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By AJ Freda
<ah518@tcnet.org>
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Beta Theory Pack - Classic!!
Note: This theory was written before the release of the Sonic 2 Beta ROM.
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#10 is the real music for Hidden Palace. I have proof: 
You can speed up the music with Super Sneakers in the sound test,
They probably didn't have the music finished yet in your beta copy,
so they used something else, just like for wood zone, etc. #10
plays with the hidden palace level on the FINAL sonic 2 cart, so
that was the finished music. Here is my theory about how all those
lost levels went bye bye ^_^ 
Ok, First they had all those levels, then they took out Neo Green
Hill Zone, Wood Zone, and Genocide City Zone, and they told magazines
not to list those levels because in the carts that the magazines
received those levels were still in there. Sonic Team told the magazines
that they were sure they were going to put Hidden Palace in, and were
fairly positive about Dust Hill (mystic cave). That's why you see so
many pics of them in magazines. That one early dust hill picture was
probably taken by a magazine that got the first stage development cart
and didn't listen to them. ^_^. Next, they renamed dust hill to mystic
cave. Then, once Sonic Team was wrapping up Sonic 2, they found out
they had more than 12 levels (all sonic games come with 6 or 12 levels),
so they said alright alright, we'll take out HPZ, but they had already
programmed the level in, so they stuck in a few bytes of code to skip
the level and take it out of the level select menu, and they took out
the graphics to save space. 
END!! ^_^ 
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Taken from 'Secrets of Sonic the Hedgehog - The Original'
http://secretsonic.cjb.net
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