Sonic 2 - Lost in Time

Although I do agree with the philosophy of the post, I don't think Time Travel in Sonic 2 worked quite like that, nice stuff though! Wood, Emerald Hill, Metropolis seems fairly plausable.

 

1 Wood Emerald Hill Metropolis
2 Aquatic Ruin Chemical Plant Genocide City
3 Desert Casino Night Oil Ocean
4 Winter Mystic Cave Hidden Palace
5 Hill Top Sky Chase Wing Fortress

1. I can't see Wood or Metropolis's features in Emerald Hill (or vice versa). Where are the long travelators, where did the swirly corkscrew things go. Doesn't really work too well.

2. Depends on who/what was "genocide"ed! If the original people of the Aquatic ruin are killed, then Genocide would come in the past, then Aquatic Ruin, then the Robotnik style Chemical Plant.

3. ?

4. OK, but what about this.. If you start playing in the present, you should start with Winter. It's bland, and mostly uneventful. The interesting stuff occurs when you visit the future/past. Hidden Palace would be the past, since it fits in with the mystical earthy style of magic that's in Sonic's past. Then Mystic Cave would be the leftover ruins of Hidden Palace which are uncovered in the future. Although, I am assuming some huge kind of storyline here

5. ? These are just storyline events. Sky Chase leads directly onto Wing Fortress. By the time they stuck these two zones in, I'm pretty sure they'd given up on the Time Travel gubbins.


Winter and Desert though, are meant to be linked, though, so we should try to keep those two together. As are Emerald and Hill Top (although, I still believe Hill Top was a last minute zone, made up of A) what gfx do we have? and B) do we not have a level like Marble?)

 

...Which is why the Zone appears in some of that earliest concept art for enemies? The level that the Snail is pictured in is listed as 'Hill Top'.

Not to mention that one of the earliest shots (from a magazine) that we have apart from the three mockups (Green Hill / Desert / Hidden Palace) is of Hill Top, with the green balls on the see-saws rather than the Gola heads.

Some Zones were planned to have shared art like this - the winter level and Desert Zone being two of them (though presumably after the time travel concept was scrapped, since otherwise Brenda would possibly have been working on Rock Zone aswell), aswell as Green Hill and Hill Top, and Chemical Plant and Death Egg (though whether this last one was planned from the beginning remains to be seen, since Death Egg was seemingly added in later into the development process, wheras Hill Top was present from very early on. They may even have had different plans for Death Egg originally which, like Genocide City, were cut for time constraints).

So, yeah. That's my reasoning as to why Hill Top wasn't a 'last-minute zone'. Almost completely off-topic, but yeah.

 

As far as we know, there was never a "Future" for any zone in Sonic 2... =|

 

I believe the concept involved only two timezones. In this case, present and past. Act 1 would serve as the present and act 2 would serve as the past. Or vice versa. When used with this concept we get better results.

Past: Hill Top
Present: Emerald Hill

Past: Aquatic Ruins
Present: Chemical Plant

Past: Wood
Present: Metropolis

Past: Hidden Palace
Present: Mystic Cave

Past: Rock
Present: Desert

Past: Casino Night
Present: Genocide City

My (old) theory on the subject can be read here.

 

I think Metropolis and Genocide City would also be good Past/Present levels, specially since, according to their name, they're both supposed to be some kind of cities.

 

I thought you said the name of levels didn't mean anything? *cough*DHZ*cough*

 

What?

 

Winter Zone and Desert Zone are linked by nothing more than the graphics used.

 

Hmm.. Good point

I should've noticed that, really!

So, how do you think the time travel would've worked, then? Would it have been story based, or more like Sonic CDs?

 

In fact, the Winter level might have been concepted right after the time travel and Rock Zone were scrapped, to add more variety to the level landscapes.

Anyway... Every single one of the developers we've spoken with barely remember a very early time travel feature, and aren't even sure of it, not even the person that provided the scan that proved it. Also, only that extremely early enemy sketch actually has a past alternate zone (it could even be a Sonic 1 sketch they kept for the sequel), so the Rock and Desert zones could be the only ones that were ever related this way...




It's always fun to speculate, thought.

 

It seems to me, that if Hill Top was developed first (and it was, seeing the screenshots) that Emerald Hill was made after.

So when you say "Hill Top is just a pallet change of Emerald Hill." You should say "Emerald Hill is just a pallet change of Hill Top!"

Just a Guess, anyway :P

 

I'd think the opposite, for the same reason :

Considering that the sonic world (pre-sonic adventure) was mostly animials, unless there was a built up lost civilisation, cities would tend to be future destruction caused by
robotnik, therefore its more likely that both city levels were future remains of an otherwise undeveloped past.

 

Even if Robonik was originally the only human in the Sonic universe, there's already a "non-evil" city in Spring Yard's background, which is set in the present.

 

Sorry, what I meant was, that the cities are created by Robotnik. Unless he had gone into the past and built the city, it would stand to reason that past = natural and present/future = city/mechanised.


Robotnik probably made spring yard. Probably :P

 

Green Hill (past) - Starlight (future)

Marble (past) - Spring Yard (future)

Labyrinth (past) - Scrap Brain (future)

man that's too easy :P *shot*

Ok, now let's get serious.

Robotnik is a human being. Is he? He looks like one but at the same time he doesn't. Anyway, I see Sonic 1 going much like Sonic chasing Robotnik, or being attracted by him to his traps (as we can see at Labyrinth Zone 3, where Sonic doesn't really fight Robotnik). The places where we have to go through are nothing more than eventual places on the way until we reach Scrap Brain and Final Zone, the only places really created by the Dr., at the beginnings of his evil plot.

So, IMO, Robotnik began to build city-like stages starting on Sonic 2.

Secondly, from S1 to S3K, and ignoring time travel on Sonic 2, we see Robotnik striking on Sonic's world, and, noticing that he's not succeeding on this particular evironment, he starts to attack the human world, a different place where Sonic may fail. Considering Robotnik as a human being, we have in a nutshell:
- Sonic's world: Robotnik fails
- Robotnik's world: Sonic fails?