Genocide/Cyber City pallete and art found!

[Solister]

A Sonic Retro user, Frank Cifaldi, had a chat with Tom Payne (level designer of Genocide City/Cyber City and Metropolis (As we know so far)), and got some photos of the supposed pallet used in the level:

At a glance, it may not look like much interesting. Some boring color pallete, some new sprites perhaps.

But things get interesting when applied to Metropolis Zone:

Looks familiar?

As you may know, Tom Payne himself mentioned Metropolis Zone Act 3 was a leftover of Genocide/Cyber City, thus being the only zone with 3 acts in the game. As he also confirmed, much of the inspiration/concept which would go to Genocide/Cyber City was reutilized in Sonic Spinball (Similar to how Toxic Caves is quite Hidden Palace's counterpart in the game).

Of course, it isn't that much of a big deal, but perhaps, we now have a much broader idea of what the level would look like (given on all prototypes, Genocide City was always a bottomless pit).

Source

[Jango]

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.

[DaBigJ]

Genocide City's still a better zone name than "Town", I'm just saying

[jungle_penguins]

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

[Solister]

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.

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.

[VO.SUPER]

This is the palette that was eventually used in Spinball?

[PinkFloydMania]

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

[Solister]

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).

[Shiny Gems]

Sorry to bring this thread back up, but…

 

[Solister]

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!

[Shiny Gems]

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.