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  • Cyber City Zone Lives! Brand New Sonic 2 Lost Level Footage Unveiled

    Dust Hill Zone Christmas variant revealed as well!
    Dreadknux  · 
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    It's incredible to think that, three decades after its original release, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 still has some secret lost content left to offer fans. But here we are - a new video published by the Video Game History Foundation has unearthed some fascinating new information about the Mega Drive classic's development, alongside a new stage reveal and a reconstruction of a Zone once thought to be entirely lost. 

    The long and short of it is that, through some fantastic donations and insight from former SEGA Technical Institute developers and artists, the VGHF organisation was able to document and archive a previously-unseen Winter variant of the well-documented "Sand Shower" (aka "Dust Hill Zone"). You can see an image of this below:

    2023-sonic2-winterdust.jpg

    Now, we all know that part of Sonic 2's chaotic development involved time travel, before the concept was scrapped ahead of the game's final release. But what's interesting is the video explains that, in order to fit as many stages as that original idea would have needed (the video discusses, via concept documents, a 'future' South Island that included no less than THREE Death Eggs installed on the planet), the studio decided to recycle art assets to save on memory. As a result, the above screen you see here would have most likely have been intended as a past or future version of the canned Sand Shower Zone.

    It also means that various stages that DID end up in the final version - including Chemical Plant and Hill Top Zone - were originally planned to be past/future or otherwise time-travelled "remixed" versions of other Zones in the game.

    :gasp:

    In addition to this, host Frank Cifaldi and the VGHF collected and archived newly-discovered concept documents - alongside new information gathered from interviews with former STI artists - to help reconstruct one of the most notorious lost stages in Sonic the Hedgehog history. Cyber City Zone - also known as Genocide City.

    2023-sonic2-cyber1.jpg

    2023-sonic2-cyber2.jpg

    2023-sonic2-cyber3.jpg

    Using assets from a number of Sonic 2 prototype sources, combined with colour palettes and background work from Sonic Spinball's "The Machine" stage (a level which was confirmed in the video to be the recipient of a lot of Cyber City Zone's hand-me-down art) and existing stage design maps from Hirokazu Yasuhara, the above result you see is an experimental project that aims to re-imagine what one of the planned penultimate stages of Sonic 2 might have looked like.

    All in all, it's a fantastic piece of game research and a cracking video - it's well worth the 20-minute watch, so we highly recommend you spend some time over lunch to view it and learn more about the never-ending mystery that is Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

    The VGHF has also shared links of its archival of this work - you can find the "Tom Payne Sega Technical Institute Papers" on the Internet Archive right here.

    The Sonic Stadium may link to retailers and earn a small commission on purchases made from users who click those links. These links will only appear in articles related to the product, in an unobtrusive manner, and do not influence our editorial decisions in any way. All proceeds will go to supporting our community and continued coverage of Sonic the Hedgehog. Thank you in advance for your kind support!
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    castell-neath

    castell-neath 695

    Posted (edited)

    Wow!! That snow level looks great, but a crocodile in the snow??! lol i do love q snow level mind....would love to see it completed and reused in the future

    Cyber city looks interesting...bit like Metropolis but a but more "grim" with tge brown and purple.

    These pictures are a real treaure trove, fair play!!

    The time travel element is intetesting...know CD has it but imagine if that concept "stuck" as a feature of mainline games inc. Sonic 2....i think it would be really cool. 

     

    Edited by castell-neath
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    Covskin

    Haha, I literally just finished watching the video and had come here to post it. I'd personally never even heard of a winter level in 2 before, and this version/arrangement of the time travel concept was new to me as well but makes perfect sense.

    Amazing how often new details about this game still manage to turn up.

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    The Swordsman

    The Swordsman 82

    Posted

    Its nice to see a the concept for a winter themed level around this Christmas season and more details for Cyber/Genocide City. With the original Japanese branch being far more serious about establishing the lore and continuity during the Classic Era than the branches at America and Europe and with CD's placement in the timeline being revealed, I wonder if the bad ending of CD was originally the canon ending before the time travel framing for the levels and story was scrapped? As even if Sonic 4, despite being unfinished, is still in continuity, Mania closed the plothole it created with it's Encore mode. With the restored Hard Boiled Heavies making a Bad Future in the zone (ruining Sonic's hard work in CD and Mania's normal mode) and Metal is defeated there once again, not helped by our heroes not really stopping Heavy King or the Ruby. (Superstars prototype may or may not throw a monkey wrench into this though)

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    Solister

    Solister 1,530

    Posted

    Seeing that Wood Zone "GIF" and a bit more about Sand Shower and Winter Zone did bring a grim to my face.

    I'm beyond excited about their interview with Brenda next year (also, is anyone else shocked that her surname is Cook? (I assume her full name must be something like Brenda Ross Cook)).

    But really, I'm with a loss of words with all that. Sonic 2 Simon Wai Protype fascinated me when I was as 10-year-old kid, and seeing new stuff I spent days theorizing suddenly seeing the light of day is just phenomenal.

    And someone please do a full hack with all this content ASAP. One of my biggest dreams is to do a full Sonic 2 game with the original artists and give them all the time and resources to fully finish it (as I nicknamed it, "Sonic 2: as it was meant to be")

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    Knight Terror

    Knight Terror 209

    Posted

    On 12/13/2023 at 4:24 PM, Solister said:

    (I assume her full name must be something like Brenda Ross Cook).

    I'm sorry, I don't quite understand?

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    Solister

    Solister 1,530

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Knight Terror said:

    I'm sorry, I don't quite understand?

    For all of Sonic 2 Development history shared on the internet, the name of the developer of Wood/Winter/Dust Hill Zones was known as Brenda Ross. Now, all of a sudden, the guy started calling her Brenda Cook which, for someone used with Brenda Ross for nearly 10 years, it is at minimum weird.

    What I meant is that I suppose that Cook must be another surname of hers.

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    Lorekitten

    Lorekitten 852

    Posted

    On 12/13/2023 at 5:24 PM, Solister said:

    And someone please do a full hack with all this content ASAP. One of my biggest dreams is to do a full Sonic 2 game with the original artists and give them all the time and resources to fully finish it (as I nicknamed it, "Sonic 2: as it was meant to be")

    That would be freaking awesome. And while I don't expect the original artists to ever return to this, I do fully expect some group of fans or another to create a version of Sonic 2 with the time travel mechanic intact. Give it a few years, it'll almost certainly happen eventually.

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    Knight Terror

    Knight Terror 209

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Solister said:

    For all of Sonic 2 Development history shared on the internet, the name of the developer of Wood/Winter/Dust Hill Zones was known as Brenda Ross. Now, all of a sudden, the guy started calling her Brenda Cook which, for someone used with Brenda Ross for nearly 10 years, it is at minimum weird.

    What I meant is that I suppose that Cook must be another surname of hers.

    Possibly she got married.

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