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  • Palette & Pixel Art For Scrapped Sonic 2 Level Found

    Take me down to the Genocide City...

    We finally have an idea of what Sonic 2’s most infamously named scrapped level, Genocide City (aka Cyber City) would’ve looked like. For the first time ever, some pixel art and the palette from the long lost stage have been released to the public courtesy of video game developer, preservationist and historian Frank Cifaldi.

    Cifaldi took a photo of documents featuring the art during a meeting with Tom Payne, a Sonic 2 level designer who worked on Genocide City. Take a look:

    sonic2-palette1.jpeg

    Cifaldi posted the photo to the discord of Hidden Palace, a game preservation site, and it eventually found its way to Sonic Retro thanks to Sonic Retro user The joebro64. Sonic Retro researcher ICEknight took the palette from the documents and applied it to Metropolis Zone Act 3, known to be a leftover from Genocide City’s development, to give us an idea of what the level might’ve looked like in game. Check out their work below:

    sonic2-palette2.webp

    sonic2-palette3.webp

    sonic2-palette4.webp

    via Sonic Retro Forums

    Sonic News Tips Credit:
    Solister

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    Such a cool find. But for the love of God, Genocide City is the wrongest zone name ever. Can't believe it was even a proto name.

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    1 hour ago, jungle_penguins said:

    Why 3 acts, was it one of the first zones concepted?

    Not necessarily one of the first, but a few of Sonic 2 levels were cut at last minutes, like, literally a month before the game was shipped, so pretty much until that point, Metropolis and Genocide/Cyber City were considered different zones, but given the developers noted it would be impossible to finish Genocide/Cyber City Act 2 in time, they just reused Metropolis Zone's aesthetics (which apparently were very similar), and called it Act 3.

    Shameless self-promo, but here's an infographic I made last year about the game development.

    D74ydo8.png

    Note how Genocide/Cyber City was still featured in prototypes much until Alpha, while Metropolis itself was already introduced in Simon Wai. In comparison, look how far a level such as Hidden Palace was still being present on the prototypes.

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    I can't believe after all these years and headcanons, Genocide/Cyber City was just Blue Metropolis all along.

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    On 3/22/2023 at 7:03 PM, VO.SUPER said:

    This is the palette that was eventually used in Spinball?

    I guess so. Or at least very similar colors. More interestingly, I think it really proves that The Machine (Spinball level) was indeed inspired by Genocide/Cyber City.

    52 minutes ago, PinkFloydMania said:

    I can't believe after all these years and headcanons, Genocide/Cyber City was just Blue Metropolis all along.

    Well, Hill Top is still just a blue-ish Emerald Hill. And it seems the same would go for Sand Shower and Winter Zone.

    At all, it isn't as weird as it sounds. But I can completely feel your disappointment (despite I didn't get my hopes high already knowing Metropolis 3 was a scrapped Genocide/Cyber City 1).

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    That's definitely worth of bringing the thread back.

    Wow!

    Shame is in such low res, but we can have a notion of how the level would look like. I'd have never guesses Cyber City could have been a water level.

    What's weird is that the puzzle pieces don't seem to fit at all. The pallets look nothing like The Machine or Metropolis zone, and comparing to the Metropolis Zone 3 is Cyber City rumor, unless it was heavily modified, it's hard to see some similarities, if any, at all.

    I hope a high resolution scan, alongside better information soon surface the web.

    Thanks for sharing!

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    4 minutes ago, Solister said:

    That's definitely worth of bringing the thread back.

    Wow!

    Shame is in such low res, but we can have a notion of how the level would look like. I'd have never guesses Cyber City could have been a water level.

    What's weird is that the puzzle pieces don't seem to fit at all. The pallets look nothing like The Machine or Metropolis zone, and comparing to the Metropolis Zone 3 is Cyber City rumor, unless it was heavily modified, it's hard to see some similarities, if any, at all.

    I hope a high resolution scan, alongside better information soon surface the web.

    Thanks for sharing!

    No problem, Solister, at your service.

    It is interesting to see that the planned Genocide City had water, though.

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