Genocide City Zone

From Sonic Retro

Cyber City Zone concept art.

Genocide City Zone is a scrapped level from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It was meant to be a single level which used the map that ultimately became Metropolis Zone Act 3. Concept art of it has been released revealing that the level's name was originally Cyber City. Due to the level being mechanically themed, instead of grim and deadly as the name implied, the theory that this magazine clip referenced the boss of Genocide City seems unlikely.

It is listed in the level select menu in the Simon Wai prototype but selecting it simply brings the player to a empty level. Chemical Plant Zone music plays, and the player will simply fall to their death at the bottom of the stage. Enabling debug reveals that the only objects in this level are the two default objects, a ring and a teleport monitor.

According to Sonic 2 level designer Tom Payne, the name "Genocide City" being chosen was due to the development team's "not quite complete grasp of the English language." During an interview with Payne, he went on to say that the team "may have been looking for a name that sounded dangerous," which resulted in the name "Genocide City" appearing in one of the Sonic 2 betas. It is now believed that Cyber City was the name conceptualized later on in order to remedy the zone's former name.

According to ICEknight, Tom Payne used the theme of the level to create some graphics for an unreleased game called B-Bomb. He then used them in the Sonic Spinball level, The Machine.[1]

Info From Staff

Tom Payne, the zone artist in charge of this level, stated that it was dropped before it was even started. Instead, he worked on the third act of Metropolis. In the Sonic Jam strategy guide Yuji Naka stated basically that the third act of Metropolis Zone used the layout meant for Genocide City and that it was meant to be a single act. Here is the quote in full:

“	Act 3 (of Metropolis Zone) was going to be a different Zone that would only appear once (one act)... We had already finished the map, and it would have been a shame to waste it, so this is what we went with.	„
—Yuji Naka, from the Sonic Jam strategy guide