SAGE 2011 Reviews (Part IV)

Sonic Worlds Level Collab

A long while back, I recall LiQuidShade of Zone: 0 and me discussing how cool it would be if there was some kind of project that was like the Little Big Planet of Sonic - you'd be able to play user created zones without all the other rigmarole. Well, the SWLC team has finally brought us something much like that.

This first release contains 2 full zones and 5 short 1-act challenges. Apparently there will be new packages released twice a year, once for SAGE and once for Christmas. Of course the amount of cool zones we'll get depends on how many folks get involved.

The content on offer right now is quite good, though. The standout of all the zones is definitely Amazing Ocean, with its clever boss, intelligent layout, and character-dependent paths. I played it through many times in order to find all the red rings, and I'm not tired of it yet.

Collecting said red rings gets you unlockables, such as Super Mode for all the characters and the aforementioned challenge levels.

The challenge levels are for the most part charming and fun (although the Labyrinth one is a bit spare). The only thing is I wish they were much harder to make up for their brevity. They are called "challenges" after all; I was expecting to be hit with extreme difficulty.

But it's all worth it for Cheese Hill Zone: =P

So far I love the concept and the content, and I can't wait for Christmas to see what other goodies the team will have for us.

Sonic 2 Retro Remix

Sonic 2 Retro Remix is an ambitious and pedigreed Sonic 2 hack. It's also a bit controversial, because the gameplay is intentionally more akin to Super Mario 64's search for stars than the standard run-for-the-goal Sonic fare, although a "classic mode" has traditionally been included. When I last reviewed it, I played only the classic mode, and majorly missed the point. This time, classic mode has been removed to encourage playing the game the way it was meant to be enjoyed, so we'll see what that does to change my mind about it.

Not actually a whole lot, to be honest. I still can't seem to enjoy this game, no matter how hard I try. There's just something about the cramped, overly-technical layouts that puts me off. Even the short overworlds, where you enter acts by way of Warp Rings, are frustrating and difficult to navigate, an aspect of Sonic Advance 3 which I loathed and I can't imagine why anyone would want to emulate it. The zones themselves are huge, confusing, sloppy, and devoid of any sense of flow - to me at least; I've heard others swear that, when played right, they're feats of genius. But as far as I'm concerned they are the epitome of everyone's complaints about Sonic CD's level design, cranked up to 11.

I'm also not fond of the unnecessarily complicated controls, the busy art, or the music culled from disparate sources. It all feels bloated and aimless, and I can't find any fun in it at all.

I know this is an acclaimed hack. For all I know it's a quality one. But it doesn't appeal to me.

To sum up

And that's it for my brief thoughts on SAGE. I won't be going over things like Sonic RealmZ or Super Sonic Knockout, because I'm not interested in, nor qualified to evaluate, such extreme deviations from the standard Sonic formula. I'm also skipping a few embarrassingly incomplete offerings which really should have been kept under wraps for another year or so - you know who you are.

But this won't be the last of my reviews for a while - I'll be giving my thoughts on the Hacking Contest entries once the winners are announced.

I'll leave you with a recap of my favourites, which I think should be in any Sonic fan's game collection.

• Sonic: Before the Sequel
• Sonic Fusion
• Sonic Axiom
• Sonic Worlds Level Collab

See you at next SAGE! Maybe by then that lazy, opinionated wanker Murky, or Merkin, or whatever he calls himself, will have released his engine.

SAGE 2011 Reviews (Part III)

It's hardly a secret that I'm not too fond of modern Sonic. I haven't loved anything of the Sonic brand released after 1996, and haven't even liked anything since Sonic Adventure 2 (short segments of Sonic Rush Adventure excepted). Yeah, I'm a grinch. But I'm gonna try to be fair at least to my fellow Sonic fangamers who do like modern Sonic and use those kinds of elements in their projects.

Sonic Inferno

Sonic Inferno is a demo of a single (rather short) act, but there are several characters to choose from: Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow. (Tails and Chaos are present in the select screen, but inaccessible. One assumes they'll be ready in the next demo quite soon.)

