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Sonic 2 Secret Stuff This game is full of secrets that have never been known when the game was first released! But now they're all here! Missing
Levels
The most famous lost zone of all. The full version is only playable with Sonic 2 Beta, but the hangovers remain in the final version. You can only access them with hex editing, emulation, or a Pro Action Replay/Game Genie code. The Game Genie code is shown below. ACLA-ATD4 Let's look at some screenshots.
The one on top was taken with an emulator. As you can see, Sonic appears to be in a dinosaur cave, but look at his sprites; they're from Sonic 1. Also notice that he's balancing on the ledge of what appears to be the Master Emerald, but he's basically standing on nothing! The one on the bottom, according to STH Area 51, is what you get with Action Replay. Some of the floor is missing, and you can only play act 1(act 2 is also playable but it's less complete). There's no badniks, Star Posts, or ending. There are rings, and the only way to get out of it is with debug mode, where you can place one of those "Egg - O - Matic" machines and stand on it. After completing the level, you'll go to Oil Ocean. For more info on Hidden Palace, go to my Sonic 2 Beta page. Another lost zone is the Wood Zone, which takes place in a forest. This level has been completely deleted from final Sonic 2, but it's palette remains. It's also still has the number 02 in the level select. If you don't know what I mean, here's the order the levels in the level select go in S2 Beta: Green Hill, Wood Zone, Metropolis, Hill Top, Hidden Palace, Oil Ocean, Dust Hill, Casino Night, Chemical Plant, Genocide City, Neo Green Hill, Death Egg. As you can see, Wood is the second level. By changing palette 00(Emerald/Green Hill) with palette 02 in a hex editor, you get a strange-looking Emerald Hill with Wood's palette. You can hardly play it, but it looks pretty cool. Check it out:
You can also do the same thing with Sonic 2 & Knuckles, but it's even more messed up. Take a look.
Genocide City is a rather confusing mystery. It's accessable in Sonic 2 Beta, but there's no implanted floors, so you just fall to the bottom and die. Jan Abaza, owner of StH Area 51, thought to have discovered Genocide City in final S2 as palette 09, but was wrong. In Sonic 2 Beta, it had the palette number 0E, but in the final, 0E is owned by...DEATH EGG?! WHAT?! So it seems that Genocide City could have become Death Egg. Or did it... Continuing on, this mystery may be close to being solved. Someone named Sonic Jedi on Simon Wai's Sonic 2 Beta board claimed to have found Genocide City. Here's what he said: "I may
have found a major lead as to what Genocide city was supposed to look like. And from what
I've found that it is NOT an inferno-plagued Chemical Plant Zone. In case nobody noticed,
Sonic & Knuckles is realy a "lost levels" game contaning levels that were
cut from other Sonic games. However the Sonic 2 Levels were evolved and most names were
changed: I checked this out for myself, and it is indeed true. HyperSonic started a new thread confirming it, and Cracked Knuckle responded saying it's possibly a glitch; here's what he said: "If you DO look
at the screenshot at that website(MSM's Note: He's referring to the screenshots
HyperSonic took here.),
it appears that Genocide city would have had red leaves. I always thought leaves were
green most of the time. However, if it IS in fact another version of Aquatic Ruin, it
would make sense to make the scenery a little different. But, another possibility is that
strangely colored ARZ patterns are loaded because of a simple glitch. I can't really say
much though, because I haven't actually seen this for myself yet. If you do think that GCZ
was another version of ARZ, and NOT CPZ, post your theories now." "Well since how the tile-system for
genesis works (i think) those tiles aren't propperly colored.. since each seems to have
just a number of possible colors and you switch wich it use.. if you click on the area
you'll switch color in a cycle.. so no.. they aren't red.. but there's no color mode that
looks like Aquatic ruin though.. "We know that Sonic 2 was supposed to
deal with time travel, right? Well, if Genocide City has ARZ's patterns, could it be a BAD
FUTURE of ARZ? I got three responses. Cracked Knuckle repeated his 'glitch' theory, Compie said to check his response to Cracked Knuckle's theory, as seen above, and then there was an interesting one from Sonique, the owner of the now defunct Shadow of Light. Read on: "I think Emerald Hill and Neo Green Hill would be past and future together. I mean their old names are Green Hill and Neo Green Hill. It also makes sence that Green Hill has a few water falls where as Neo Green Hill is completely under water like before erosion or something. Another thing to note which I think MSM
pointed out was Ruins means like an old city.. like.. know what i mean? See how big this mystery is? And yet there's more to do... The last lost level to be discussed is Dust Hill, a desert-like level. In Sonic 2 Beta, it's Mystic Cave. But that's not the point; let's take a look.
