Details On Sonic 2's Lost Stages Have Been Revealed

Sonic 2 is probably the best overall Sonic game in my view. The levels are perfect, very little jank. That said, Sega would have my wallet with a Sonic 2.5 that includes the base game with 3 of these added zones here (we probably don’t need a second desert zone).

So what was Genocide City Zone supposed to be? I think it was on the original prototypes level select screen but if you selected it, you just fell to your death 🤣

@LiquidNinja
It’s Cyber City Zone and as the video shows was more like Scrap Brain Zone than Metropolis ended up being, it looks like a couple of its gimmicks like the fans and turrets were repurposed for Wing Fortress.

One of my favourite Sonic winter stages:

I don't know why everyone hates on Sonic 4 Episode 2. I thought it was a lot of fun, especially in co-op and I loved the soundtrack.

Ahh! Reading about cut and beta Sonic content online was so fascinating to me in my childhood. That desert level screenshot is very familiar to me haha. It's so cool that there's still new information about this game's cut content to uncover like this.

And I agree with the sentiment at the end of the video - there's no use lamenting what was lost, because games are always in a constant state of content flux during development - there are infinite potential ideas that could have made it into the game. And what eventually came out is considered one of the best games of its generation anyway.

I'm just imagining an alternate universe where we did get that cut desert level, but for years and years we instead saw a cool-looking "chemical plant" mockup screenshot that never came into being. ...heh. Would that reality really have been better for Sonic 2?
So I think it's best to celebrate what we did get, and to treat the beta things as a curiosity.

Scraped the time travel in sonic 2 and put it in sonic cd job done😊
The extra stage could have been put in sonic mania 2 if Sega green lit it
That would be really interesting

I expect modders to add these stages pretty quickly.

Even though these never made it to the final game, most of these levels did get modified or incorporated into later games in Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Winter Zone probably became Ice Cap Zone. Even the idea of time travel in a Sonic game was incorporated into Sonic CD.

Anything would have been better than Metropolis Zone.

I once played a rom that added back in the removed stages and one level called Genocide city really stood out. It has this creepy looking cloud with the moon in the middle looking like some ominous eye looking down on you in the background. That should have stayed in the game but i suppose calling it Genocide city was a bit dark for a kids game.

VG History Foundation doing quality work as usual. Maybe throw them a few dollars if you have some spare this holiday season.

@Clyde_Radcliffe Primarily cause episode 1 was so bad people didn't play 2 and assume it's just another set of levels.

I expect the Sonic rom hacks to include these in the future.

YES! I HAVE WAITED FOR THIS!

Great insight!

There is the Sonic 2 Delta romhack that created a whole other Sonic 2 game from the cut content. And Sonic 4 was a great game, screw the trolls. I loved it on my iPod touch and Wii. Episode 2 had some great graphics and gameplay but too much slowdown for a Sonic game.

@Clyde_Radcliffe Yep Sonic 4 episode 2 was pretty good imo. They got better. Shame that episode 1 pretty much killed the hype the game had.

@EarthboundBenjy I agree with you in general: it's fascinating to dig up and study cut content (as well as beta versions of existing content) in our favourite games, but the high quality that we see in the final product is only achieved by refining- if not outright removing- many elements. So while we may long for the unused content from something like Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time, the final product is better than what we missed out on anyway.

However, there are cases where the original plan for a game was much grander and more impressive than what we got: the final game may be good, but it's still compromised. It's less than what could have been, and that's when it kind of hurts. Star Fox Adventures and Vexx are my two main examples of this, as each of those is literally half the game it was meant to be.

I got just a bit of this feeling when watching the above video, as there's something compelling about not just seeing the content that we missed out on, but also seeing the levels we know in their original intended context. The original plan was not just bigger, but more logical and cohesive than the final jumble of zones that we got. Sonic 2 was, and still is, one of my favourite games of all time, but there's a part of me that wants to see the original plan brought to fruition now!

@LiquidNinja Come to think of it, simply taking away the ground is a pretty effective way to wipe out the island's hedgehog population...

@smoreon
That is true, come to think of it. The big example that comes to my mind is Mother 3. The GBA game that released was absolutely amazing, but there's no denying that the cancelled N64 version was going to be much larger in scope. The amount of content they had to cut in order to finally get Mother 3 released is significant and unfortunate. And I do feel a little saddened when I think about what "could have been". And of course, I would absolutely love to see the unfinished N64 rom get leaked to the internet one day...
That being said, I'm still not going to lament it too much - the final product is still outstanding.

@smoreon I’d say it’s a pretty effective way to wipe out everything 🤣