The single act is called "Engine Base", which sets one's expectations up for an original (if a little generic) zone, but those are let down when the title card sweeps away to reveal this:

...It's Route 99, from Sonic Advance 3. Yes, it has a different layout, but c'mon, guys. When we made the Scrap Brain demo for Sonic Time Twisted, at least we had the decency to advertise it as such!

But I digress. Sonic Inferno's engine is robust and quite a few features are implemented - magnet shield, homing attack, Knuckles' climbing/gliding, Advance-style attacks on a secondary button, etc. It's really quite nice overall.

But considering how there's hardly anything new (and I use that "hardly" out of charity) and it's shorter than Sonic after touching the shrink laser from Metallic Madness Zone, there's not a whole lot of reason to play this one unless you're already following the project and are interested to see how the it's progressing. For pure entertainment value, look elsewhere.

Sonic Fusion

I reviewed Sonic Fusion at last year's SAGE, and was impressed, but was plagued by some control incompatibilities that prevented me from accessing all the features. For some reason it thought the Down button was continually pressed or something, making it impossible to select Knuckles on the character select screen or even perform the Spin Dash.

All of that's in the past now, I'm relieved to say, and I was able to fully enjoy this year's demo. And there's a lot to enjoy - 8 zones, 3 fully implemented characters, a mission mode, and even online multiplayer.

The story mode is really cool, and feels like playing a 2D entry in the Sonic Adventure series. The zones themselves are expertly crafted and a joy to play, and as I said last year they equal or top the Sonic Advance series.

Unfortunately the similarity with the Dimps developed titles extends to the physics as well, with a floaty jump and rolling that slows you down instead of speeding you up. Fortunately, while I would prefer classic physics, there's never a moment in Sonic Fusion where these things become a problem. The levels always play smoothly and there's nothing that feels cheap or unfair.

This game just has so much polish, so much heart, and so many cool elements all brought together with one of the best overall presentations I've seen in a Sonic fangame. You can tell it's a labour of love, and I urge you to try it out. If this is just the demo, we can all expect the finished game to be one of the coolest ever.

Sonic NXT

Last year, Sonic NXT was hardly more fun to play with than a rabid wolverine juggling poison chainsaws. Since then it has an impressive amount of progress, becoming a respectable engine with a lot of the modern trappings: homing attack targets, combo scoring, boost attack, etc.

However, it runs with a system-mangling amount of slowdown on my machine so I can't evaluate it all that well. My impression, though, is that there's nothing really that exciting or new, and that it is bogged down with a heapin' helpin' of unnecessaries. I always raise a critical eyebrow when I unzip the archive to find several megabytes of physics DLLs spilling out like so many packing peanuts. If you can't make a 2D Sonic game without relying on PhysXCore, maybe you're in the wrong line of business.

I guess for this one I'll just go with "no comment".

Next time I'll go on about Sonic Worlds Level Collab, Sonic 2 Retro Remix, and whatever odds and ends I can scrape together.

SAGE 2011 Reviews (Part II)

Sonic and Friends 2

Sonic and Friends 2 is nearly complete with 11 levels, and the first thing I noticed was that those levels are huge. They aren't laid out like a traditional Sonic game, though - they feel a lot more boxy and remind me of the kinds of things I used to see in the earlier days of Sonic fangaming. They are by no means bad, though, and I quite like the first few acts. The readme file indicates that the later levels are less complete, and they are decidedly less fun, with cheaper enemy placement and less to do.

I'm quite impressed with the engine, too, especially since it doesn't appear to be any of the usual suspects but an entirely original one. It's not 100% accurate (what ever is?) but it's solid and smooth and I encountered no collision bugs. My personal acid test for a Sonic engine is how the ledge balancing and pushing up against walls works, and neither of those features are implemented here, much like in Sonic Advance 2. That kind of bothers me, but the jumping feels right and I guess that's the main thing. I never found any slowdown, either.

