I did a huge rant on Sonic Mania, about how a lot of the gameplay was lifted from better Sonic games and How the Phantom Ruby makes no sense. ua-cam.com/users/liveVia1LYuvCSw@@micabryant4513
I was one of the artists on Sonic 2 (Oil Ocean and Hidden Palace Zone). I wish I hadn't lost all my journal entries from that time at SEGA-STI. (they were on a 3.5" floppy that is probabaly in a landfill somewhere in Redwood City CA) I can remember being in the meeting when Yashuara pulled out his maps and drawings to tell us his plan. I remember it sounding REALLY cool, but also knowing we would never be able to do something like that in the time we had to make the game. Needless to say, I was VERY upset/disappointed when HPZ was cut from the game. The art was 100% complete, but they ran out of time to finish programming the zones. There were only two zones and no boss fight at the end. The art for HPZ is still some of my favorite art for any game I worked on. Yasuhara was really a great guy to work with. I left SEGA in 1995 and then left the industry in 2005 (after 10 years with Insominac Games). I've always said that there are only a couple of people that could get me to go back into making games, one is Mark Cerney, and the other is Yasuhara.
What's your name? We've nearly completed an 80 minute documentary on Sonic 2 but its not too late to add to it. Anything you want added to the documentary?
Thank you for creating hidden palace and oil ocean ( 2 of my favorite zones ) though I'm wondering, is the level layout in hidden palace in the mobile and origins version of the game accurate to your original layout
Indeed,it explains that explains why the level progression in Sonic 2 always felt (at least imo) like random levels that were put together instead of something that made more sense like in CD and 3&K.
@@Cr102y yeah even with the levels they put in they probably could have strung them together a bit better. I think the best order thematically would have been: Emerald Hill Zone Aquatic Ruin Zone Hill Top Zone Mystic Cave Zone Oil Ocean Zone Casino Night Zone Chemical Plant Zone Metropolis Zone Wing Fortress Zone Death Egg Zone
@@Cr102y id say that just the first four zones feel out of order, if aquatic ruins and chemical plant were swapped then it could almost work really well.
weird? It is a video game trope very common since the NES days. Same as having fire/lava, wind, water/ice, earth/cave, light/dark zones & enemies. It is a cheap & easy way to create enemy variety and reuse environment design. It is not innovative, it is lazy.
The manga dealt with time travel. Nicky is Sonic’s kid self and what looks like a transformation is in fact his future self temporarily replacing him to save the day.
9:36 That concept art reminds me of Emerald Coast from Sonic Adventure. The second one even has docks similar to that zone. 11:50 One thing you forgot to mention was that Sonic Adventure also had some brief time travel elements with Tikal sending the characters to the past (though none of the levels took place there).
This is so fascinating! So much got revealed and I didn’t even know this presentation happened! It’s great to see so much new information and so many rumours being concerned. It’s a real shame Ocean Wind and Tropical Sun got cut, I honestly think those stages would’ve been amazing, the concept art looks so beautiful.
The Time Traveling idea seem to be removed early in the developement, while Hidden Palace Zone was removed very late. But I can see a similar idea where getting All Chaos Emeralds give you access to Hidden Palace Zone, which will also be the center point to the Time Travel Mechanic, with all the prehistoric Badniks in Hidden Palace Zone acting as the portal.
This is the first time I'm hearing about that presentation, I had no clue that more info about the lost zones and missing time travel plot had been revealed, it's so cool to finally have enough info to put together the puzzle pieces of what was the original plan. I really hope they revisit/recycle some of these concepts in a future game someday, they could make for a really neat example of environmental storytelling in the same vein of what S3&K did with the Death Egg and Angel Island with the zones changing to reflect the events taking place in the plot. Really nice video, and very informative!
It's funny how much of that early Sonic cluster between 2-CD and the first two DiC shows all including time travel- CD's plot, the Quest for Chaos Emeralds plot in AOSTH, Blast to the Past's two-parter (and maybe how SatAM's other leitmotif sounds like Back to the Future?). It makes you wonder if AOSTH's plotline knew of the scrapped Sonic 2 plot. It even has a Medieval "timezone" and egyptian-adjacent times. This also would explain Emerald Hill and Hill Top's "reused tiles".
The reused tiles in those zones were apparent to me when I was like 5, but I never made the connection of them being analogs to each other. I probably had never been exposed to a story featuring time travel at all yet, so why would I? I figured that Hill Top was near the top of a volcano in Emerald Hill, explaining the lava. It erupted at some point while you played zones 2-4. I never gave the dinosaurs a second (or first) thought.
Rock World Zone isn't believed to be Mystic Cave Zone, afaik. Rock World Zone would have more likely resembled the rock terrain in the background of Hill Top Zone, based on their positioning on the time travel maps. As far as we can speculate, Mystic Cave Zone derives from the concept of Madness Mountain Zone, which would have used haunted house (as mentioned in a developer interview) and Circus elements, which we see represented in the music used in Mystic Cave, which uses 'spooky' theramone music and references the scale used in Entrance of the Gladiator, a.k.a., 'the circus music'.
If I remember correctly, the existence of a rock level of some kind was mentioned a long time ago by one of the devs. Like, I wanna say we knew of it's existence as early as 2010. I think it was mentioned alongside a winter level which this video didn't go over and I can't help but wonder how it would have worked with the time travel story.
I always felt those circus aspects of the Mystic Cave theme - whilst cool (sweet & catchy) - felt a bit out of place. I assumed they were just going for "spooky" but somehow wound up with a bit of circus in there accidentally; however, the clearly intentional reference to Entrance of the Gladiators (used in Carnival Night also) always prevented me from believing that. Knowing it was originally to house a haunted house and have circus elements makes a lot of sense.
Rock World was most likely intended to be the ice level that was a palette swap of Sand Shower. It's placed in the same position in the Past map as Sand Shower in the Present map. Simon Wai prototype also plays what would become Sky Chase music in the zone slot that coincides with Rock World on the map and it sounds very much ice themed, especially its demo.
@@NicknineTheEagle Just in case you haven't seen it, the look for the ice level was finally revealed. It's on the Video Game History Foundation's channel.
