Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis)

This page details development materials of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis).

Sub-Pages#

Tom Payne ArchivesScrapped badniks, remnants of Sand Shower, and a... guy being shot?!

Spring 2023 Discoveries#

To do: Add the early Cyber City assets, they were mentioned previously in an early iteration of this section but not provided. Move the artwork given to DiC alongside the notes from Yasushi Yamaguchi to the Concept Art page. Add the sources for the quotes with proper formatting, here's a list of them, feel free to add any that were missed.

Tails Concept art sent to DiC#

Various concept art of Tails sent to DiC by Sega of America for the production of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM).

Notes from Yasushi Yamaguchi#

Tails' designer, Yasushi Yamaguchi, also mentioned several things about the artwork shared with DiC.

"These are the earliest character set-up drawings. Since the development period for Sonic 2 was short, we used these drawings as a base and brushed up the design as we created the game."

"You can see that the pictures on the game screen have changed considerably between the beta version title screen and the final version."

"The character designs were stabilized when we returned to Japan from creating the manual illustrations to create the official character setting drawings."

He also answered several questions in regards to the artwork and other Sonic promotional material.

Q: "Did you make that early sprite art for Tails? Tails' colours appear to be different than in your finalized design. These early design colours appear on official Sega merchandise in 1992 as well." (shows photos of early US promotional with Tails as an exanple)

"I have no knowledge of the pictures or figures in the photos. At the time, Sega of America ignored the opinions of the development staff. They did not listen to our requests for the number of fingers on Sonic in the package art, or our request to fix his legs to be straight."

"The data was immediately discarded, so it is a mystery why it is still there. The printer at STI did not have good performance, so the colors are quite different. The printout is only for the programmer to get the coordinate data and size, not for checking the exact color."

"I don't remember much about it since it was over 30 years ago, but I think maybe the pixel art on the printout is a test pattern for size and what the Sonic 1 color palette can represent. The results were not good, so I immediately created a new color palette."

Q: "When you say that the colour palette was quickly discarded, do you mean that Tails' mouth and chest were changed from peach to white almost immediately after the pixel art was made? I'm not sure why 1992 Japanese media also uses it."

"Sega in Japan also did not have a department to properly manage the characters until I returned to Japan and finished the development of the SONIC CD."

"The quality of the promotional materials that Sonic ordered from outside in Japan was also disparate, so we created a solid document and Mr. Oshima, Mr. Miyake, Mr. Hoshino and I began to do quality checks little by little."

"Miles' test pattern with different colors should have been used only two or three days after the character design in line drawings was completed, and the animation pattern should have already been created in December 1991 with the current color palette."

"The existence of this pixel art was so short-lived that I myself had forgotten about it until it was pointed out to me this time, and only the development staff would have seen it, so I do not know why figures such as the one in the photo were created based on this color data."

Q: "I'm not sure why Sega of America sent this early pixel art to the animation company DiC in April 1992, around 5 months after the colours had been changed. Or why these colours appear on other merchandise."

"Perhaps the data for Miles' painting was created in January 1992. I would have to check the date of the saved DISC data to be sure. However, I only remember that I was correcting Sonic's animation pattern in December 1991."

"I must have started working on Miles' animation pattern right after that...I spent about a month each for each character to create them."

It's possible that the scan of the spritesheet were darkened, and the correct palette could be revealed when brightening up the image, reveals that a Sonic Crackers-esque palette was used. A similar leftover was found in the raw palette index in the Simon Wai prototype, which just so happens to contain the darker colors that Metropolis Zone had.

Masato Nakamura's Demos#

In 2011, composer Masato Nakamura released SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 1&2 SOUNDTRACK, containing not only the final in-game soundtracks, but also his original demo tracks for Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. They were performed on a Yamaha SY99 synthesizer. They were recorded at a slow speed, so that it would be easier to get them working in the game.