An In-Depth Sonic & Knuckles Design Analysis

Comments · 177

• KL

  @klaas-wimvandiermen · 1 month ago (edited)

  Fun fact: in the orginal game in Flying Battery Zone Act 2 Knuckles will fight Eggman instead of Eggrobo. This was an oversight that was corrected in Sonic Origins.

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• EX

  @Excalibur_LP · 1 month ago

  I did not realise Mushroom Hill Robotnik was changing the weather. Now it makes such sense

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• JA

  @JaronWilliams456 · 1 month ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLPMmPgORMQ&amp;t=3027">50:27</a> The Hyper Flash can actually be used in all 8 directions, essentially making it a better version of the three elemental shield abilities combined.

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• ZE

  @zeropointer125 · 1 month ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLPMmPgORMQ&amp;t=1101">18:21</a> Some extra details<br>First off, for context for the rest of this comment: the rings are only rainbow if they would send you to hidden Palace<br><br>The first ring in the 3K version of mushroom hill for both Sonic and Knuckles will always be a rainbow ring. Regardless of how many emeralds you have (including zero), all that you currently have will be transformed into inert super emeralds.<br><br>Every other giant ring in the S&amp;K portion of the game will only be a rainbow ring if you finish collecting the chaos emeralds. In fact there is a unique message if you finish collecting the emeralds after having transformed some of them into into super emeralds.<br>Instead of saying &quot;{character} can now turn into super {character}&quot; it will say &quot;{character} can now got to hidden palace&quot;<br><br>I think the reason there are two different starting locations for Mushroom hill is because that first ring really is meant to send you to hidden palace.

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• TA

  @tacofoxo · 1 month ago

  Thanks for the credit on the Bonus Stage correction! I played Sonic 3 obsessively for several years as a kid before I even knew S&amp;K existed. It was quite surprising when I first encountered the extra Bonus Stages in my first lock-on playthrough!

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• SP

  @Sparkys_World-0 · 1 month ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLPMmPgORMQ&amp;t=1043">17:23</a> An interesting thing about Mushroom Hill Zone’s intro is the whole cutscene with Knuckles and the hidden room is actually described fully in the JP manual for Sonic and Knuckles, despite not appearing in the standalone game. That brief moment was part of the level’s concept from the very beginning. Sonic Origins’ museum has some amazing early sketches by Yasuhara showing his first pass at the level design. The initial plan for Mushroom Hill was Sonic would take the secret path to Hidden Palace and see not only the emerald shrine, but also the mural. Except instead of depicting Super Sonic and Eggman, it would’ve shown the prophesied “dragon” that was destined to destroy Angel Island. That whole dragon concept was abandoned in the final game, before kinda sorta being revived for Sonic Superstars true final boss. I have to assume they only removed this sequence from the start of Sonic and Knuckles to add extra value to the complete Sonic 3 and Knuckles package.<br><br>Also something else Iizuka mentioned in one of those interviews was that the original plan for Sonic 3 was you’d only unlock Knuckles after beating the game with Sonic and Tails, which I think would’ve been an absolutely awesome surprise for players. It also would’ve more clearly communicated that Knuckles’ story is supposed to be an epilogue, which a surprising amount of people didn’t get back then. But I guess alot of gamers may have felt cheated if they paid for a new game and couldn’t play as the cool new character straight away lol.

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• LL

  @llennoxyt · 1 month ago

  Ngl I’m glad everyone was okay from the crash but starting with that was such whiplash it was kind of funny

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• AR

  @areoants9453 · 1 month ago

  Main takeaway of the video: always wear your seatbelts, kids!

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• RL

  @rloasby · 1 month ago

  The analysis and detail on just the title screen alone is sickeningly nerdy... I love it

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• TH

  @TheBelowAverage1289 · 1 month ago

  the super emerald appearance in the master emerald cutscene is one of my favorites in any of the classic games. on top of it being an amazing touch, there’s so much attention to detail based on if you collected the emeralds or not. it’s amazing

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• MA

  @MadokaTokisaki · 1 month ago

  From what I recall, the way Knuckles in Sonic 2 is effectively a game Patch for Sonic 2 that is stored in the cartridge. Basically, it contains code to overwrite Sonic 2, much like you suspected, and inject extra data in. This includes art assets, character data, and yes, a few small tweaks to levels for Knuckles.

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• US

  @user-yf3cr5ev5p · 1 month ago

  SRAM would have been a separate hardware chip, so I&apos;m sure because of manufacturing costs, Sega only put the chip on the S3 cartridge, but made sure it was able to hold save data for both games. &nbsp;Few games in this era had memory that could save content because of how expensive it was to implement. &nbsp;The S&amp;K cart has the extra slot at the top, and is a larger rom in total, so that is where its extra hardware costs go.

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