I love using time travel as a method of contextualizing change and the ability to see large changes happen very quickly, or compare multiple iterations of the same location and see why and how these locations are the way they are.
A cool anniversary game would be them revisting those original plans for Sonic 2, having it be that Eggman found a time portal or something letting him go back to Sonic 2 and, with all he knows now, take another shot at that
Or at least the name since the level itself was probably going to look like the Emerald Hill that we got, slightly better than just Green Hill without that many changes just like they do nowadays.
I remember having heard that Sonic 2 started development after CD even though it got released a year earlier because Sonic 1 was so popular. The story goes that the dev team started working on a sequel immediately after finishing the first game because they had ideas they didn't get to use in time for release. Then, when the first gane was super successful, corporate said "Make a sequel now!" with dollar signs in their eyes. This was the reason behind the development split and why Sega of America started on Sonic 2. Essentially, Sonic CD and Sonic 2 started as the same game, but split into 2 in order to get something out quick to capitalize on the momentum of the first game. Comparing level designs between the three games really brings credibility to this explanation. Zones like Marble Zone and Labyrinth Zone featured much more vertical scrolling and required patience, which isn't found much in Sonic 2 comparatively. Emerald Hill zone is much more horizontal than Green Hill. On the other hand, Palmtree Panic is much more reminiscent of Green Hill. While you could completely ignore the time travel mechanic in Sonic CD and just race to the end of every level, but not only would you get the bad ending, but you miss a ton of content that way. You would never even see Metal Sonic until Stardust Speedway. Compare the special stages as well. Sonic CD lets you explore a 3D area, while Sonic 2 has you on a track and doesn't even give you the option of standing still. All of this is to say that both Sonic 2 and Sonic CD were the "original Sonic 2", and that the time travel concept was in the bones before they split. The end result was a Sonic 2 catering to what fans loved most about Sonic 1, and Sonic CD being a passion project of the devs. Or I could be making it all up :)
I think the time travel concept was just a coincidence since both teams were working in two different countries and didn’t share concepts or anything. But in a way the thing about both Sonic 2 and CD being “the Sonic 2” is true,both were made to be direct sequels of Sonic 1.
i await the day someone either finds a way to release a variant of Sonic 2 that followed through the the time travel idea in mind. or a fan game that uses the unused info to make a "Sonic 2: Time Attack" or something like that
Actually, Hidden Palace Zone was a level you would have unlocked after getting the chaos emeralds. Beating it granted you the ability of transforming into Super Sonic.
Maybe Hidden Palace would have acted in a similar way to Sonic & Knuckles, where you're warped there to do the special stages, but then visit it fully later in the story.
@jeremyabbott4537 No, you would've had to do the special stages normally and then you'd be sent to Hidden Palace Zone after you collected all seven chaos emeralds.
Not mentioned in this video is the existence of a futuristic looking sign post/check point that I wanna say was first found in the most famous sonic 2 prototype's debug mode. It and wood zone's use of metropolis zone music and gimmicks was the first clue to the potential time travel concept for sonic 2.
I don't think Hidden Palace was a time zone. A dev for Sonic 2, I believe Yuji Naka, said it was where you get transported after collecting all the Chaos Emeralds.
So it's basically a similar concept to that they used to the Hidden Palace in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which makes sense. The space combat thing might have been Doomsday Zone also. They probably just couldn't fit all of those ideas in a single game and ended up reusing them in S3&K.
Dude. I really want someone to make a fan game of this time travel for sonic 2. And if someone doesn’t do it, I might as well try to do it myself. I’ll learn somehow, someday.
Y'know on the note of Time Travel in Sonic media, Sonic The Comic (Fleetway) actually had a major plot point in Issue 9 in Sonic being sent 6 months into the future by Robotnik, leaving the world to be conquered. This was before the Sonic CD adaptation so it's safe to say it was inspired by whatever was going on with Sonic 2, but Oil Ocean Zone already being established beforehand means they probably didn't actually have any references from the Sonic 2 devs, just some notes.
What I really like about this is that the time travel is genuinely woven into the game, through the narrative, level order etc. I think Sonic CD's art does an amazing job of selling the time-travel aspect (and the music, to a lesser degree) but that's it. Just having 3 different flavours of the same level you can switch between rather freely doesn't sell it for me personally. I'd much rather have distinct levels that exist in different time periods, and if you do revisit a level during a different time period, it's somewhere different in the zone order. Revisiting a level you've already completed, except this time it's in the *past* and is harder, would be a trip. CD - due to the way it works - can't capitalize on anything like this or weave the time-travel into the narrative; it essentially winds up just being 3 different reskins of each stage. Pretty reskins no doubt, but still reskins with no greater connection really to the time-travel plot.
I wholly agree with you, Sonic CD in general is a weird example of its parts being better than the final result, the way it's structured there's no reason to ever visit some sections of the game unless you actively want to see them, and the way they implemented the exploration aspect of the game it doesn't mix well with the rest of the gameplay. It would have been nice if the time travel was better integrated into the narrative and natural flow of play. I think that Sonic Mania did a better job of selling the idea behind playing through different time periods of the same zone in how it implements Stardust Speedway than what CD did, and Mania was just reusing and remixing the zone. The idea of having only 3 or 4 base zones and then redefining them through time travel into a much longer adventure with a dozen or so zones in total is really cool, I hope it gets revisited at some point. I specially like the concept of sinking an entire chunk of the landmass to justify one of the zones missing from a time period, it could be such an effective way of doing environmental storytelling while also being a clever way of reducing the workload for designers.
Yeah, but have you actually 100%ed it more than once? I mean like 10 or even more times and quickly, them you will see the true beuty of this game, and how its actually gameplay over presentation to a degree
@@jorgitoislamico4224 I think you greatly underestimate the depth of narrative kids can understand and appreciate; it's not that complicated, though as someone who struggles to read ~150 words I can see why you would think that ;)
Imagine CD came out and it had its really fun time travel mechanics with 3 slightly different time periods and a good future and then immediately after Sonic 2, the numerical sequel to the original, just drops outta nowhere with 5 time periods that had unique enemy times and level gimmicks and even different names for the levels and where your actions have more impact than just “get rid of the Metal Sonic projector and teleporter in past and you get the good ending for the zone”
I thought cybershell said a developer said that hidden palace was supposed to be a zone that after getting the chaos emeralds you would be warped to and would have to beat to become supersonic
Why not both? In this video we're talking about VERY EARLY Sonic 2 development. Likely by the time Hidden Palace Zone was being worked on the Time Travel mechanic had been dropped.