My biggest beef is with the music, which is mostly borrowed, but where there actually are original compositions they are repetitive and pretty grating. There is the feature for custom soundtracks, though, which is nice - so I'm not gonna dock too many points for the cruddy music.

I'd say give this one a go. It progresses nicely in a sort of Sonic 3 & Knuckles way, and feels like playing through a proper game. The later, imcomplete levels can be a little frustrating, so you might want to stop immediately when you begin to weary of it rather than pushing on. That way you can leave it with a good feeling, and play the final portion when the finished build is out.

Sonic Axiom

I love the new title screen; a definite improvement over last year.

A team of highly trained tapdancing butlers are still cleaning up the jizz from when I played Sonic Axiom last year. The prospect of a completed version at this year's SAGE eclipsed my excitement for Sonic Generations and Taxman's Sonic CD, and was even able to temporarily postpone my pathetic pining for the Sonic 1 & 2 Soundtrack, which is no mean feat.

Strangely, though, this year I think I've soured on it a little. Probably because I had a whole year for expectations to build and my memories to go rosy, this time around I found quite a bit of it to be, well... lame.

Firstly I'm really disappointed by the change from Calcified Caverns to Mineral Mine.

Left: Calcified Cavern; Right: Mineral Mine

It was my favourite level from the 2010 demo, with its beautiful music, fun switch puzzles, and overall atmosphere. Now it feels like a whole different level, and it's not as good. Waah.

In addition to that little letdown, I continually noticed other issues with the game that kept the experience from being pure unadulterated fun: everything has huge hitboxes making parts of the game totally unfair; the physics feel really weird causing too much overcompensation; a lot of the objects and animations seem really poorly programmed, jittering and locking up; and (in the nitpick category) the rings don't make sparkles when collected!

A particularly apt example of a choppy object is the Bonus Stage glowing orb - it's brutally basic and barely does a passable job. It makes me cringe, because I'd made those work in even my crappiest earliest engine, and trying to make SAGE in time is no excuse because I added them in an hour or two. I refuse to believe I'm superhuman, so Sonic Axiom has no excuse!

It's not all bad. The levels are still beautiful - easily the best use of repurposed graphics I've ever seen. The layouts are brilliant, giving nods to Sonic CD while still feeling original. The music is pretty good, too, though personally I would have preferred something funkier rather than so mellow.

If I had the free time, I'd jump at the chance to port this to AeStHete. The content here is too good; it deserves better than a choppy framerate and physics that fight you. Like Sonic Genesis, it's a brilliant game struggling to overcome a less-than-stellar implementation.

I doubt that this is the last revision we'll ever see, so there's still hope for the future. Regardless of what happens, though, Sonic Axiom is good enough to deserve a permanent home in my game collection, and I'd still recommend it for anyone else's.

Sonic: Before the Sequel

Sonic BTS is advertised to take place between the events of Sonic 1 and 2, and chronicle the first launch of the Death Egg. Because of this, I was expecting a game that cleaved to a Sonic 1 or 2 style at the expense of any kind of originality.

Boy, was that illusion ever shattered.

Instead, Sonic BTS is far and away the most creative and entertaining Sonic fan game I've played since Eggman Hates Furries. The bosses, enemies, level tropes, gimmicks - all of them kept me guessing and put a huge smile on my face. It even has mildly humorous Flash cinemas, for pete's sake! Who couldn't love that?

The game borrows sound effects and music from Kirby, Yoshi's Island, and Ristar, which also makes me smile. The creator (LakeFeperd) must be my kind of guy!

This is definitely my favourite of SAGE this year, a treat I wasn't expecting at all that really picked my spirits up after the mild disappointment of Sonic Axiom.

I don't want to say anything else about it, because that would spoil it. Go play it yourself and remember to thank me for pointing you to it. =P

Beautiful!

Next time I'll be looking at some of the modern styled offerings. Stay tuned! (said the barman to the guitar.)

