Sonic 2 Original Music Allocations

One somewhat interesting fact that doesn't seem to get much attention is that in the August 21st 1992 prototype, the unused Track $10 was duplicated as sound test $9E, the same slot that would later be used for the staff roll theme.
This could have simply been a placeholder choice made on the fly, but it might also suggest that someone on the development team was aware that this track was originally intended for cutscene.

 

Maybe it was planned as the Ending theme instead of Sweet Dream ?

 

Actually, there is not really much of sense in WZ-MPZ connection. I don't remember exact list of wood zone objects.. isn't there is just ring and empty monitor in both Simon Wai and final game? Even if no, there is lot of odd things in source code, like same situation happens in final Hidden Place, it placed near to Oil Ocean and uses same objects list in debug mode, but it doesn't mean that Hidden Palace is past/bad future/alternative universe version of Oil Ocean zone (at least if I don't forget some stuff, sorry then )

Also yeah. Aquatic Ruin absolutely doesn't sound like Desert for me. 100% rainy tropical vibe, IMO.

 

That’s because there is none. Wood Zone’s music is a Sonic 1 leftover.

Specifically, Slot $02 in Sonic 1 used Music ID $83 (Marble Zone), and the same is true in Nick Arcade Prototype. When the Simon Wai Prototype was made and Wood Zone was implemented, they simply never updated the music ID being called.

When the August alpha rolled around, they shifted the music to their new slots, but didn’t pay too much attention to what they were shifting, hence why the August alpha build and onward still has Metropolis music play there.

 

I'd be willing to believe this if Sweet Dream wasn't also in that build, and also if Masa didn't have demos for both. If you assume Track 10 was meant to be the ending theme, that raises the question of what the hell Sweet Dream was meant for and that requires way too many assumptions.

Track 10's demo just feels perfect for a Super Sonic cutscene. I know that's not real evidence, but god, I can just picture it. The ending kicks in as Sonic transforms, we fade to white, and you see the text "YOU CAN NOW PLAY AS SUPER SONIC".

 

Actually, Hidden Palace was meant to be the past version of Oil Ocean. The latter zone shares the same spot on the maps as Olympus, which was an early version of HPZ according to Yasuhara. Additionally, Tom Payne's enemy design documents state that OOZ and HPZ were meant to share enemies (much like Sand Shower and the winter level were), meaning that the shared debug mode object list is almost certainly not a coincidence.

And yeah, sorry for my rude comments earlier. I'm just really tired of hearing the same disproven arguments over and over again.

 

By the time of the August prototype, the final ending theme (Sweet Dream) is already placed at $95 (correction: the actual staff roll theme is $9E, not $95 as I originally mentioned). So even if they had considered using $10 for the ending, it was probably intended to be used alongside Sweet Dream in some way.

Speaking of the August prototype, it appears that the developers had not yet finalized the zone order at that point. The sequence goes: EHZ, CPZ, HTZ, MCZ, MTZ, and ARZ.
Considering how MTZ was treated in the early plot drafts, and the fact that ARZ was still referred to as Neo Green Hill at the time, it's possible that this zone order was a lingering remnant of the early time travel concept.

 

Honestly, just getting a simple, concrete explanation for Aquatic Ruin's initial purpose would answer like 75% of the questions we still have regarding this game.

 

This is interesting and a cogent theory as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to try and compile some tables of the sound cues across the S2 prototypes and S1, we should be able to see the patterns.

 

Is it possible the Sound Test #10 was intended for a Bad Ending Sequence at one point? It seems more suited for an ending & the bittersweet tone of it (Moreso in the actual track but not the Demo Version) doesn't exactly sound like a happy & uplifting track.

 

There's no doubt that Aquatic Ruin/Neo Green Hill remains a major mystery from the later stages of development around the Simon Wai prototype.
Personally, other questions that still intrigue me include whether the order of the songs in the sound test has any significance, the three major concept changes that Dust Hill/Madness Mountain/Mystic Cave apparently went through (traces of which still seem to linger in the maps) and the very ambiguous status of Metropolis Act 3, which continued to be excluded from normal play up until Beta 6 (Naka's comments on this zone remain particularly interesting, in fact).