1:59 If you look at the map, you can see two of the islands are duplicated. Does that mean Sonic Forces making Green Hill all sandy was a reference to Dust Hill Zone?
You forgot to mention the warp boxes that were found in the multiplayer mode of the game. In the final release of the game, the warp box would cause both players to switch places and it made a very futuristic sound.
In my opinion, Olympus was the intact version of Aquatic Ruin, then Ocean Wind was the original name of Aquatic Ruin back then, because there's a big forest and mountains in the background of this level that fits perfectly with the artwork of "Now 1"
The UK Sonic the Comic did toy with time travel in their stories IIRC, and this may have been before they started their adaptation of Sonic CD and were doing Sonic 2 inspired stories. It's been a very long time, but I think they also worked in aspects of the darker Sonic cartoon
Death Egg always seemed like it was cut down. They had a song made up for what was going to be a few seconds of running before back to back boss battles.
cool video but I really didn’t like how the same 10-second loop was playing in the background for most of it. that got very old. I’m glad the music eventually changed to something else.
Honestly, Genocide City Zone is a damn good name for a level and I'm glad the city appeared at last in Sonic Forces, albeit with the name changed to match Metropolis and an aesthetic change from purple to white, similar to what the reboot of The Crystal Maze did for Future Zone. They should have kept it in both Sonic 2 & Forces especially as the namesake was Eggman's plan, even moreso in Forces when he uses the "solid" sun illusion though since it also includes anyone human or otherwise who doesn't like or listen to him, it's technically Democide. Cyber City Zone works better as a Good Future version of the same zone which means Forces if it was made better could use that for GCZ Hubs post game once the world is being rebuilt. Sonic 2 is harder as that game had no good future versions planned unlike CD.
Oh yeah I have read about this before and I always thought it was so cool and we would have got so many levels that were unfortunately scrapped including a Christmas level which definitely would have been my favourite Classic Sonic level of all time.
One timeline is Yuji Naka not being rehired by STI and someone else (Yasuhara) went on to become head of Sonic Team. The other timeline is canon: Yuji Naka returning to Sega's Sonic Team (through STI) after resigning for the first time then becoming a convicted criminal after resigning for the second time.
The idea of the time travel being built into the narrative like this, where you go to different time periods over the course of the gameinstead of how CD did it as a direct seems really interesting as a sort of alternative to how CD turned out. I think CD is really interesting but personally I think I’d enjoy the Sonic 2 beta method more at least in terms of a 2d platformer like Sonic, ideas like it are more appealing to me when they’re applied in different game genres.
I just noticed that in the background of Hill Top Zone in-game, it shows Blue Lake Zone, and the background matches with how Blue Lake Zone is depicted on the fifth time period.
The history of Sonic 2's development is interesting. I new about some un-released zone like hidden palace , Wood Zone and Genocide city , but I had no idea about the Time travel mechanic.
I think it's not too late for this sonic project to get revisited and produced to honor the original time travel plan. ...and... there would be a HUGE market for it!
Now that the time travel thing has confirmed, the fact that some zones like casino zone and chemical plant feel like eggman things but different because of time travel shenanigans make sense
Would have been interesting to see what would have been if the concept would have worked as expected. We would end up with a Sonic 2 that is even closer to CD than it is already except that the zone mechanic is story driven here rather than gameplay driven.
I actually doubt Hidden Palace was ever finished, because in the last build it's present in, it's more or less unchanged from the previous ones: Act 1 is the only Act that has enemies and objects and can't be completed, Act 2 is empty of enemies and objects, starts you inside a wall and likewise can't be completed, on top of the layout being an exact copy of Act 1... (although it's speculated that HPZ was going to only be one Act, so perhaps this second Act was present as a placeholder at the time and would not have been encountered in normal gameplay)
Great video! I can see the effort put into this Unfortunately, there was a bit of a missed opportunity here. Another great video called "The mystery behind Sonic 2's Soundtrack" (ua-cam.com/video/74wRhQXhIZ8/v-deo.html) by Collision Chaos Radio attempts to match the order of Sonic 2 Beta zones with the order of the zones on the time travel concept maps. This reveals what music would have played on all those scrapped zones and even what kinds of zones they would be. One notable find from that video starts with a scrapped badnik "Banper" that was listed to appear on both Rock World Zone and a desert zone. Sonic 2 artist, Brenda Ross, said she was in charge of a desert zone that would a palette swap into a winter zone later in the game, similar to Emerald Hill/Green Hill to Hill Top. That desert zone's cacti would become Christmas trees. Additionaly, there was concept art for Ice Cap Zone (along with other Sonic 3 zones) found in a Sonic 3 documentary. Concept art for Sonic 2's scrapped Wood Zone has already been proven to be reused for Sonic 3's Mushroom Hill Zone. The same goes for Metropolis Zone and Flying Battery's concept art. Perhaps Ice Cap's concept art is reused from Sonic 2's Brenda Ross winter zone? This concept art also featured the Christmas trees Brenda Ross mentioned! On top of that, a Sonic 2 badnik placement document had a name for a zone called "Desert World" which featured exploding cactus. Now, looking at the map for the present we see a zone called Sand Shower Zone. The placement of Sand Shower Zone in the present overlaps with the location of Rock World Zone in the past. All of this evidence adds up to say that Desert World is Sand Shower Zone, Rock World Zone is Sand Shower Zone from the past, the desert and winter zones Brenda Ross worked on are Sand Shower Zone and its pallette swap Rock World Zone, and lastly, that Rock World Zone later became Ice Cap in Sonic 3. You know what the real kicker is? That video reveals that when you enter the 9th zone in Sonic 2 beta, the Sky Chase music plays. That music has a "Christmas bells" motif playing throughout which is commonly used in christmas music. Do you know what the 9th zone was on the time travel maps? Rock World Zone! The mystery of Sonic 2's development seems to be just as convoluted as an actual time travel plot lol
It’s nice to see someone mentioning that video. The history of Sonic 2 and its scrapped zones + themes definitely is interesting,arguably the most interesting part about it lol,especially since people still come up with new theories that honestly make sense,like the Christmas theme theory from the video.
