Genocide City

Sonic the Hedgehog 2's rushed development time meant many levels and concepts had to be discarded along the way. Among these deleted stages is the worrying sounding Genocide City, a single techno-maze stage that was to be found late in the game. Much of the work done structuring this level ended up being used in the release version for the third act of Metropolis Zone. Still, the weirdly atypical name struck a cord with fans, particularly the Sonic hack scene.

A fan designed version of Genocide City appears in Esrael Neto's Sonic 2 Delta, there the stage uses Chemical Plant's industrial loop de loop geography suspended in space. Disaster Year's favourite interpretation though is the one found in Sonic Hachelle-Bee's Sonic 2 Long Version, Hachelle-Bee imagines the level as a brick cityscape, dwarfed by scrolling castle-scrapers, and adorned with Aztec monster-mouths. This Genocide City resembles the ruin corners of Mega Drive RoboCop Versus The Terminator, particularly the opening stages set in that fiction's dilapidated Old Detroit. Ghosts haunt doorways in Genocide City, the murdered populace infrequently appearing as strung-up mummies dried to a muddy brown. Escape Sonic!