Sonic 2 Original Music Allocations

If we actually were going to believe the reused music idea, the only one that could realistically work is GHZ if the zone was going to be the same as S1. But due to the concept art and even final art, it isn't. There'd be no point especially with the music later on, so the idea doesn't work already.
And with my addition to DigitalDuck's level chart, it shows that there'd realistically be two zones without proper songs as mentioned earlier. The idea of Masato having unreleased demos that'd be linked to the zones does sound more believable than the fan theory of EHZ 2P being for Wood Zone.
Excuse the bad grammar in the notes but the point is clear

 

Considering that Masa was an external musician and that S2 initially had a large-scale plan for 16 unique zones (excluding revisits), I think there's at least a slight possibility that track reuse was being planned.
That said, in terms of raw numbers, only two zone themes appear to be missing among the implemented levels. This might be related to the three duplicated track IDs seen in the Simon Wai prototype's sound test ($8B, $91, and $97). Of these, the position corresponding internally to $8B was later used for the ending theme (Sweet Dream), so only two duplicated entries remain unexplained.

 

I feel if song length is to be acknowledged, it should be thought of in a straight forward manner.
Level music can span between 30 seconds to a whole minute if the whole song (intro and all) is considered, Chemical Plant being the stand out here.
Long form jingles like the super theme and invincibility usually last up to 10 seconds or more give or take.

Using this, I find that it makes the most sense that Hidden Palace (Track 10 yadda yadda) should be atleast understood as either a cutscene or level theme, again, Masa's Demo has a conformed loop ending, while the in-game version doesn't have this closure. This can be understood however you'd like, and personally I don't wanna even try in fear of being ripped to shreads.

Also I live with the sentiment that regardless of whatever, Options was obviously used for either a map selection screen or a file select theme, maybe even both!

Another thing of note I might as well leave here.

This allocation theory most commonly uses Song IDs and acquaints them to the concept art of Time Period maps we have as evidence of the Time Traveling theory.

To use this as definitive leeway to figuring out the correct song attachments is absolutely bollocks.
The only reason why the Song IDs don't line up perfectly is because they're being compared in association with maps that are most possibly outdated yet are still being spread around as Classic Sonic gospel.

It's should be obvious that there has definitely been some shifting around in the level order ever since these concept peices have been made, and these peices should not be used as definitive judgements since it's not too far fetched to think that there is probably more concept art of these maps since then, a little while before the Time Traveling concept was ultimately scrapped altogether.

Again, all we can do is speculate until more concept art gets released, so please for the love of Yuji Naka, do not treat raw assumptions like they're ultimate fact.
Thank you.

 

I'm almost 100% certain that Track 10 was the original ending theme.

Like, we know that the YM2612 rendition of Sweet Sweet Sweet was created towards the end of development, and there's no way in hell that any other part of the game would've had a sequence where control is stripped away from the player for an entire minute.

 

You're assuming that "cutscene" means a literal scene that cuts away from gameplay. Hidden Palace in 3&K is basically a cutscene, even though it's technically playable.

If Track 10 was a cutscene, the way I assume it would've worked is it would've looped in a playable segment, then cut to the "ending" portion when an actual event played out.

 

This is how I would've suspected it would work.

I'm still a bit stumpted to why the closure half wasn't in the final, but i'm guessing they either forgot to compose that part in or they had other incentives for the track later on? I'm not sure.

 

The options theme is technically a shortened looped version of Sweet Sweet Sweet, and it's been around for the level select in prototypes as a slight variation, and it predates 10. So I'm not quite convinced of that.

 

As Dubs described, i'm most inclined to believe Track 10 would be used in a part of the game similar to Hidden Palace of S3K and not something like the Ending cinematic of all the games.

When listening to the track, the best I can describe it as is "Walking slowly, taking in your surroundings, basking in the sheer beauty." Which I feel best suits a gameplay segment.

 

That's what I was initially thinking, but the outro is around 18 seconds long and blends seamlessly into the the past 42 seconds. The only way to implement it into a level where the player is in control would be to crudely cut to the outro when the player passes a certain trigger, regardless of which part of the song was playing when the player touched it. And that would just sound clunky and inorganic as hell.

Oh damn, I completely forgot about that. That changes things a lot.

 

This.

Don't forget that there was a conversion process in going from Nakamura's tapes to the actual ingame versions -- I'd presume that they were submitted for conversion in a batch (y'know, as a tape or tapes plural) and then, Nakamura gets paid, job done. Hence, Sweet Sweet Sweet's instrumental version is there for the sound programmer to either convert or make a shorter arrangement of for the options screen music.

 

And that may be precisely why the outro wasn't programmed into the game the way it sounds in the demo. It's entirely possible that whenever there was an event, it would simply fade out or keep playing until the next level/boss actually shows up.

 

If Unused Track 10 was for Hidden Palace, i'm only guessing the loop got cut because of that reason, and since Hidden Palace was implemented as a cinematic zone, i'm guessing the failure of implementing a guided event like that ended up being one of the contributing factors to why the zone as a whole was ultimately cut.

I'm also guessing another reason to the zone being hacked was that it was considered too jarring during the development phase of lining up the zones traditionally, meaning the developers couldn't find anywhere to really place it.

 

I wanted to see if this worked, so I grabbed a vid of the ending and overlaid the Masa demo version of the Unused Song. It ends right when the flickies leave the screen, which doesn't really work too well for what they programmed.

accidentally made a fucky wucky with the audio editing aaaaaa

 

I'm not a big fan of the "it was used for the ending" theory, but to support it anyway I recall that Masa purposely recorded the demos slowly so that they could be interpreted better while translating them to the game. So it'd likely go a bit faster. If the cut scene pictures were never a thing, or they faded faster, it could totally fit. It honestly feels like it was made for a special stage (which then makes me wonder what the finals special stage would have been for) or an ending. In the final days, they moved a few around so that the two player levels could have unique music, as to not waste any songs.

 

Yamaguchi has indeed said that the lack of a boss fight and a proper ending was why the zone was ultimately cut, so you might be onto something.

 

I've heard this before, but to my knowledge, he has never actually said this. It was just an assumption based on the demos being so slow compared to Sonic 1. Feel free to prove me wrong, but if they were truly meant to be faster, then why is most of the music slower in general in the Wai build?

 

I THINK I remember seeing that the slower tempo was intentional as the demo recordings were like that to make sure the programmers get an accurate transcription of the song. Masato likely composed the songs at the correct tempo before slowing it down to send them in to the sound programmers.

 

Even though Simon Wai's Metropolis is a bit slower than in retail, it's nowhere near as slow as the demo is.

 

My thoughts are as follows (I guess they're someone else's, but this seems plausible at least):

 

In addition to these maps, there are two timeline documents currently available to us, and the order listed in them is actually closer to the internal zone IDs used in the Simon Wai prototype. These documents also mention the name Hidden Palace.
https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sonic_2_Time_Travel_Document_3.jpg
https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sonic_2_Time_Travel_Document.jpg

My guess is that the music was commissioned after development had begun and concept art for each zone had been drawn. These concept art includes two zones not present in the timeline documents (Emerald Isle and Madness Mountain), suggesting that the plan had been partially revised by that point.

Additionally, the order of the tracks in the sound test, as well as the zone order in the August prototype I mentioned earlier, may also reflect remnants of some mid-development planning.