@cristianrojas9684 Yeah, the fact that Olympus' name doesn't end in "zone" and that it's written in a bubble like the warp point and not a box like the other zones. These are giveaways that it serves a different purpose.
I have a theory about Hidden Palace zone: This zone would've used for time travel, probably at the end of every act of this zone, would've been an object that teleports you in a different time period.
I heard a theory a while ago that Hill Top/Emerald Hill/Dust Hill were the story of a hill being formed by volcanic eruption (past), a period of dormancy (present), and then another eruption (future) that turns the hill to ash (or in their phrasing, dust). I wonder if there are still any Dust Hill design documents out there that might shed light on that.
Time travel isn't an important feature to me, but an interesting one. You can't cover the development of Sonic 2 without also considering Sonic CD. they diverged completely, yet started from the same place. It is obvious that a lot of this content cut from 2 ended up in CD in a very meaningful way. Sadly SegaCD games didn't reach near as many people because SonicCD wasn't enough to carry the accessory into success. It was one of the best SegaCD titles, while most were chasing FMV-based games that were terrible. They were pushing the cutting edge too far instead of enjoying the opportunity to just make Genesis games without memory limits.
Time Travel (and legacy/interconnected events) is basically a secondary or tertiary element of the Sonic series. It would be weird if they stopped using it
And look at them now. Sonic Mania got a Steam trailer in Polish. And starting with Forces, all mainline Sonic games have the Polish language available in the options (only for the UI and subtitles for now, sadly, no actual voices yet).
It would make sense why Sega decided to cut certain levels - Wood Hill Zone, Ocean Wind Zone, Genocide City Zone, Death Egg Zone (which was only cut down to the final boss), Hidden Palace Zone and Rock World Zone.e, then i
They probably scrapped the time traveling mechanic because Sonic CD was being developed by another Sega team at the same time which also was doing time travel as it's gimmick.
To be clear the colorizations are fan made for the video. But all the other islands have a hole for water so I'm pretty certain that was the intent. Plus, Aquatic Ruins contains Greek Architecture and water, so that fits Olympus concept.
If only they had revisited this idea, wonder how super sonic would interact with time. Surely super sonic would be in a major sonic game with such a mechanic
When I was a kid I realized a lot of things about Sonic 2. Like how Super Sonic was inspired by Super Saiyan goku. Also how the Death Egg was basically thr Death Star from star wars.
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Sonic Triple Trouble Facts: ua-cam.com/video/HXpSvh79JmY/v-deo.html
Sonic Mania and the Phantom Ruby would like a word.....😅
Cleanest implementation of time travel in sonic. Cleanest Sonic game too! 😂
I did a huge rant on Sonic Mania, about how a lot of the gameplay was lifted from better Sonic games and How the Phantom Ruby makes no sense. ua-cam.com/users/liveVia1LYuvCSw@@micabryant4513
I was one of the artists on Sonic 2 (Oil Ocean and Hidden Palace Zone). I wish I hadn't lost all my journal entries from that time at SEGA-STI. (they were on a 3.5" floppy that is probabaly in a landfill somewhere in Redwood City CA)
I can remember being in the meeting when Yashuara pulled out his maps and drawings to tell us his plan. I remember it sounding REALLY cool, but also knowing we would never be able to do something like that in the time we had to make the game.
Needless to say, I was VERY upset/disappointed when HPZ was cut from the game. The art was 100% complete, but they ran out of time to finish programming the zones. There were only two zones and no boss fight at the end. The art for HPZ is still some of my favorite art for any game I worked on.
Yasuhara was really a great guy to work with. I left SEGA in 1995 and then left the industry in 2005 (after 10 years with Insominac Games). I've always said that there are only a couple of people that could get me to go back into making games, one is Mark Cerney, and the other is Yasuhara.
What's your name? We've nearly completed an 80 minute documentary on Sonic 2 but its not too late to add to it. Anything you want added to the documentary?
@@GameFactsSpecial their bio says Craig Stitt
HPZ IS THE BEST ❤❤❤
Hidden Palace Zone was readded in ports of the game, so your work didn't entirely go to waste!
Thank you for creating hidden palace and oil ocean ( 2 of my favorite zones ) though I'm wondering, is the level layout in hidden palace in the mobile and origins version of the game accurate to your original layout
Damn, that...Actually adds a lot of context to Sonic 2's zones.
Indeed,it explains that explains why the level progression in Sonic 2 always felt (at least imo) like random levels that were put together instead of something that made more sense like in CD and 3&K.
@@Cr102y yeah even with the levels they put in they probably could have strung them together a bit better.
I think the best order thematically would have been:
Emerald Hill Zone
Aquatic Ruin Zone
Hill Top Zone
Mystic Cave Zone
Oil Ocean Zone
Casino Night Zone
Chemical Plant Zone
Metropolis Zone
Wing Fortress Zone
Death Egg Zone
@@Cr102y id say that just the first four zones feel out of order, if aquatic ruins and chemical plant were swapped then it could almost work really well.
Can't wait for someone to make a fangame about this!
Some have like Sonic 2 Delta. But not since all this new news came out.
Sonic 2 Archives had demo release on shc.
Sonic 2 time quest exists too
This makes me wish I could make this a reality but considering I have dozens of other projects I'd never get to do this until many years later.
@@GameFactsSpecial ever heard about Sonic 2 time quest?
Sonic 2 Long Version bros
"Green Hill is looking a lot more like Sand Hill." Sonic Forces
Its weird how often sonic has had run ins with time travel, even early on
If my man is gonna run at the speed of sound, even light, he might as well go back to the future
@@JosuhSame with the Flash
weird? It is a video game trope very common since the NES days. Same as having fire/lava, wind, water/ice, earth/cave, light/dark zones & enemies. It is a cheap & easy way to create enemy variety and reuse environment design. It is not innovative, it is lazy.
