November 24, 2010

Sonic 2: 18 Years On

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 is a platform game by SEGA, the sequel to the debut Sonic game of 1991. Unlike the first Sonic game which was programmed in Japan, Sonic 2 was developed in the United States at the Sega Technical Institute. Released on November 24, 1992, it was the fastest- and highest-selling video game of its time, and continued to hold that title for years.

The combined Japanese/American design team would certainly influence the game's graphical style and give it a look and feel distinct to its predecessor, as the screenshots below show.

The verdict: 18 years on, it's still a winner!



The title screen, and a new playable character – Tails the Fox, created by Yasushi Yamaguchi, who drew and animated just about everything in the game.



Emerald Hill Zone, level 1. Its best feature is the checkered 3D 'barrel roll'. Tim Skelly, the Art Director, had to work on this 3D feature until the checks lined up exactly.



Chemical Plant Zone, level 2. This level is infamous for allegedly triggering seizures in some players (what the press termed 'photo-epilepsy'). This was supposedly brought on by the bright background combined with the high speed sections. Beats me – I had no problems with it.



Aquatic Ruin Zone, level 3, the obligatory 'underwater' level.



Casino Night Zone, level 4. An amazingly fun level; Sega got so much positive feedback about it that they decided to develop Sonic Spinball, a pinball game, soon after. This level was Yamaguchi's and it looks very different from how it looks in prototype versions. I should add that the music in this level really adds to the atmosphere.



Hill Top Zone, level 5. Basically a simple reworking of Emerald Hill.



Mystic Cave Zone, level 6. Sometimes after Sonic jumps off the vine, Tails continues to hang there.



Oil Ocean Zone, level 7. The foreground art is by level artist Craig Stitt, the background is by Yamaguchi. This screenshot is from a hack. There's now an extensive Sonic hacking scene; most hacks are too buggy and not worth playing, but a few are done by scarily talented people. I took this screenshot from a hack to show the 'checkered ball' which was in earlier versions, but later taken out. You hit a switch, the ball comes out from the ground and...you can stand on it. And that's about it.



Wing Fortress Zone. After the 8th level, Metropolis Zone, there's a short plane level (Sky Chase), then you get this. Tails is the one who normally flies the plane.



Death Egg Zone, and the final boss.



The ending sequence.



The Special Stage. Tim Skelly drew the 3D half-pipe. He says he could have done a full 360˚ vertical loop, but they ran out of space (the game was an 8-megabit [1MB] cartridge).



Sonic fans know what Sonic 2 was like in unfinished form thanks to a ROM of an earlier version (the 'beta version') which appeared online in 1998. The level select revealed some levels which later got scrapped. One of these was Wood Zone, which was set in a forest and done by Brenda Ross. It's unplayable without debug mode and is very glitchy, as you can see.



A level set in a desert (also by Brenda Ross) was also scrapped, but it's not even in the beta version. All that exists is a screenshot that Brenda mocked up for the press (however, she has said that this level was up and running, but they didn't have time to add it to the game). Hackers have put together this whole level based on the art style seen in that one screenshot (like I said, scarily talented) by finding unused artwork buried in the ROM. There have been endless debates over the level's name. Most people call it Dust Hill Zone, including Brenda Ross.



Brenda said the desert level was designed to have a palette change, so the yellow sand became white snow, and the cacti became Christmas trees. This hack screenshot shows what it might have looked like.



The most famous lost level is called Hidden Palace Zone, done by Craig Stitt. It was supposed to be a 'secret' level, and it appeared in so many pre-release screenshots, but was not in the final game, most likely due to time constraints and additional design work being required. Hidden Palace is in the beta version, and it's a great looking level – unlike the other scrapped levels, it has rings, enemies and most platforms implemented – but cannot be completed. The fully complete version in the hacks is fun to play, and it still remains a shame the level was cut. The music it had was very moody and eerie and fit the visuals really well.



