Summer of '69

A compilation of Sunlust castaways, Summer of '69 is a tier below the main thing, but that is still respectable. The maps to make the Sunlust cut are jacked. Not only that but they wear the freshest clothes, eat at the chillest restaurants, and hang out with the hottest dudes! It's a high bar.

Since these maps make little sense to play before Sunlust -- or I'd argue, even immediately afterwards (give a bit of space first imo) -- I'll assume the reader's knowledge of Sunlust going forward. 

The rejected maps aren't ugly, but they don't match up to Sunlust's beauty or impeccable thematic maturity. The visual styles are inchoate, with combinations of assets that don't entirely gel, or they are bland, as with the two rejected snow maps. (Pure CC4-tex snow is not the best fit for Sunlust's mode of abstract design and streamlined theme-ing. CC4's snow assets are sterile -- overly clean -- and need either varied or ultra hi-fi aesthetics.) The old "Sol" might be an exception in my book, because I have a soft spot for its brick-vine assets. 

On average, the combat is fun, but in the first half, two or three fights a map felt "off" to me. Sometimes it was because of their occurrence at weird times in the larger scope of the map, sometimes it was because of an unexpected lack of teeth. This half consists of rejected early maps, and as the final product shows, both authors eventually got a good handle on pacing their smaller, ease-in crumpets.

In combat terms, the fourth map "In Flight," an abandoned snow map, is arguably the most faultless map of the batch. It's also a nearly pure Tyson map. It missed the cut seemingly in part because ... it's a nearly pure Tyson map. Sunlust's "In Flight," a completely different map that is also a Tyson map, is defined by its unusual bounty of optional non-Tyson content -- maybe not a coincidence. 

The old map24, "Gloomy Glacier," has many areas that would remain in Sunlust's "Dying on Cue," retextured and rebalanced, but as a whole it is even more monstrous, long and grindy and full of half-thawed meat. In sheer content, it is comparable to Sunlust's grand finale -- shorter if only because its areas aren't marooned among long silent expanses. It also has harder fights. Definitely worth checking out if you've got the 0xf00ba12 gene. Most of the fights are every bit as good as "Dying on Cue's" -- but I can see why, viewed as a whole, Danne considered it too much.  

At the end, it's bonus time, with a silly proto-Italo Doom closer, on the easier side, with music to dance to and many cloven dance partners for you to blast your green goo into!

Cool map 01, some maps quite similar to Sunlust; worth a playthrough if you like Sunlust, but expect a somewhat lower level of quality (which makes sense for discarded maps, ofc).