The manga dealt with time travel. Nicky is Sonic’s kid self and what looks like a transformation is in fact his future self temporarily replacing him to save the day.
Even in sonic 1!
9:36 That concept art reminds me of Emerald Coast from Sonic Adventure. The second one even has docks similar to that zone. 11:50 One thing you forgot to mention was that Sonic Adventure also had some brief time travel elements with Tikal sending the characters to the past (though none of the levels took place there).
I wouldn't be surprised since Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 reused a lot of concepts that were scrapped from the Genesis games
This is so fascinating! So much got revealed and I didn’t even know this presentation happened! It’s great to see so much new information and so many rumours being concerned. It’s a real shame Ocean Wind and Tropical Sun got cut, I honestly think those stages would’ve been amazing, the concept art looks so beautiful.
The Time Traveling idea seem to be removed early in the developement, while Hidden Palace Zone was removed very late. But I can see a similar idea where getting All Chaos Emeralds give you access to Hidden Palace Zone, which will also be the center point to the Time Travel Mechanic, with all the prehistoric Badniks in Hidden Palace Zone acting as the portal.
This is the first time I'm hearing about that presentation, I had no clue that more info about the lost zones and missing time travel plot had been revealed, it's so cool to finally have enough info to put together the puzzle pieces of what was the original plan. I really hope they revisit/recycle some of these concepts in a future game someday, they could make for a really neat example of environmental storytelling in the same vein of what S3&K did with the Death Egg and Angel Island with the zones changing to reflect the events taking place in the plot.
Really nice video, and very informative!
It's funny how much of that early Sonic cluster between 2-CD and the first two DiC shows all including time travel- CD's plot, the Quest for Chaos Emeralds plot in AOSTH, Blast to the Past's two-parter (and maybe how SatAM's other leitmotif sounds like Back to the Future?).
It makes you wonder if AOSTH's plotline knew of the scrapped Sonic 2 plot.
It even has a Medieval "timezone" and egyptian-adjacent times.
This also would explain Emerald Hill and Hill Top's "reused tiles".
The reused tiles in those zones were apparent to me when I was like 5, but I never made the connection of them being analogs to each other. I probably had never been exposed to a story featuring time travel at all yet, so why would I?
I figured that Hill Top was near the top of a volcano in Emerald Hill, explaining the lava. It erupted at some point while you played zones 2-4. I never gave the dinosaurs a second (or first) thought.
Rock World Zone isn't believed to be Mystic Cave Zone, afaik. Rock World Zone would have more likely resembled the rock terrain in the background of Hill Top Zone, based on their positioning on the time travel maps. As far as we can speculate, Mystic Cave Zone derives from the concept of Madness Mountain Zone, which would have used haunted house (as mentioned in a developer interview) and Circus elements, which we see represented in the music used in Mystic Cave, which uses 'spooky' theramone music and references the scale used in Entrance of the Gladiator, a.k.a., 'the circus music'.
If I remember correctly, the existence of a rock level of some kind was mentioned a long time ago by one of the devs. Like, I wanna say we knew of it's existence as early as 2010. I think it was mentioned alongside a winter level which this video didn't go over and I can't help but wonder how it would have worked with the time travel story.
I always felt those circus aspects of the Mystic Cave theme - whilst cool (sweet & catchy) - felt a bit out of place. I assumed they were just going for "spooky" but somehow wound up with a bit of circus in there accidentally; however, the clearly intentional reference to Entrance of the Gladiators (used in Carnival Night also) always prevented me from believing that. Knowing it was originally to house a haunted house and have circus elements makes a lot of sense.
Rock World was most likely intended to be the ice level that was a palette swap of Sand Shower. It's placed in the same position in the Past map as Sand Shower in the Present map. Simon Wai prototype also plays what would become Sky Chase music in the zone slot that coincides with Rock World on the map and it sounds very much ice themed, especially its demo.
@@NicknineTheEagle Just in case you haven't seen it, the look for the ice level was finally revealed. It's on the Video Game History Foundation's channel.
@@tuffmanchannel Yeah, I did.
I love using time travel as a method of contextualizing change and the ability to see large changes happen very quickly, or compare multiple iterations of the same location and see why and how these locations are the way they are.
A cool anniversary game would be them revisting those original plans for Sonic 2, having it be that Eggman found a time portal or something letting him go back to Sonic 2 and, with all he knows now, take another shot at that
That music loop in the background is driving me nuts
These old Sonic 2 concepts would be such a cool idea for a fangame, hope someone steps up to the plate and decides to do it!
The idea that even this early they considered reusing Green Hill is 💀
also, Sonic the Hedgehog: Time Twister sounds like a fun time
*"I will always come back."*
Or at least the name since the level itself was probably going to look like the Emerald Hill that we got, slightly better than just Green Hill without that many changes just like they do nowadays.
Back then the idea of reusing levels wasn't off the table, hell we got Green Hills and Mecha Green Hill in the 8bit games
@@Chillipeffersonic time twisted
I remember having heard that Sonic 2 started development after CD even though it got released a year earlier because Sonic 1 was so popular. The story goes that the dev team started working on a sequel immediately after finishing the first game because they had ideas they didn't get to use in time for release. Then, when the first gane was super successful, corporate said "Make a sequel now!" with dollar signs in their eyes. This was the reason behind the development split and why Sega of America started on Sonic 2. Essentially, Sonic CD and Sonic 2 started as the same game, but split into 2 in order to get something out quick to capitalize on the momentum of the first game.
Comparing level designs between the three games really brings credibility to this explanation. Zones like Marble Zone and Labyrinth Zone featured much more vertical scrolling and required patience, which isn't found much in Sonic 2 comparatively. Emerald Hill zone is much more horizontal than Green Hill. On the other hand, Palmtree Panic is much more reminiscent of Green Hill. While you could completely ignore the time travel mechanic in Sonic CD and just race to the end of every level, but not only would you get the bad ending, but you miss a ton of content that way. You would never even see Metal Sonic until Stardust Speedway.
Compare the special stages as well. Sonic CD lets you explore a 3D area, while Sonic 2 has you on a track and doesn't even give you the option of standing still.