A large Emerald in Hidden Palace. For a while, there was all this speculation that this was the 'Master Emerald' (as seen in 1994's Sonic & Knuckles, the follow-up to Sonic 3, which also had a level called Hidden Palace, totally unlike this one). Craig Stitt said much later that it was just there to stop up the tube – Sonic would break it open like he would any other smashable object. The Emerald in the beta version is unbreakable, though.

All images © SEGA/Sonic Team 1992.

November 18, 2010

Quarantine


Thanks go out to Chris at CKGD, fellow designer and friend for his review of the Quarantine album. You can read it on his blog here.

Chris was kind enough to allow his artwork which he did for an unrelated CD artwork project to be used for the 4th China 5 album Republic in 2008.

© CKGD 2008

As mentioned before only two new songs have been uploaded so far but there will be more to come. I also received this comment from Ian Roure in New York City. Ian is the singer and guitarist in a great band called The Larch.

"Hey Pete – congrats on finishing the CD! "I particularly like 'Too Many Sushi'."

Thanks Ian! Speaking of that song – I was thinking of submitting it to that Snow-something-or-other competition where the best song sent in gets a video professionally shot, but never did in the end. I'll be keeping an eye out for the winning song though! I hope to plan and shoot a video for "Too Many Sushi" this summer. Wanna be in it?

November 13, 2010

Desktop Wallpaper


Here's my second desktop wallpaper calendar design. I know it's next month's calendar, but I wanted to start the next one straight away. So, you'll have to wait half a month for this to become relevant.

It can also be seen here on Devo, where it has a heading, description and other fun stuff.

November 10, 2010

Be A Nut


Beernut the Cow was a character from the early, early days of the story/comic that eventually became Palace Club, back when it still had its 'talking animals'. My sister and I created the character's look and personality, sometime in the early '90s.

Back then, she was supposed to be Maxine's 'foster child' (don't ask, for God's sake) and had her own TV show, a Krusty the Clown-like affair that screened episodes of an R-rated kids' cartoon (again, don't ask) called Ruxpin, which would incite kids to commit murder. She also used a pillow instead of a litter box (usually while it was still on someone else's bed) and enjoyed kissing people but ended up suffocating them due to her large 'snout'.

These are the first two drawings of Beernut done since the '90s, as she never appeared in any Palace Club episode. I'd like to write her in somewhere though. I could use a subplot involving a hyperactive purple cow.

November 8, 2010

We Must Repeat!

Hey, I just redesigned the masthead; like it?

Our theme for the month of November 2010 is 'We must repeat': in other words, look back to the past and re-interpret it for the future. 'Repurposing', as those chin-stroking tosswinkles at Thr**dl*ss call it.

© SEGA 1994

I can't remember who sent me this, but it was before I got a Mac, so that person is probably dead. Anyway, it's obviously a scan from a Korean magazine. This is a piece of promo artwork for Sega's video game Sonic The Hedgehog 3, released February 2, 1994 and quite a remarkable piece of colour styling and airbrushing as well as character design (this is probably the best official drawing of Tails out of them all!).

I'm assuming this artwork was done in Japan because Yuji Naka wanted an all-Japanese team working on Sonic 3, despite the fact that 1992's multi-million-selling Sonic 2 featured level art done by American artists to give the game a more 'international' look. Oh well, the dude gets what he wants.

November 2, 2010

Little Friends III

John and John from They Might Be Giants.
(Photo on the left © Dan Coogan)

November 1, 2010

Souvenir

Now, when you design your wall panel, you have to touch base with the person on either side so your design elements overlap. But when they put the wall panels up they weren't even touching. There was like a metre gap between 'em. Oh sorry, wrong topic.
This illustration below was rejected from Airbury because I couldn't manage to fit a subplot in where Psyche somehow leaves the campus and goes for a nighttime ride through Sydney in the back of a fancy car holding an old-style German camera.
What can I say? What the comic drops, the blog picks up! Enjoy. It's on devoART, too.
By the way, my iPod played Gorillaz' "November Has Come" on shuffle today. How did it know??