The secret sonic thread of secret secrets!

[Serephim]

This is probably an old decaying murdered horse, but...

I remember putting in the debug cheat to get those SPRITES, but i dont remember ever hearing about them actually being used. And here i thought i knew everything about this game.

did anyone ever find out what those red balls were for?

[Dark Raven X]

There is a tonne of unused stuff in Sonic 3! I knew most of this before getting into Fangames, hacks and all that.

The big thing:

Flying Battery was supposed to be in Sonic 3. It was cut at the eleventh hour. Originally, it was to be between Carnival Night and Ice Cap - in fact the surfboard Sonic uses in Ice Cap's intro was the door he knocked off the Flying Battery on the way out. They put a lot of thought into it; the reason Tails and Knuckles would skip the snowboard intro was that they had no reason to hold onto the door, as they could both fly down.

There is so much more cool stuff in Sonic 3's development history. I'll try and remember more stuff, if ya like?

[JetHawk95]

I always wondered why Sonic flew in the way he did... Someone should totally make a hack implementing Flying Battery where it originally should of been.

Or even cooler a hack with all the best Sonic levels in one game (Probably run of the S3k Engine)

Kind of a Sonic Generations Genesis.. Like have a cut scene after greenhill zone taking you to the next stage.. Have you burst out of flying battery into ice cap.. Is implementing levels into other games possible?

[Sparks]

Without Flying Battery in S&K, the transition from Mushroom Hill to Sandopolis would be weird (unless they put another zone in Flying Batterys place).

Makes you wonder what could have been.

[Apricity]

Without Flying Battery in S&K, the transition from Mushroom Hill to Sandopolis would be weird (unless they put another zone in Flying Batterys place).

Makes you wonder what could have been.

Arid Transition Zone

[Dark Raven X]

Can I intrigue you with more Sonic 3 secrets?

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but; the classic games were literally built on top of each other. Sonic 2, for instance, has lots of Sonic 1's assets, and Sonic 3 has lots of Sonic 2's. What is really interesting though is that Sonic 3 doesn't try and hide this stuff the way Sonic 2 did: if you enter the level select in Sonic 3? You get Sonic 2's level select screen.

But the best bit?

Enter the level select in Sonic 3, you can find this level icon:

That right there. That is the lost Sonic 2 level Hidden Palace's icon. This icon was nowhere in Sonic 2's code, but it still exists in Sonic 3's level select.

[Dark Raven X]

A little more on Flying Battery; it is the most 'complete' cut zone in Sonic 3's code. Lava Reef is also present, but it is little more than a title card. Flying Battery, however? It has a fully functional fully coded boss in Sonic 3. Even has it's own (unique, different from the one in S&K!) level select icon;

Bonus points - there's Knuckles, playable in Sonic 3 alone.

Finally, if you have it to hand, crack open the ol' Sonic 3 instruction manual, navigate your way to the enemies page. You will see 2 badniks unique to Flying Battery Zone, which do not appear in Sonic 3.

...one last thing about playable Knuckles:

It worked. It just caused a gamecrashing glitch when you used some of his abilities in that game's gimmicks, so rather than make a workaround, they just cut it entirely. :<

[JetHawk95]

We Should rename this Thread Sonic Unused/Secrets

Its very exciting indeed

anyway what I know about Sonic 3

The first cutscene was originally going to have Sonic Surfboarding onto the beach,

But the appearance of knuckles made using Super Sonic a better option and would explain him dropping the seven chaos emeralds

Also there was an 8th Chaos emerald in Sonic 3, By using a game Genie code you can access the 8th Special Stage

It seems to be a spiral/maze typed stage.

[Dark Raven X]

That's the Golden Emerald stage, right?

I have one final thing to add re: Sonic 3 - that surfboard sprite is the last remaining shred of it. Sonic 3 was originally gonna use Sonic 2 sprites. There are quite a few screenshots around of early Angel Island zones using Sonic 2 sprites. The new Sonic 3 sprites were a fairly late change. The surfboard sprite, since the sequence got removed, got no Sonic 3 style sprite done - hence it looks like Sonic 2, though it belongs in 3.

I think that's it for cool Sonic 3 stuff.

