used an earlier demo to make music for another project (Hidden Palace -> Lagoon City), I don't think this is entirely too farfetched. I don't think that's the case, but hey! Who knows!
I’ve always been curious if Taxman had concept art for the other time zones or if he only did the present as like a proof of concept to show Sega his level making abilities.
Oh! That's interesting! I didn't know that, thank you for the bit of info! I feel the same way, that's why I made this thread, so it could spark interest about DD '11 again and hopefully get some unanswered questions answered like with the DD '93 thread. Ah, well that definitely kills the Mirage Saloon Music theory, though I wonder if the Hidden Palace demo was made by someone else and Tee finished it or if it was by him and he decided to use it for Lagoon City.