SAGE 2011 Reviews (Part 1)

And now, INPO, here is the first batch of my reviews of the games on offer at this year's SAGE. There will be more over the next couple of days, but don't expect a review of all the showings; I'm only interested in the Sonic ones and even then there are a few that don't catch my fancy.

Sonic Small World

I'm impressed that this is actually a complete functioning level with a handful of objects such as a trampoline and moving platforms. But there's nothing here to really blow me away - or anyone else, for that matter.

I don't have much affinity for 3D Sonic engine tests. The effort necessary to make a 3D game even playable, let alone good, usually means that all other departments get neglected. As a result, they are usually very bland and not entertaining, and Sonic Small World is no exception. I'm not going to say it's bad - it's not - but it was probably far more fun for the creator to make, exercising their skills, than it will ever be for an audience to play.

As basically all of the artworks and other elements are ripped from other sources, there's nothing really new or creative on offer, either. I'd give it a pass if I were you, unless you're a 3D Sonic engine test enthusiast.

Sonic Zero

I reviewed this one last year and it hasn't changed much - but it sure has been expanded! There are now 3 working acts and a boss (albeit an embarrassingly easy one).

Though I was lukewarm last year, calling it generic, I've warmed to it this year. I really like the mix of elements, from Sonic's new sprite set, to the appearance of the Golden Shield from Sonic 3D Blast, to the Battle Kukkus from Tails Adventure. I was really enjoying myself, and even though I harbour a certain amount of hate for the Sonic Worlds engine (the way it handles corners and edges is just ass) it doesn't seem to mar this game too badly. The level design works around a lot of the issues quite cleverly.

I am disappointed by some minor changes from last year. The music has been traded out with another remix of Chaotix's Isolated Island (and not a very expert one, at that), which is so overused it makes me groan every time I hear it. And there's a rumble feature that - on my system, at least - makes the identical annoying jolt with every spring and enemy you hit.

I do really appreciate the highly detailed and user-friendly control customisation screen, though. I am sick of games that leave joypad users high and dry, so the Sonic Zero team deserves commendation for rectifying that.

And one last thing - why is the intermittent drowning warning (which is traditionally a chime) the Sonic CD drowning countdown sound effect? It's a ridiculous change that makes anyone who's familiar with Sonic CD feel like they're drowning any time they happen to be underwater for a moment.

The good far outweighs any complaints I may have with this one, though, so I definitely recommend you check it out. If this ever progresses beyond the "single green zone demo" stage, it'll be a keeper.

Sonic Run 3

This is either a joke, part of a conspiracy to make Game Maker look bad, or made by a developer that needs 5 or 10 more years of practise before they should ever set foot at another SAGE.

I won't complain about the visuals - they're actually sort of cute - but the gameplay is totally borked. Which I could excuse if there were complicated loops or something - but the whole game is made of simple boxes. Even then, there's a terrible bug upon all horizontal collisions, making each jump a chore that requires you to stop and start.

This would be better suited to RAGE, I'm afraid. Don't waste precious minutes downloading it.

Madcap Grotto

Made by two members of the community I've long respected, Dimension Warped and my bud Overbound, and with music by the inimitable Karl "Sonicesque" Brueggemann, this single level demo delivers a veritable Sonic playground. It has more gimmicks than a sitcom with failing ratings, and when it comes to Sonic zones, that's a very good thing. Along with those gimmicks, a posse of clever new enemy types and an impressively animated boss make for a greatly satisfying experience.

What makes a Sonic zone live and breathe for me is when it has a tonne of original stuff for Sonic and his friends to actually do, rather than the all-too-common "look guys I made Tropical Trope Zone Act 345656frghgjkjkf and the Ring Monitor sound is different!" Be warned though, at least one bit of gadgetry in Madcap Grotto will inspire rage unless you remember the worthy lesson the Barrel of Doom taught us all. =P

It's not all roses, though. Some of the usual Sonic Worlds issues rear their ugly heads, and there was plenty of slowdown on my machine (which, to be fair, isn't that high-end). Some of the gimmicks had a bug or two, one of which actually forced me to restart, and the boss - as cool as I think it is - is in a large arena making it difficult to keep track of. Wandering around stupidly while a boss shoots you from offscreen happens to be one of my pet peeves - there's a reason Sonic game don't normally do this, you know!