Shall we get into Adventure era, which is chock FULL of cool shit? Or stick with Classic game secrets? :3

[JetHawk95]

Both I Think.. So much good stuff gets took out of games

[tentril]

I think the surfboard thing would have made more sense for losing the emeralds. I never understood how Knuckles punched the emeralds out of him while he was invincible.

[JetHawk95]

Yeah that does play on my mind quite a lot..

What I meant was when they used Super sonic the player automatically knew Sonic had the 7 Chaos emeralds so the cutscene made more sense if you catch my drift?

If it was the surfboard scene you'd be all like "Where did he get the Emeralds?"

But I'm guessing Sonic 3's intro carries on from Sonic 2's Ending so It would make sense if you got the best ending of Sonic 2

[Dark Raven X]

One final final thing on Sonic 3:

The Flying Battery boss, in Sonic 3, with no lock on stuff.

Anyway! Onto Sonic 1!

Chronic pointed out to me that most of this stuff is probably on Sonic Retro. But I figure I'll post anyway, since I dunno if people here read there.

First up; ZE GOGGLES! THEY DO SOMETHING!

This is a removed power up. It would have allowed you to breathe under water. It's fully coded, just never appears in game.

[BlazefireLP]

I know most of the stuff in this thread already. However some I did not. I am very interested. Keep it coming people!

[JetHawk95]

The Goggles where presumed to have made you breath underwater like a scuba mask.. But probably scrapped due to wearing goggles dont do that. they just protect your eyes xD

This is what Green hill Zone originally looked like.

Looking at the Style of sonic and the Zone I'd say the game was planned to be a lot more darker but was made more friendly and fun later on.

Also a Special Stage Warp was planned..

When you touched the object you would disappear into the flash..

When you use the actual object in game it just makes you disappear and then reappear later on after a couple of seconds.. Probably to test to see if the animation worked

[Dark Raven X]

Here is a very cool thing;

At the "Sonic Team Present's" screen, press C,C,C,C,C,C,U,D,L,R then hold A,B,C and Down when demo starts.

This will appear:

That? Sonic 1's credits. Actual proper credits - the end of game credits gave everyone weird code names (Yuji Naka = Yu2 for instance)

Translation:

Program Naka Yuuji

Plan Yasuhara Hirokazu

Design Ooshima Naoto

Design Ishiwatari (Jina)

Design Kataoka Rieko

Sound Produce Nakamura Masato

Sound Program Kubota Hiroshi

Sound Program Makino Yukifumi

I have a few more Sonic 1 things. Or we could skip ahead to Sonic 2. :3

[JetHawk95]

This can also be achieved by changing the color pallets of Sonic's eyes to the desired color.

That Jappanese text actually shows behind the "Sonic Team presents" Screen but is black so its hidden. If you change the color you get this

[BlazefireLP]

You can also see it "I think" by taking a screenshot of it and filling the black in with another color. The other black will show up.

[JetHawk95]

Correct indeed, Its a very fine difference but the text black is a little lighter than the background

[Serephim]

I loved this stuff, man. Yeah, i was aware they built the games ontop of eachother when i picked up the Sonic 2 Beta rom. IIRC it had not only Sonic 1 animations, but music, as well as it's same intro screen and cheat menu.

All that sonic 3 stuff makes sense. I guess Mushroom Hill was just altered to support the flying battery change.

[luksamuk]

If we're talking about secrets...

Sonic 2 was supposed to be an American Sonic CD. There's dozens of theories that confirm that (or at least they try to).

Little idiot experience as proof:

1. Get a Sonic 2 ROM

2. Open the scrapped Hidden Palace Zone with a level editor

3. ONLY REPLACE Oil Ocean's graphics by theirs.

You'll get the same level layout.

What means

Hidden Palace (Past) > Oil Ocean (Future)

What means

Time Travel?

What means

Sonic 2 = Sonic CD?

What means

Your head explodes.

And there are dozens of other things here. I'm not sure if that's possible to do with Wood Zone and Metropolis Zone too.

I'd be surprised if someone don't know it, though. Sonic 2 is by far the game that had most uncovered secrets in Sonic franchise.

If someone has patience and some Google Translator, This Brazilian website has an entire session dedicated to try to explain that.

[GSF]

As for that LH, I dunno. Hidden Palace uses Oil Ocean's item set just because it was supposed to be before OOZ.