 

In my tireless search to try and find Tomoyuki Shimada, I found an article from 2015 talking about the history of Japanese video games, and if it's to be believed, then unfortunately, it seems by that point, Shimada had already passed away.

There goes one of our leads...

 

That's an interesting observation on Metropolis 3!

 

My (potentially wrong) conjecture on the matter is that Neo Green Hill/Aquatic Ruin was meant to be the second to last level in the further ruined present (maybe future?) after a tsunami hit South Island, hence why it's partially sunken.
It has the last fully defined Zone ID, $10 equivalent to 16 in decimal but more logically 17 when counting from $00, though there are some leftover references to index $11 in some functions. This would align with the initial 18 zones concepts and the maps, which also mention a final battle in space, hinting at the Death Egg. This actually makes me wonder how would Sonic (& Tails?) would reach the Death Egg in this scenario, since Sky Chase and Wing Fortress fill that role in the final game.
The final level order seems to be partially based on how complete zones were, or the order in which they were worked on.

I actually think it's possible not all the demos were released. I think $10 was included because it was in the actual released game, even if unused. Maybe there were more songs composed but they never go converted for the game, and by the time they would the scope of development changed.
This might open up the idea that $10 was among the last songs to be converted, which in turn brings back the discussion about it's use. Personally, I think it was composed for a cutscene but when it was brought over to the game was for Hidden Palace's bgm, as the allocation appears as the same time as a few other things related to HPZ even though it was cut by then.
I think we need to start differentiating between original intention and how things came to be afterwards.

 

As for "final battle in space", I believe it's merely a provisional label that Yasuhara added for presentation purposes (just like the Medieval time period).
In the actual timeline documents, the rough draft refers to it as "zero gravity zone (space)", and in the finalized version, it's listed as Neo Death Egg as the final level.

Regarding the music, if there were any tracks that were composed but ultimately not implemented, I think it's possible that Ocean Wind might have had its own theme. This level had dedicated concept art and was placed second in the intended level order, yet it appears that no actual development progress was made on it. Because of that, it seems like a strong candidate for a "composed but unused" case.
(Also, due to the lack of an intro, I consider it unlikely that 2P Results track was originally intended as a level theme.)

 

Typically when albums get re-released in a "deluxe" or "anniversary" package it will contain outtakes or unfinished demos, or even entire songs considered for the first release and simply dropped.

I wonder if, assuming Masa really did compose more tracks, they were knowingly left off of the 2011 release, and were being saved for another day when he could sell it again. If that's the case, maybe we'll hear them in 2031 or maybe even 2026.

 

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the lack of music probably is why multiple levels were cut.

Like, it sounds absurd initially, but once you start thinking about how Nakamura was both really expensive and very famous with an extremely distinctive sound, it'd totally make sense.

Like, if getting a music track for a single level is just as expensive as its graphics, level design, mechanics and enemies combined, why make more levels than necessary?

 

Who ever said music couldn’t be reused? That was the norm back then and this franchise was monumental for the variety of music, but there was no pattern, there were no rules. It was possible that Sonic 2 could have reused music under the original concepts of the game, but turns out, what we had was enough.

 

I have a hard time believing that. Every zone in Sonic 1 had an unique track, while none of the Sonic 2 prototypes makes a single track play in multiple zones intentionally.

Besides, how would track sharing even be implemented? Would different eras of the same location share the same track? Because in that case, Casino Night's track would've played in Wood and Oil Ocean's track would've played in Ocean Wind, and it doesn't take a genius to realize how jarring and ill-fitting that would be.

 

Not to mention that they made separate arrangements for each act in the following game, so it really is hard to believe they were going to use the same tracks for multiple zones.