Magazine Preview #3

Source: EGM
Alt. Source: GamePro, and others

This is the only picture released by Sega showing the desert level. There's nothing to compare to, because quite obviously this level doesn't exist in either of our prototypes or in the final version.

If Sonic's off-centerness, plus wrong zone's enemies, plus the seemingly impossible trajectory for Sonic to grab the two rings don't convince you the above image is fake, the following analysis will.

Scale the desert level picture so that the HUD has the same size as the one captured in Sonic 1 by an emulator. Superimpose it with a Sonic 1 screenshot, and notice the desert level picture's life icon is misplaced. What does it prove? The screen size of the desert level picture is not correct -- unless Sega moved up the life icon by 12 pixels, which was extremely unlikely. Therefore this picture is believed to be a mock-up.

Still don't believe it's a mock-up? The zone artist confirmed it when asked about Sonic's off-centerness:

"He was just dropped in for placement for the marketing folks. It was totally random and has nothing to do with any real gameplay."

― Brenda Ross, Dust Hill Zone Artist @ Sonic Database

Showing doctored pictures of games in development to the press is a common and acceptable practice within the game industry.

Lost Sprite

The crocodile in the picture can be found in our prototype ROM:

Seeing that Emerald Hill buzzers do appear in this picture, it's questionable whether the crocodile was really intended for this desert level or not. Brenda Ross, artist for this zone, said the following when asked why there'd be a crocodile in a desert:

"I don’t think there was one. It’s been 9 years, so I might not remember."

― Brenda Ross, Dust Hill Zone Artist @ Sonic Database

This crocodile might belong to Hidden Palace instead.

"It was used in HPZ when it was at an earlier stage in development, but since then the palette has changed, so some of the colours are incorrect."

 ― Nemesis, ROM Hacker @ Nemesis' Sonic hacking site

Therefore the existence of this enemy doesn't really prove there was ever a playable Dust Hill level in an earlier prototype.

Winter Zone

Interestingly, on the drawing board, this desert zone might have featured a palette change and turned it into a winter zone.

"The desert zone was as you see in that image, with cactus and assorted plants. It was designed to have a palette change, which turned the sand into snow, and you’d have a winter scene. We had to be fairly ingenious with such a limited palette. In the winter zone, (that’s what I call it), instead of cactus, I had created Christmas trees, which I thought looked kinda cool."

― Brenda Ross, Dust Hill Zone Artist @ Sonic Database

 

Desert Level = Dust Hill Zone? Unproved, and unprovable

While S2B has long abolished examining unprovable theories in favor of documenting provable facts, an exception is made in this case. The widespread belief that "Dust Hill is the desert level name" warrants investigation and documentation. This assumption can be traced back to as early as the time even before the prototype ROM was released to the western public. It is unclear who started calling the desert level Dust Hill.

Despite the fact that selecting Dust Hill Zone loads Mystic Cave Zone in our prototype, some believe "Dust Hill" was the intended name for this lost desert level instead. Their reasoning is that "common sense" would tell you the name "naturally" "fit" a desert theme, and the programmers had merely switched out the pointers at some point in development. The apparent association of "Dust Hill" with the desert level was also made in the interview with Brenda Ross, but the reliability of this interview has been questioned by some people for various reasons, such as misleading questions, bombardment of pre-interview fan mails that used "Dust Hill Zone" and "desert level" interchangeably, and scene politics (not Ross' fault).

To this day, there is no solid evidence to prove the theory of Dust Hill Zone being the name of the desert level. Although one can argue there's no way to disprove this theory either, many believe disproving it is logically unnecessary since the burden of proof would be on the wrong side, and the simplest, least-assumptions "Dust Hill is the prototype name for Mystic Cave, as shown in the ROM" argument would prevail by default ala Occam's Razor. On the other side of the fence, some argue simple human common sense is more applicable here than pure logic, and it would be simply intuitive to call the desert level Dust Hill Zone.

It's worthwhile to note that the desert level picture was never accompanied by the caption "Dust Hill Zone" in any magazine. On the other hand, the term "Dust Hill Zone" has been used to describe Mystic Cave Zone on several occasions, such as in the picture below (source??), and in a GamePro magazine (M05).

Based on all the knowns and unknowns, we can make the following statements:

• We don't know if the desert level was called Dust Hill Zone.
• We don't know if the desert level was NOT called Dust Hill Zone.
• We know selecting Dust Hill Zone, in the prototype ROM, takes us to what we now know as Mystic Cave Zone.
• We know SonicTeam has once coined it 砂漠Zone, or Desert Zone.
• We don't know if the Desert Zone has been renamed later.

This topic is routinely debated on the forums. More arguments and counter-arguments can be found there.