All of this is to say that both Sonic 2 and Sonic CD were the "original Sonic 2", and that the time travel concept was in the bones before they split. The end result was a Sonic 2 catering to what fans loved most about Sonic 1, and Sonic CD being a passion project of the devs.
Or I could be making it all up :)
I think the time travel concept was just a coincidence since both teams were working in two different countries and didn’t share concepts or anything.
But in a way the thing about both Sonic 2 and CD being “the Sonic 2” is true,both were made to be direct sequels of Sonic 1.
i await the day someone either finds a way to release a variant of Sonic 2 that followed through the the time travel idea in mind. or a fan game that uses the unused info to make a "Sonic 2: Time Attack" or something like that
7:15 is quite the final explanation to see where Forces' sandy Green Hill concept came from.
“Green Hill is looking a lot more like Sand Hill right now.”
Actually, Hidden Palace Zone was a level you would have unlocked after getting the chaos emeralds. Beating it granted you the ability of transforming into Super Sonic.
Maybe Hidden Palace would have acted in a similar way to Sonic & Knuckles, where you're warped there to do the special stages, but then visit it fully later in the story.
@jeremyabbott4537 No, you would've had to do the special stages normally and then you'd be sent to Hidden Palace Zone after you collected all seven chaos emeralds.
@@billloney2567 Both ideas are really cool, but if you can confirm yours with a statement from the devs, that'd be awesome.
They had different ideas for it, but it was indeed a regular stage at one point and is what Blue Lake ended up becoming.
It's a strange realization that Sonic is basically a time travel series. I mean not as it's main thing, but it's always been there. I like it.
Not mentioned in this video is the existence of a futuristic looking sign post/check point that I wanna say was first found in the most famous sonic 2 prototype's debug mode. It and wood zone's use of metropolis zone music and gimmicks was the first clue to the potential time travel concept for sonic 2.
I don't think Hidden Palace was a time zone. A dev for Sonic 2, I believe Yuji Naka, said it was where you get transported after collecting all the Chaos Emeralds.
So it's basically a similar concept to that they used to the Hidden Palace in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which makes sense. The space combat thing might have been Doomsday Zone also. They probably just couldn't fit all of those ideas in a single game and ended up reusing them in S3&K.
Dude. I really want someone to make a fan game of this time travel for sonic 2. And if someone doesn’t do it, I might as well try to do it myself. I’ll learn somehow, someday.
Y'know on the note of Time Travel in Sonic media, Sonic The Comic (Fleetway) actually had a major plot point in Issue 9 in Sonic being sent 6 months into the future by Robotnik, leaving the world to be conquered. This was before the Sonic CD adaptation so it's safe to say it was inspired by whatever was going on with Sonic 2, but Oil Ocean Zone already being established beforehand means they probably didn't actually have any references from the Sonic 2 devs, just some notes.
Imagine Sonic 2 with time travel would have been the perfect Sonic game
What I really like about this is that the time travel is genuinely woven into the game, through the narrative, level order etc.
I think Sonic CD's art does an amazing job of selling the time-travel aspect (and the music, to a lesser degree) but that's it. Just having 3 different flavours of the same level you can switch between rather freely doesn't sell it for me personally. I'd much rather have distinct levels that exist in different time periods, and if you do revisit a level during a different time period, it's somewhere different in the zone order. Revisiting a level you've already completed, except this time it's in the *past* and is harder, would be a trip. CD - due to the way it works - can't capitalize on anything like this or weave the time-travel into the narrative; it essentially winds up just being 3 different reskins of each stage. Pretty reskins no doubt, but still reskins with no greater connection really to the time-travel plot.
I wholly agree with you, Sonic CD in general is a weird example of its parts being better than the final result, the way it's structured there's no reason to ever visit some sections of the game unless you actively want to see them, and the way they implemented the exploration aspect of the game it doesn't mix well with the rest of the gameplay. It would have been nice if the time travel was better integrated into the narrative and natural flow of play.
I think that Sonic Mania did a better job of selling the idea behind playing through different time periods of the same zone in how it implements Stardust Speedway than what CD did, and Mania was just reusing and remixing the zone.
The idea of having only 3 or 4 base zones and then redefining them through time travel into a much longer adventure with a dozen or so zones in total is really cool, I hope it gets revisited at some point. I specially like the concept of sinking an entire chunk of the landmass to justify one of the zones missing from a time period, it could be such an effective way of doing environmental storytelling while also being a clever way of reducing the workload for designers.
Yeah, but have you actually 100%ed it more than once? I mean like 10 or even more times and quickly, them you will see the true beuty of this game, and how its actually gameplay over presentation to a degree
And they arent reskins at all, very similar, yes, reskins, *no*
That's too complicated for a kid's game. Even a 20 yo dude like me didn't even have the energy to read that whole paragraph
@@jorgitoislamico4224 I think you greatly underestimate the depth of narrative kids can understand and appreciate; it's not that complicated, though as someone who struggles to read ~150 words I can see why you would think that ;)
Imagine CD came out and it had its really fun time travel mechanics with 3 slightly different time periods and a good future and then immediately after Sonic 2, the numerical sequel to the original, just drops outta nowhere with 5 time periods that had unique enemy times and level gimmicks and even different names for the levels and where your actions have more impact than just “get rid of the Metal Sonic projector and teleporter in past and you get the good ending for the zone”
I thought cybershell said a developer said that hidden palace was supposed to be a zone that after getting the chaos emeralds you would be warped to and would have to beat to become supersonic
Why not both? In this video we're talking about VERY EARLY Sonic 2 development. Likely by the time Hidden Palace Zone was being worked on the Time Travel mechanic had been dropped.
Greenhill's looking a lot more like Dusthill right about now
1:59
If you look at the map, you can see two of the islands are duplicated. Does that mean Sonic Forces making Green Hill all sandy was a reference to Dust Hill Zone?
Rock World Zone is Winter Zone, Mystic Cave Zone is Dust Hill Zone, Olimpus is Hidden Palace Zone, and Aquatic Ruin Zone is Emerald Iles Zone.
I'm convinced Time Travel was one of those decade wide obsessions that influenced media. And I think it started with Back to the Future.
I want to see some kind of sonic 2 time travel version that uses these old concepts, whether it's official or a fan game
You forgot to mention the warp boxes that were found in the multiplayer mode of the game. In the final release of the game, the warp box would cause both players to switch places and it made a very futuristic sound.
