--- By Stealth --- Beta Backlash - Classic!! Note: This theory was written before the release of the Sonic 2 Beta ROM. --- aj's "proof" is less than convincing. the music in sonic games are all a midi type thing. all the "speed shoes" in sound test do is increase the tempo. plus, since the hidden palace in the real sonic 2 is crap, theres no telling exactly why it loads the music from sound test 10 it couldve been intentional, it could be a bug, it could have something to do with whats modified in the save-state... lots of things that music doesnt really fit the real hidden palace anyway... sound test 3 does much better. besides, if you want to argue over the "real hidden palace music", you would have to say it was 3, because the only playable version of hidden palace (ie.. the "real" one) uses that music and from what i know, "neo green hills" was the early name given to aquatic ruins. the name isnt really creative, so its obvious that they wouldve changed it if they thought up a better one. as for dust hill, i read part of a letter from saturnman saying the original one WAS supposed to be a desert level, but sega didnt feel itd interest the japanese. the level was stopped, and they probably used the name for mystic caves like i said earlier for aquatic ruins.. lack of a better one at the time i dont exactly know the deal with wood zone... but as you said, in your beta its unfinished. they might have stopped development on that level for others they thought were more suited for the game, and ran out of time in the rush sega was putting on them to send the game to the market, so they had to cut it out. same with hidden palace. earlier on, i heard something about sonic 2 being the last sonic game, because itd bring an end to the story. the hidden palace mightve had something to do with that, especially since one of those pics you uploaded has something that looks similar to s&k's master emerald. either they didnt have enough of the zone finished by the time they had to sell it, or the plot behind that part wasnt developed enough.(leaving way for future sonic games) and for the number of levels idea... i doubt that had anything to do with it. if they'll all fit on the cart, theres no problem with it, and the more thereare, the happier the players will be itd be pointless to "stick a few bytes in to skip the level"... really, if the game is like saturnman says, just a bunch of files that are encoded, they might have forgotten to remove ONE file, which held basic structure of the level. the garbage in the background comes from trying to load graphics from a part of memory that shouldnt be accessed, i ran into that problem while programming my games before. thats my 2 3/4 cents.. make of it what you will --- Taken from 'Secrets of Sonic the Hedgehog - The Original' http://secretsonic.cjb.net ---