Sonic the Hedgehog 2/Trivia


 * Executive Meddling: Sonic Team planned for eighteen stages but producers wanted to get the game out in time for the Christmas season which forced Sonic Team to scrap several stages.
 * Urban Legend of Zelda: Several planned levels were Dummied Out, such as Wood Zone (eventually recycled as Mushroom Hill in Sonic and Knuckles), Death Egg (all of the level before the final boss fights was cut) and Hidden Palace (whose soundtrack and some data survives in the final cartridge). A lot of Wild Mass Guessing has surrounded these, including the idea that originally Sonic 2 was supposed to have the time-travel gimmick of Sonic CD and the Dust Hill Zone (which eventually became the Mystic Cave Zone) was a Bad Future of Emerald Hill, and so forth. A particularly mysterious cut level is the gloriously named Genocide City Zone.
 * Genocide City was actually supposed to be a single act zone, and was replaced by the third act of Metropolis Zone, Or So I Heard.
 * Genocide City was eventually renamed Cyber City Zone once the Japanese developers understood what the word actually meant. However the lost zone did make a comeback of sorts in Sonic Spinball.