In my opinion, Olympus was the intact version of Aquatic Ruin, then Ocean Wind was the original name of Aquatic Ruin back then, because there's a big forest and mountains in the background of this level that fits perfectly with the artwork of "Now 1"
The UK Sonic the Comic did toy with time travel in their stories IIRC, and this may have been before they started their adaptation of Sonic CD and were doing Sonic 2 inspired stories.
It's been a very long time, but I think they also worked in aspects of the darker Sonic cartoon
The idea of a time-traveling Sonic game where Sonic and Eggman's antics through time actually cause damage to the present is such a cool idea!
Death Egg always seemed like it was cut down. They had a song made up for what was going to be a few seconds of running before back to back boss battles.
cool video but I really didn’t like how the same 10-second loop was playing in the background for most of it. that got very old. I’m glad the music eventually changed to something else.
A very pleasant and cohesive video! Thought I knew everything about Sonic! Well received!
Thank you. Soon you may find you know even less than you think! :)
Honestly, Genocide City Zone is a damn good name for a level and I'm glad the city appeared at last in Sonic Forces, albeit with the name changed to match Metropolis and an aesthetic change from purple to white, similar to what the reboot of The Crystal Maze did for Future Zone. They should have kept it in both Sonic 2 & Forces especially as the namesake was Eggman's plan, even moreso in Forces when he uses the "solid" sun illusion though since it also includes anyone human or otherwise who doesn't like or listen to him, it's technically Democide.
Cyber City Zone works better as a Good Future version of the same zone which means Forces if it was made better could use that for GCZ Hubs post game once the world is being rebuilt. Sonic 2 is harder as that game had no good future versions planned unlike CD.
Fascinating insight but the music loop of Mystic Ruins drove me mad a bit XD
12:12 This unlocked some dormant memories. Sonic Time Attacked was my favorite Sonic fan game.
Why the constant looping in the sonic 2 split screen mystic cave theme?
Oh yeah I have read about this before and I always thought it was so cool and we would have got so many levels that were unfortunately scrapped including a Christmas level which definitely would have been my favourite Classic Sonic level of all time.
One timeline is Yuji Naka not being rehired by STI and someone else (Yasuhara) went on to become head of Sonic Team.
The other timeline is canon: Yuji Naka returning to Sega's Sonic Team (through STI) after resigning for the first time then becoming a convicted criminal after resigning for the second time.
The idea of the time travel being built into the narrative like this, where you go to different time periods over the course of the gameinstead of how CD did it as a direct seems really interesting as a sort of alternative to how CD turned out. I think CD is really interesting but personally I think I’d enjoy the Sonic 2 beta method more at least in terms of a 2d platformer like Sonic, ideas like it are more appealing to me when they’re applied in different game genres.
Great video. But the repeated background music from 1:40 to 10:13 made it very hard to focus on your good info.
I think that they accidentally added a Siivagunner rip instead of the original music
So in the end they did try to copy Naoto, and failed despite having a bigger team that what was left for Naoto. How nice of you, Naka.
Wow imagine what Sonic could have been if the dev had enough time to flesh out their ideas ?
Finally, I found a video talking about this, THANK you, really
Reminds me of the video by collision chaos radio! Awesome job!
Subscribed, seems like a great channel I've never seen until now 😢
I feel like if this and CD both had time travel it would have been a permanent part of his character. The first sonic movie was about time travel too
I just noticed that in the background of Hill Top Zone in-game, it shows Blue Lake Zone, and the background matches with how Blue Lake Zone is depicted on the fifth time period.
The history of Sonic 2's development is interesting. I new about some un-released zone like hidden palace , Wood Zone and Genocide city , but I had no idea about the Time travel mechanic.
I think it's not too late for this sonic project to get revisited and produced to honor the original time travel plan. ...and... there would be a HUGE market for it!
Now that the time travel thing has confirmed, the fact that some zones like casino zone and chemical plant feel like eggman things but different because of time travel shenanigans make sense
Would have been interesting to see what would have been if the concept would have worked as expected.
We would end up with a Sonic 2 that is even closer to CD than it is already except that the zone mechanic is story driven here rather than gameplay driven.
Is the background music a Siivagunner rip? Cause it never ends. Feels like a blue ball rip
Genocide City Zone, holy cow
Reminds me of how Spring Zone has COPE plastered all over it for... some reason
*TARDIS materialises, the door opens and Jamie pops his head out*
Cool, someone actually remembered Time Attacked! 😁
I thing dust hill was mistic caves zone because behind the bust hill text you can see a cave that looks similar to mistic caves.
Cant wait for the release of this game soon 🫡
Cool video!
I actually doubt Hidden Palace was ever finished, because in the last build it's present in, it's more or less unchanged from the previous ones: Act 1 is the only Act that has enemies and objects and can't be completed, Act 2 is empty of enemies and objects, starts you inside a wall and likewise can't be completed, on top of the layout being an exact copy of Act 1... (although it's speculated that HPZ was going to only be one Act, so perhaps this second Act was present as a placeholder at the time and would not have been encountered in normal gameplay)
Tropical Sun and Ocean Wind look so cool.
Great video! I can see the effort put into this Unfortunately, there was a bit of a missed opportunity here.
Another great video called "The mystery behind Sonic 2's Soundtrack" (ua-cam.com/video/74wRhQXhIZ8/v-deo.html) by Collision Chaos Radio attempts to match the order of Sonic 2 Beta zones with the order of the zones on the time travel concept maps. This reveals what music would have played on all those scrapped zones and even what kinds of zones they would be.