That aside, I'd definitely recommend this audio-visual and gameplay feast.

Project Spikepig

The plaintext manual that accompanied the Project Spikepig executable I found to be incredibly witty, but I'm afraid that's the extent of anything good I have to say about it. The level trope is generic, the level layout is - as the manual admits - "slow, nebulous, confusing, complicated and made by a drunk man", the music is frankly terrible, and the engine is plain vanilla Sonic Worlds at its worst. Give this one a pass.

...I suppose the graphics do have a certain charm to them, as well. But it's not enough to save it.

Sonic Gear

Look at that shot and tell me honestly whether it's an improvement over the original:

I didn't even bother playing this for more than a few minutes. It was pretty dire.

Sonic GML

This is such a clumsy mess I have no idea where to begin. It's weird because there's so much content and so much "completed", it must have been worked on for a long time. But there's absolutely no polish or charm whatsoever.

A pass, then.

Sonic Mobius

Sonic Mobius, judging from the material at its homepage, has a lot of potential. This demo, however, is yet another "single green zone demo". As such it would be unfair of me to evaluate it. I'll only say this - I don't think it was ready to be shown off.

Sorry it's got to be so abrupt. Next time I'll be giving my thoughts on some of the heavier hitters: Sonic Axiom, Sonic and Friends 2, and Sonic: Before the Sequel. Those will be in greater depth.

Expo-sition

SAGE, a.k.a. the Sonic Amateur Games Expo, is now in full swing. Unfortunately it's coinciding with a particularly busy and tumultuous time in my life, but that seems increasingly to be the case with me. Nevertheless, I'm going to try and review most of this year's offerings as I did last year, while they're still relevant.

I'm also going to review the Hacking Contest entries, but since I'm a judge this year I'm going to do that once the results have been comfortably revealed through the proper channels. Anything else would be bad form, doncha know.

This year, for the first time, I'm actually involved with one of the games on display (Sonic Fan Remix didn't make it to SAGE last year thanks to a poorly timed illness on my end). So do a bloke a favour and visit the Sonic Time Twisted booth. Said bloke being you, of course, because there's sum good eatin's t'be had thar.

I think the showing this year is phenomenal, and I can't wait to get started.

Speaking of Hidden Palace...

I made a remix!

I wanted to make it sound like the opening to a wushu movie; it could use some more polish but meh.

Y'all win an internet cookie if you can ascertain where I lifted the drum sample from. =P

A Musical Mystery Still Unsolved

While Michael Jackson's involvement with Sonic 3's soundtrack seems to get all the press, the mysteries surrounding Sonic 2's soundtrack by Masato Nakamura capture my interest to a much greater degree. With the release of the Sonic 1&2 Original Soundtrack imminent, I'm hoping some of these mysteries will finally be put to rest by the demo material that's promised to be included.

There are many questions I'd like answered about Sonic 2's music. For example, were the 2-Player tunes originally intended for zones that didn't make the cut, but included in their current capacity in order to avoid discarding Masato Nakamura music for which Sega had already payed good money? But today I want to discuss a single issue in particular: The strange and wonderful subject that is the Hidden Palace music.

