They had all the assets and most of the level design done, so why didn't they just finish it and put it in for the initial release?
They had all the assets and most of the level design done, so why didn't they just finish it and put it in for the initial release?
Honestly in retrospect it's kinda amazing that Sonic 2 even came out. It was completed in like 10 months and there are so many cut levels. Obviously from a business stand point it was completely rushed.
They got rid of half the zones and the cutscenes. The story was about time travel.
>The story was about time travel.
Why? CD already was the time travel game.
sonic 2 was developed in america by STI and sonic team together (its why sonic has his mohawk in the corkscrew sprites), while CD was developed by the other half of sonic team in japan.
>its why sonic has his mohawk in the corkscrew sprites
except that the sonic sprites were all done by the japs, the americans only did background art and enemies (and even those got touched up by the japs).
also sonic 3 was all jap and still used those sprites.
Great question honestly. As
said different teams worked on the two games so they probably came up with the same idea, executed it differently, and then when the Sonic 2 team realized they were doing the exact same shit in different ways they cut their losses and just threw the different time period zones wherever.
On the one hand, I have to wonder "what if" for the Sonic 2 we never got. The narrative flow as Sonic chases Eggman around the island and the numerous trips to the past/altered futures sound fun, but it also makes the assest reuse that much blatant and interrupting the stages to load in the worldmap to show how things are would have impacted what makes Sonic's zippy "beat stage, go next stage" rhythm hit a bit. And while they existed as early in the concept as they did, saving Chemical Plant and Casino Night until the final stages just rather than shoving them to the front might not have given Sonic 2 that "pow, check THIS out!" stage feel that it wound up having.
>You will never vacation at Genocide City
I kinda agree with you. Despite Sonic 2 being rushed out the door in the end the final product is shockingly competent and the flow+pacing of the zones works great. The original concept is really cool and honestly a better take on the whole time travel thing as it relates to a Sonic game than CD wound up being, yet I don't know if it truly belongs in a classic Sonic game. Even Sonic 3&K, which itself tried to create a narrative between levels, avoided a world map and kept the contextualization to a minimum of simple, quick cutscenes.
On one hand, the original concept would have had a cool "ramping up" of stakes and what you saw over time, but on the other you would be stuck in less interesting locales for quite some time instead of pacing different areas throughout the game where they made the most sense to wow the player.
Por que no los dos?
Because they blame a cartridge being stolen at a trade show that had "all the data of the level in it".
sega has never blamed it on that, quit making shit up. the stage was removed at the very last minute just before release, and none of the developers were informed.
Frick off zoomer. Whether it was a good excuse or not, that was their excuse for over a decade.
What they deem of lower quality gets the cut. Also does your "all the assets" even include music and enemies?
It's not uncommon to plan a lot tof things and cut and only keep what works best or what's in the most finished state. The only difference between Sonic 2 and other games is that we know a lot of that data.
Also, getting a rough prototype of a stage into the game probably takes less time than you imagine, even with new art. Once they have a process in place they could probably do that in a couple of days. What takes time is then to turn that into a final level with all the details and gameplay fun, which takes a lot of testing and back & forth between designers
>Also does your "all the assets" even include music and enemies?
yes
>Also does your "all the assets" even include music
They even left the song in the sound test for the final release
I just finished Sonic 1 for the first time yesterday. How is 2? I know everyone loves 3.
part two is the only one I beat
part one is endearing though dude
good memories of my cousins playing that shit together with me
2's great, big leap ahead from 1.
Did you get all the emeralds though? 2's great
Sonic 2 is like Evil Dead 2
It was designed by an American, and nips are very racist.
metropolis 3 and auto scroller were of a higher priority
>Most of the level design done
It really wasn't anywhere near done design wise, the most you had was a few screens until you had a void of nothing and some garbage. The devs didn't touch shit in the level for so many iterations until they decided "We can't fit this anywhere in design wise, might as well cut it"
Because that would've taken time that they didn't have.