One notable find from that video starts with a scrapped badnik "Banper" that was listed to appear on both Rock World Zone and a desert zone. Sonic 2 artist, Brenda Ross, said she was in charge of a desert zone that would a palette swap into a winter zone later in the game, similar to Emerald Hill/Green Hill to Hill Top. That desert zone's cacti would become Christmas trees. Additionaly, there was concept art for Ice Cap Zone (along with other Sonic 3 zones) found in a Sonic 3 documentary. Concept art for Sonic 2's scrapped Wood Zone has already been proven to be reused for Sonic 3's Mushroom Hill Zone. The same goes for Metropolis Zone and Flying Battery's concept art. Perhaps Ice Cap's concept art is reused from Sonic 2's Brenda Ross winter zone? This concept art also featured the Christmas trees Brenda Ross mentioned! On top of that, a Sonic 2 badnik placement document had a name for a zone called "Desert World" which featured exploding cactus. Now, looking at the map for the present we see a zone called Sand Shower Zone. The placement of Sand Shower Zone in the present overlaps with the location of Rock World Zone in the past.
All of this evidence adds up to say that Desert World is Sand Shower Zone, Rock World Zone is Sand Shower Zone from the past, the desert and winter zones Brenda Ross worked on are Sand Shower Zone and its pallette swap Rock World Zone, and lastly, that Rock World Zone later became Ice Cap in Sonic 3. You know what the real kicker is? That video reveals that when you enter the 9th zone in Sonic 2 beta, the Sky Chase music plays. That music has a "Christmas bells" motif playing throughout which is commonly used in christmas music. Do you know what the 9th zone was on the time travel maps? Rock World Zone!
The mystery of Sonic 2's development seems to be just as convoluted as an actual time travel plot lol
It’s nice to see someone mentioning that video.
The history of Sonic 2 and its scrapped zones + themes definitely is interesting,arguably the most interesting part about it lol,especially since people still come up with new theories that honestly make sense,like the Christmas theme theory from the video.
Dude fucked up by including Olympus in the order. That wasn’t a zone, it was a landmark.
@cristianrojas9684 Yeah, the fact that Olympus' name doesn't end in "zone" and that it's written in a bubble like the warp point and not a box like the other zones. These are giveaways that it serves a different purpose.
Emerald Isle is basically Aquatic ruin.
Olympus Palace would have been...an actual palace and would most definately use the unused track.
Very underrated channel ngl,this was a short but neat analysis. A longer in-depth version would be great,but this video is still good though.
its coming
I wish that they hadn't scrapped this idea, it would have really brought a lot more interest to Sonic 2 than there already is.
I really wouldn't mind a "Sonic 2 Final Mix" or a "Sonic CD 2" this idea sounds fuckin sick
If chrono trigger and sonic had a baby
I have a theory about Hidden Palace zone:
This zone would've used for time travel, probably at the end of every act of this zone, would've been an object that teleports you in a different time period.
Genocide City Zone got a nice fanmade mockup that makes it look like Gotham City in that zones restored ROM.
Wow, imagine if there was a Sonic 1 sequel that had time travel...
We had an alternate timeline where we could’ve have TWO Sonic CDs, wow.
I heard a theory a while ago that Hill Top/Emerald Hill/Dust Hill were the story of a hill being formed by volcanic eruption (past), a period of dormancy (present), and then another eruption (future) that turns the hill to ash (or in their phrasing, dust). I wonder if there are still any Dust Hill design documents out there that might shed light on that.
Time travel was in Sonic CD with 3 time paths.
Time travel isn't an important feature to me, but an interesting one. You can't cover the development of Sonic 2 without also considering Sonic CD. they diverged completely, yet started from the same place. It is obvious that a lot of this content cut from 2 ended up in CD in a very meaningful way. Sadly SegaCD games didn't reach near as many people because SonicCD wasn't enough to carry the accessory into success. It was one of the best SegaCD titles, while most were chasing FMV-based games that were terrible. They were pushing the cutting edge too far instead of enjoying the opportunity to just make Genesis games without memory limits.
Time Travel (and legacy/interconnected events) is basically a secondary or tertiary element of the Sonic series. It would be weird if they stopped using it
“ emerald Hill looking a lot like hilltop right now “
I feel like if this and CD both had time travel it would have been a permanent part of his character
I was just scrolling through UA-cam and then I saw this and I had to click
Hidden palace was supposed to be the place you got sent to once you collected all the chaos emeralds, and where you would unlock super sonic.
The most bizzare thing here to me is the fact that the conference took place in Kraków.
I would have never expected SEGA in Eastern Central Europe.
And look at them now. Sonic Mania got a Steam trailer in Polish. And starting with Forces, all mainline Sonic games have the Polish language available in the options (only for the UI and subtitles for now, sadly, no actual voices yet).
It would make sense why Sega decided to cut certain levels - Wood Hill Zone, Ocean Wind Zone, Genocide City Zone, Death Egg Zone (which was only cut down to the final boss), Hidden Palace Zone and Rock World Zone.e, then i
They probably scrapped the time traveling mechanic because Sonic CD was being developed by another Sega team at the same time which also was doing time travel as it's gimmick.
In the manga also, there is Amy (which is the brown prehistoric hedgehog that kissed Sonic)
Sorry for my grammar
Nah you good
I can't finish this video, the Hidden Palace zone music looping on that one same bit over and over again is driving me crazy,
The ancient map having the blue ground instead of brown blows my mind I've always wondered about that I didn't know there'd ever be an answer.
To be clear the colorizations are fan made for the video. But all the other islands have a hole for water so I'm pretty certain that was the intent. Plus, Aquatic Ruins contains Greek Architecture and water, so that fits Olympus concept.
We still need a Sonic game that grants the players new abilities with the Chaos Emeralds they collect. Yet, I suppose that rings of Mega Man.
!?
Superstars does that..
Heard of SONIC SUPERSTARS?
@@nathansos8480 Apparently not. lol
Yo Thanks For The Script!!!
Ill Make A Fan Game, The Downside is that Its Not Called "Sonic: Lost in Time"
Its "Sonic: Time Chaos"
If only they had revisited this idea, wonder how super sonic would interact with time. Surely super sonic would be in a major sonic game with such a mechanic
1:21That's not an early mockup image. That's an upscaled scan of a screenshot of a prototype, that has been around for many many many years.
That's been debated for many many many years. People think its a mock up since Sonic is off center.
When I was a kid I realized a lot of things about Sonic 2. Like how Super Sonic was inspired by Super Saiyan goku. Also how the Death Egg was basically thr Death Star from star wars.
0:45 whats with the diagonal paths in the prototype layout of Metropolis act 3?
The Hidden Palace background music driving me insane