In the interest of full disclosure I must admit that my take on all things Hidden Palace is quite aberrant due to the circumstances of my experience. Back when I first played Sonic 2 the only things I knew about the beta and the removed zones were those titbits which I chanced across in gaming magazines like Sega Visions. Any knowledge of the Simon Wai prototype and the Sonic hacking scene would have to wait over a decade for me to dip my toes into the Internet. For whatever reasons, I just never encountered any screenshots of Sonic 2's Hidden Palace, but only a brief mention of it by name in the letters section of a gaming mag. The only visual evidence of missing levels I saw was this shot (later confirmed to be a mockup made by Sega):

Completing the trifecta was an unused song in Sonic 2's sound test, number $10 (that's hexadecimal for 16, for all you non-computer-obsessed types). Between the name Hidden Palace, the screenshot of a missing zone, and an unused song, I made the only assumption I could given the paucity of evidence (and the mental faculties of a 7-year-old): All these bits of info were related to the same zone. In my defense, Sonic 3 had a 2-Player level called Desert Palace, which - using logic a conspiracy theorist would be proud of - I thought helped cement matters.

Once I found the glorious resource that is Sonic Retro years later and opened the floodgates of info on the Sonic 2 Beta, I had to update my mistaken understanding. However, this didn't help erase over a decade of picturing that desert zone with that music and that name. Boohoo for me - I used to pronounce "echidna" wrong, too. Sometimes you just have to change your mind and move on.

But I was invested for another reason. As evinced by the "about me" box in the sidebar of this blog, my main project is "a Sonic the Hedgehog fan game that retells the story of the original Mega Drive titles in unprecedented detail and depth." (If that doesn't sound bombastic, what does? =P) Part of that unprecedented detail and depth is the inclusion of material from the beta versions of the games - an idea which has been done to death by now but which I still wish to be part of my own project. If I include both the desert zone from that screenshot and Hidden Palace in my remake, I want to give them the right music. I don't want my choices to be influence by bullshit theories, not from my 7-year-old self nor from an internet forum. I want the music for each zone to be as accurate a reflection of the developer's original intent as possible (perhaps mixed with the slightest dash of what I deem to be most apposite as an artist).

Anyway, this isn't exactly the subject of this article. I've already made a thread thinking aloud about whether or not the unused track was intended for Hidden Palace or not. When I was informed that it was indeed the song associated with the zone when the zone is accessed (through hacking) in the retail version of Sonic 2, I was content with that. No, my subject is a different, but related, question about Hidden Palace's music.

This question arises because of a hack known as Sonic 2 Long Version. In this hack, Hidden Palace (among other cut zones) is restored to a playable state, and sound test $10 is the music it's given. Here's a video of it in action:

As a slavering Masato Nakamura fanboy it pains me to say this, but that song is really inappropriate for that zone. It's heavy, sluggish, boring, and feels detached from the action.

Such an assertion would fall squarely in opinion territory, if it not for some objective facts. Before I get to those, though, let's just take a look and listen at how Hidden Palace feels in the Sonic 2 beta:

Here, it has the tune which is known to players of the final build as Mystic Cave 2-Player. I would argue that this song is far more fitting, despite the fact that it is still unusual for a "zone music" from a compositional standpoint (it's a stretto fugue that lacks the emotional dynamism of other zones, perhaps because the bassline refuses to change chord throughout the song's duration).

Of course one can hardly learn anything from the music assignments in the Sonic 2 beta; Oil Ocean plays the Casino Night 2-Player theme, even though Oil Ocean's theme is present and accounted for in the sound test. If Oil Ocean Zone's music from the final was not intended for that zone from the get go, I'm a doughnut. (Some folks suggest it may have been intended for the desert zone, but that's nonsense - the desert zone is an American desert, replete with cacti and buttes, not an Arabian desert.)

It's unusual for a Nakamura "zone music" to not be fitting. As stated in this interview (and also by Takashi Iizuka in the Sonic Jam strategy guide), Nakamura didn't just compose a bag of music which was then alotted to each zone like a jolly neighbour handing out Halloween candy. He took a gander at concept art and even test footage of the zones, then composed themes for each with close attention payed to their pace and atmosphere. These songs need to encourage what Sonic does best: running and jumping. As such they are all flavoured with rock, funk, and jazz with time signatures that drive the action along. None of them do anything boneheaded like being a waltz which suggests endless circular motion; no, that's reserved for the stately rotating Sonic 1 Special Stage where it fits like a glove.