It's true that Sonic 2 and CD were developed in a similar time frame, by different teams (evident by the different spindash systems). I remember reading about the S2 time travel stuff, but personally I don't think it was the intent.

Enter HPZ, create a capsule item, and break it. You'll pass to act 2. Then, repeat. You'll be in Oil Ocean Act 1.

So this most likely means HPZ was MCZ. I'm think it uses the OOZ itemset and layout because there's no relevant data for HPZ, so it "looks in the next spot".

Although other people say HPZ was a special zone where you would be teleported when the 7 emeralds were acquired. So I dunno why it would be before OOZ.

note: Pure speculation, this is just what I thought back when I found out about S2beta, not something I deduced from rom analysis, as I never did any romhack work.

It's pretty fun to elaborate theories though, S2beta has that special something that makes you want to test stuff. :]

[luksamuk]

Hm, actually, that's not really like this, gsoft.

I mean, I'm not certain right now, I don't have the softwares anymore, but if you get the 8x8, 16x16 and 128x128 tiles' arrangement from OOz and import them to Hidden Palace, you will see Oil Ocean itself.

EDIT: The definitive test.

Voilà.

And, to proof me right, here's what happens when you load OOz's tiles in Emerald Hill Zone.

Meaning:

OOz and HPz have the same disposition of layout tiles (mapping, in hexadecimals). That's actually something admirable, because it seems like such a hard thing to do. I mean, they had to draw the levels at the same time so they'd fit perfectly the SAME tiles. This way, the memmory theorically wouldn't have to unload the level mapping, but only load another graphics, collisions and pallete. And objects too.

That's a job for a genius. If it didn't save too little memory in the proccess, I'd say that it's a job for a Videogames God.

[GSF]

It's the first time I've seen this particular tile loading evidence. Pretty interesting indeed...

And focusing on Sonic CD, I know there are several betas, however I never tried any of them. I did read some stuff though, and saw that none, absolutely none, have the infamous Round 2 zone. I always found it odd, since people were pinpointing what R2 was supposed to be, in an FMV sequence. If the video was made, I assumed levels must have existed already. But nope, nothing about that elusive Round 2.

Aside from that, there's the SEE YOU NEXT GAME pic, assorted hidden graphics, an extra special stage, and the S monitor.

I want to try out some betas now, hahaha.

EDIT: Oh, but the best thing to ever come out from a beta is from Sonic 3D Blast. Best Sonic head ever.

And if you like investigating leftovers and betas, check the Cutting Room Floor. Mild tabfest warning. (not as bad as tvtropes, but still risky)

[luksamuk]

Well, definitely, you should!

Power Sonic website has something to say about this too.

According to the theory, "R2" could be two kinds of levels: the never-released Dust Hill, or a Marble-styled level.

- Why Dust Hill?

Well,

That's a mock-up on what Sonic 2 would be. But yet, look at how they seemed to want to keep the Sonic 1 sprite.

But, if you go to Sonic CD's Time Attack menu, you see something that may look like Dust, behind Collision Chaos.

And, take a look at Little Planet. Collision Chaos is on the "North" of the picture. But what's on northeast?

You may find more about this here.

- Why Marble-styled?

Well, let's take a look at Sonic CD's Ending clip.

They pretty much look like ruins, don't they? Could be a possibility for a scrapped level.

And also, if you compare the levels of Sonic CD with the ones from Sonic 1, you may find some corresponding things:

Green Hill ---- Palmtree Panic

Marble ----- R2?

Spring Yard ---- Collision Chaos

Labyrinth ---- Tidal Tempest

None ---------- Quartz Quadrant

None ----------- Wacky Workbench

Starlight ----- Stardust Speedway

Scrap Brain ----- Metallic Madness

Although this seems more like the use of general concepts for a Sonic game.

It also says in Power Sonic that some art from Marble has been remixed into Tidal Tempest.

There is also much more behind Sonic games, some theories on the real order of the games, that Sonic 2 was Sonic CD from Sega of America, and that Sonic CD was being developed by Sega of Japan, and then SoA deleted the time travel and added Tails and Super Sonic to make it look different; So SoJ was forced to "Freeze" Sonic CD until the Sega CD came out, but that's whatever stuff... I've already read about that oo, but I can't confirm what I'm saying right now. I'll make some research and post what I found here once I have time.

Some theories are here.