So, after a discussion on the SSRG Discord channel which involved Sonic 2 Long Version coming up, I decided to drop Sonic Hachelle-Bee a message on Sonic Retro to see how he's been after 14 years of not being in contact, and to see if this hack was still being worked on. I knew I'd tried an unreleased and unfinished version of the hack from back in the day, so I thought I'd ask the question and see if he still had it, was willing to share it, and see if any more progress has been made since. Now, believe it or not, this hack is still being worked on in a slow and steady fashion due to life and lack of time. While I am not in a position to discuss the latest version, he has given me permission to share the version I tried all those years back that went unreleased. As far as I know at the point of writing, the only major change is to Wood Zone, but that alone is worth playing as for me it's the most complete and impressive version of Wood Zone I've seen released in all the years I've been in the community to date, and this version was dated over 15 years ago. With that said, I present to you Sonic 2 Long Version v1.10 by Sonic Hachelle-Bee. Level Select code is as S2 Final. If this hack is distributed on any other forums than here, please cross post this to those forums to clarify that permission was given to release this version, and ensure that full credit is given to Sonic Hachelle-Bee. Nothing in this hack is my work, and I am merely the permitted distributor. Have fun.
Oh wow. First Sonic 2 Advance, then Sonic Delta (A.K.A. Sonic 2 Delta) and now Sonic 2 Long Version? Damn, it feels like I'm in the early of 2010's again playing the earlier version of those hacks.
I personally wasn't a fan of Wood Zone's (or Lost Wood Zone as it's now called) length or new art assets, but I have a massive amount of respect to Sonic Hachelle-Bee for still working on this thing after so many years. The original version was made solely in hex, right? If this is still being done in hex, while it doesn't seem optimal it'd be in my opinion even more impressive. I look forward to any future releases to S2LV that may come.
When I looked at the thread title I was like "Long Version is back?" so I had to click on it to see what's up with this new version (well new to the public). Anyway I decided to skip straight to Lost Wood to see what had changed and holy smokes, this is the coolest Wood zone I've seen, the stage now looks more complete and less flat, the touched up background, the foreground leaves on the walls, the falling leaves, the palette rotations and that background switch in act 1 was sick. It is a long zone but not a "god can this end already" kind of long thankfully, I was too busy admiring the new stuff to really care too much about the length, there are still the same Wood zone issues of getting lost and falling down which many Wood zone modifications are plagued with but at this point I'm used to it, the stage is definitely more fun to play with Knuckles thanks to his gliding and climbing, I think there are low key secret paths for him only. As far as other changes are concerned Dust Hill is now Rock Desert and Death Egg act 1 & 2 have the proper DEZ background deformation rather than a static background. Thanks for releasing this to us Stephen, glad to see Sonic Hachelle-Bee is still working on this even if at a slow pace, the fact that this is all done in hex still blows my mind.
I just played the hack and it's amazing! I agree that this is the best version of Wood Zone and the thing that impresses me is that it is made without the modern tools that we have available today. I am happy that this project continues and I hope that in the next versions they improve a particular zone. What am I talking about? Of Rock Desert. The fact that this level changes theme (Fire to Ice) is impressive and well implemented, the thing I didn't like is that it is too labyrinthine. In fact this is the only zone I skipped (I spent 10 minutes looking for the exit). This part slows down the game a lot and the levels should be fast and intuitive. For the rest it was fun to play this game of the past