- Back to: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Simon Wai prototype)/Comparisons.
Metropolis Zone is noticeably unfinished in the Simon Wai prototype. While the layout is mostly there, the Zone has no Rings and is filled with navigational glitches, making turning on debug a must.
The Zone has a busier background than the final game, making some sections tough to see.
General comparisons
There is a Fourth Act which is exactly the same as Act 3 except Sonic starts in a different spot. This can be accessed by hacking.
Act 1
While the stage looks promising, it doesn't take long to find a problem. These metal crushers (which exist here instead of a rotating net) cannot crush Sonic and Tails by pushing them into the ceiling - they only kill them if they go underneath.
These pistons are slower, and don't throw the player very high, which means they'll get stuck at this spot without debug.
Some 3D rotating nets don't work. The player will fall right through this one.
But this one further down the Act works fine.
Sonic just can't seem to die.
The nut keeps going up.
Make the wrong move at one point and the player will fall down this pit. This highlights one of the Zone's biggest omissions - it doesn't loop indefinitely on the vertical axis. In the final game, pits cannot exist.
Some time later, the Act abruptly ends. The length of the level doesn't fall far short of the final, but there's a huge empty void suggesting the boundary wasn't set yet.
At the very edge of the Act is a loopback to the beginning. There's nothing to see here, though.
Map
|
| Simon Wai prototype
|
|
| Final game
|
Act 2
Act 2 introduces lava. It doesn't work.
Stand on a platform and the player can be completely submerged without taking damage.
Once again the level doesn't loop vertically, and a 3D mesh is replaced with a metal tube. This one has no entrance from the left-hand side, so it doesn't work properly. In fact, Act 2 has no 3D mesh objects at all - the level is designed more around platforming on cogs.
Conveyor belts work in Metropolis, unlike Wood Zone and Casino Night Zone.
Like Act 1, the stage stops after a while and presents us with a void.
But again, the loopback can be reached on the far right of the stage.
Map
|
| Simon Wai prototype
|
|
| Final game
|
Act 3
Act 3 has the strangest objects in Metropolis Zone - these diagonal rhombus-shaped lifts. They go up, down, left and right, and follow a specified pattern. The collision surrounding these sections is wonky however, so it's very easy for Sonic and Tails to jump through walls and be crushed.
Only two of these squashing machines exist in the final game, and they're tucked away in the bottom left of the third Act. In the Simon Wai prototype, there are a few more dotted around.
While all three Acts have their fair share of layout differences, Act 3 saw the most radical changes from this point foward. Never in the final game will the player see cogs arranged like this.
Act 3 also has a large gap to cross, but this time it gives the player a platform. In the final this would take them to the boss, but here it just keeps going until the player dies.
Though if the player debugs their way up, they'll find yet another end-of-Act loopback.
Map
|
| Simon Wai prototype
|
|
| Final game
|
References