This is the only known Dust Hill picture known. Rumored to be a hoax by SEGA themselves, you can see many strange things within this single picture. First off, you can clearly see that Sonic's sprites are his sprites from Sonic 1. The clouds in the sky are from Sonic 1 too. If you look in the top-left corner behind the counters, you can see the Buzzers from Emerald Hill. Sonic 2 badniks never repeat themselves in any other zone of the game. Speaking of badniks, there's an alligator there that can't be seen anywhere else. By further examning the pic, you can see Sonic is really off-centered, and he's in the air without doing the jumping animation. He could only do this if he walked off a ledge, but the steps are too far away to make it where Sonic could land where the aliigator was. One last thing to note is the counter; it's font is from Sonic 1. And look at the rings counter; it says '08'. Which made me think of the Game Gear version of this game. In the Game Gear version, if you get 100 rings in a zone, not only will you get an extra life, but the ring counter will reset to 0. Maybe this was supposed to happen the Genesis version, but Sega removed it so the two games wouldn't be alike. Or was Dust Hill going to be in Sonic 2 GG? No, it couldn't; graphics as detailed as that can only be on the Genesis... Jan Abaza said that he had a strange feeling Dust Hill was originally Quartz Quadrant from Sonic CD. He also said that some time ago, someone posted a list of beta levels in Sonic CD. These are the names(along with what I think they became): Palmtree Hill Zone(Palmtree
Panic) If you think it's not enough, look at this picture of the Little Planet from Sonic CD:
Each little area represents a zone, but what about that big desert-cacti area on the top? There's not a zone like that in the game at all. Dust Hill! Here's a prime example: Look at the pictures below. One is of an area in QQ Past in Sonic CD, the other is the Dust Hill pic. Take QQ Past gems, replace it with cacti. Then you take QQ Past "outside" background and replace it with desert. Volia! Dust Hill!
A few more things to prove this theory right: - YarHarHar has pointed out that
"Dust Hill" and Quartz Quadrant have the same ground patterns. Quartz Quadrant's
is just doubled! - Remember the sand in Sandopolis Zone? It has pretty much the same function conveyor belts in Quartz Quadrant have. More screenshots with saguaro-looking things in them:
The zone below is palette 01. I think this was supposed to be Dust Hill or Emerald Hill Good Future(see Time Travel theory below). As you can see, it's Emerald Hill with only floors(no loops) implented. Also note the background and the Tails life icon, but it says "Miles". And no, the "Miles/Tails" trick was not done before these screenshots were taken.
Jan found a Wing Fortress Gamma a while back, and discovered it to be Wing Fortress Act 2. It was also discovered that Sky Chase and Death Egg had two acts! Jan didn't spoil it and say what happens, but he gave these steps to get the trick to work: 1) Open a Genecyst savestate in a hexeditor. Saxman sent an e-mail with this fragment: "This is wrong. Well, not exactly, but I know what you are thinking. These are NOT real levels, they weren't made nor deleted. Act 1 and 2 on ALL zones is kept in memory. It automatically says act 2 because programmers never set a startup string (act 2 is set in the game as a default)." Okay, that's out of the way, and so is the missing levels section! Let's get to the next big stop: Yes, we all know Sonic CD has time travel, but Sonic Team was also going to put it in Sonic 2! Sources say each level was designed to take place somewhere in time. This can be easily seen. Let's make up a time travel thing for each level, shall we? Let's take Hill Top, Emerald Hill, Aquatic Ruins, and Genocide City. There's supposed to be a Past, Present, Good Future, and Bad Future for each zone. Hill Top looks sort of like Emerald Hill, but with brighter colors, so it would be a 'Past' zone. Emerald Hill would be present, Aquatic Ruins would be Good Future, and Genocide City is Bad Future. So it's like this: Past: Hill Top I'm not saying this is what it was going to be like in the final. This is just a guess. Another Time Travel thing I made up was thanks to Simon Wai. He came up with an theory about Hidden Palace being a 'Past' Mystic Cave, which lead me to my own theory. You can read it on my S2 Beta page, in the Hidden Palace section. Once again, like so: Past: Hidden Palace There are many other time travel levels that can be discovered, but we may never know them all. Only one company probably knows them, and that company is SEGA. |