Or do they? Let's take another look at sound test $10. Yes, folks - it's a waltz. Just like the Sonic 1 Special Stage. Hidden Palace, instead of having a respectable theme that encourages the actions and motions most likely to be found in a zone, it has a slow, dragging theme that - while a beautiful tune - suggests an unchanging environment.

Yes, this is one of those objective facts I promised earlier. Hidden Palace is a waltz. Say what you will about opinions and bullshit internet theories, but it's pretty incontrovertible. Furthermore, it's the only "zone music" that is (Death Egg's music doesn't count, because it's not a full zone). The only other waltz in the Nakamura Sonic canon? The Sonic 1 Special Stage theme.

Using this passing similarity (which has been noted before) as a starting point, I decided to check deeper into the two songs to see if there were any other similarities. Perhaps I would learn something interesting; after all, Nakamura is known to reuse motifs in songs that convey similar themes. You don't have to take my word for it, either. Not only is it well known that the title theme, invincibility theme, ending theme, and Super Sonic theme are all based on the same composition (one might consider it "Sonic's theme"), but there are other examples.

Robotnik's Sonic 1 theme and Final Zone (here, the arpeggio, melody, and accompaniment are all similar):

Robotnik's theme and the final boss theme in Sonic 2 also revisit the militaristic percussion and have related structures. Nakamura knew exactly how to evoke Robotnik, in the same way John Williams might reuse instruments and motifs to suggest the Empire in Star Wars.

Super Sonic's theme and the Sonic 2 Special Stage:

That sound evokes the unbridled power of the Chaos Emeralds. It's no mistake that it's part of Super Sonic's theme and the theme of the stages in which the Chaos Emeralds that power him are collected.

So are there similarities between Hidden Palace Zone and the Sonic 1 Special Stage beyond that of both being waltzes? Well, yes. They both have similar chords progressions, as well as overall superficial similarities: they're both comparatively short, and are made of a main melody that loops twice before a much shorter coda brings them back around to the beginning (this has also been noted before). But the most damning evidence is a literally reused motif!

This is barely audible in the original song with all the other tracks going, but it's really there nonetheless!

This leaves no doubt in my mind that sound test $10 was written by Nakamura with the explicit intention to hark back to the Special Stages of the first game. I would also bet money that it was never meant to be heard behind a zone with traditional gameplay.

And that's as far as I'm willing to go... on the record. If I give myself over to speculation, I would say this: What we know as Mystic Cave 2-Player was indeed composed for Hidden Palace. But as development progressed it became clear that Hidden Palace would not make the cut - at least not as a full zone. At some point in Sonic 2's development Hidden Palace was given a makeover, giving it a purpose similar to that of the zone from Sonic & Knuckles with the same name. Yuji Naka as much as confirms this. When the zone's new purpose was decided, Nakamura was conscripted to compose a new, more suitable them for it. As the zone was involved with the Chaos Emerald lore, he composed a song which borrowed heavily from Sonic 1's Special Stage. But when it was decided to scrap the zone altogether, the newly madeover Hidden Palace was never included in the ROM, even though the song assignment was updated. The displaced song was given to Mystic Cave 2-Player, because - let's not quibble here - the zone has a very similar feel to Hidden Palace (underground, brown, green, and purple).

But relying on speculation is unwise. Like Carl Sagan, I try not to think with my gut. For all I know sound test $10 was composed for a rotating Special Stage that never made it into Sonic 2. Or maybe Nakamura had a brainfart and just composed the world's most ill-fitting tune for Hidden Palace. This is why I'm so excited for the Sonic 1&2 Original Soundtrack release. On October 19th maybe some of these long-standing mysteries will be cleared up!

Until then I will rest happy knowing that I discovered an interesting connection between two songs in Nakamura's Sonic canon. And if it's been common knowledge in the community for years now, well then won't I feel silly! =P