In the prototype, the reason Super Sonic is pink (and Sonic is magenta after transforming) underwater is because the game is using leftover Chemical Plant color palettes from Sonic 2.
Correction: Those allegations weren't actually the reason why MJ was left uncredited. It was actually because MJ didn't really like how his music sounded in 16-bit. Yes, I'm dead serious.
There’s no confirmation. That’s just what the estate suggested likely happened. I feel like it could’ve been that, or sega themselves decided to just scrub his name from it last minute.
@@TetraBitGamingThat’s true, but the music for sonic three was being made by people who primarily didn’t work on Moonwalker, and some people from Sega technical Institute, who had experience working on GEMS. Couple that with the fact that Michael stated that it was hard to work over the phone [he couldn’t work overseas due to the court case, as far as I know] and the fact that the game was rushed due to both time and brand obligations[McDonald’s], and I’m sure that the real answer might be a combination of all of these.
Honestly, I always bought the fantheory that both are true at the same time. There was just a silent handshake between the parties involved because nobody wanted him credited and that was that.
I do like how in the fan-hack Sonic 3 AIR you can change the level order to Carnival Night -> Flying Battery -> Ice Cap. They even updated the cutscene to have the airship launching out of the carnival, then when you leave the airship the door you bust down is your snowboard, not an actual snowboard.
This is actually also an option in the ROM-hack Sonic 3 Complete, which works on actual hardware as opposed to Sonic 3 AIR! I’d recommend checking it out if you’re interested, it’s a really cool mod.
I’m pretty sure you got AIR and Sonic 3 Complete confused. AIR by itself has no way to switch the level order, you have to use mods, while it’s a base option in Complete
I believe the drop dash is actually the remnants of an attempt implement the Super Peel Out. So Sonic CD has come out and implemented a new move into Sonic's moveset. It would be the obvious choice to include this in Sonic 3. The button combination is very odd for the drop dash, and is the same one used for the Super Peel Out. It is incorrectly coded or something that makes it so it doesn't override the jump and then when you hit the ground it does the movement part of the Peel out. They may not have been able to get it to work on Genesis hardware for some reason or thought that the level design couldn't take advantage of it, so they swapped it out with the Insta-Shield.
A theory I’ve seen on this build is that it was a build specifically meant to test 2P mode, which is largely-complete here (and with the S3 sprites to boot). I think it’s entirely possible the code was branched at some point earlier in development so people could work on 2P mode without interfering with 1P work. Then, near the end of development, the branches were merged. That would explain why the single player portion is so incredibly rough only 9 weeks prior to release. Likely the MJ music, new sprites, special stages, working menu system, etc., were all well underway in development by the time this build was burned, just not on the branch from which this build was built.
I find it interesting how the stage icons from Sonic 2 still somewhat match up with the stages in Sonic 3. Angel Island - Emerald Hill Similar stage tiles, overall look is similar Hydrocity - Chemical Plant Lots of speed and downhill slopes Marble Garden - Aquatic Ruin Actually look a lot alike, ruins. No water in Marble Garden though. Carnival Night - Casino Night Similar overall asthetic, can be difficult to get through in a decent time Flying Battery - Hill Top Way up high in the sky! Ice Cap - Mystic Cave Cool looking caves, sparkly, interesting stage mechanics Launch Base - Oil Ocean Similar asthetic, but water instead of oil in Launch Base Coincidence? You decide!
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This round-up says to me just how much more time Sonic Team needed, and it's an absolute miracle that Sonic 3 released as it did at all. Wish they'd had more time, but "lock-on technology" was absolute genius and I'm glad that happened.
I wish it was used more than...well, three times total. It is definitly a fascinating idea to have hidden gameversions for when you own multiple products.
I imagine the development team actually intended by Dec '93 for Sonic 3 to have the Lock-On Technology when it was in development for Virtua Racing & the unreleased SegaVP line, especially for the unreleased Sonic 3 Special Edition that Japan was presumably going to get Oct '94. To keep the Sonic 2& Knuckles patch, and the unfinished glitchy Sonic 1& Knuckles patch that got dropped that the media reported on when it unveiled in '94.
18:36 flying battery was planned to be between ice cap and carnival night but the devs could'nt finish so they nudged it to the second zone of & knuckles instead.
Most of the Unused sounds were place holders for if the devs couldn't figure out how to properly implement "effect filters" for sounds in different environments. If you compare them to sounds used in the game you can figure out which sound is actually what for what.
About the levels loading as a garbled mess, I have a theory that this is because games on cartridges back in the day didn't have exception handling in the modern form. In a sense that made them closer to how DNA or animal brain works: even if things go wrong, some result should be reached. It could be working like this: when we select a stage that was actually deleted from the game, a modern game will look for assets to load, and without finding them, will either no load anything and have none, replace them with a placeholder, or return an error. Back in the day it would just load the next address in the ROM because it has to load something and that next address will contain some asset for another stage. That's how the deleted stages with no mapped own assets load a mess of a fairly consistent palette: they just load assets that weren't intended to be loaded with them and place them on the originally intended places.
No, it won‘t add the next address, but the very same address. However, the data will be whatever is at this position and that might not be the intended graphics data or no graphics data at all. The reference to the brain or DNA is completely wrong ,though. Yes, you can read from any memory address without causing any error.
33:37 IIRC sound 32 plays at the end of sonic 3 + knuckles when you have all chaos and super emeralds unlocked. It plays after the scene where angel island starts floating and sonic jumps at the screen and freezes.
Instead of interviewers being obsessed with Michael Jacksons private life, I wish they had concentrated more on his music, That way it would have been awesome to hear him talk about his work with Sega over the years.
1:01:37 "This special stage isn't anything crazy" The literal special stage that took me so many attempts back from Mania only because I was new to Blue Spheres there and had an anxious time of timing my jumps to get all the spheres. Incredible skill issue lmao
Mania has way more frames so the animation is alot smoother which i think makes it harder. Im sad they didnt bring back the tube special stages from sonic 2. Chasing the ufo just sucks.
I actually found the S monitor debug glitch as a kid - I used to play with debug mode ALL the time, and I found if I did a bunch of S monitors (one of my favourite debug things) it would glitch out and load only SnK. It never occured to me that it was anything special though.
I remember getting Debug and Level Select in Sonic & Knuckles by using Sonic 2's methods and then quickly swapping carts while holding the reset button. Was very specific to do, been about 20 years since I used it.
Since my Sonic 3 cartridge did not have the SEGA logo I could never input the level select code, so I had to use the game swapping approach instead! You just had to input the level select in Sonic 2, play something random in the sound test and keep holding a button. Swap the cartridge and reset, and voilà you would have the level select enabled on Sonic 3. Funny enough this would not work on Sonic & Knuckles, but did work on Sonic Pinball!
@@bubgamingandvlogs3870 Will never know, as soon as I turn on the console it would start directly with Sonic smashing against what it would be the SEGA logo.
A couple points I'd like to add: 1) I found out about the Super Sonic monitors crashing S3&K down to S&K when I did it accidentally on Gamecube Sonic Mega Collection. I was also able to duplicate it on emulation and on the Genesis. 2) An easier way to get debug on S3&K is to start on Angel Island, grab a swinging vine, and press L L L R R R U U U for the level select, then go to Mushroom Hill and repeat it on one of the hydraulic lifts to get debug mode.
The reason for the existence of most instances of "Blue Knuckles" and the HUD text turning green is because of Sonic and Tails, actually- while the two actually share the same palette, with Sonic possessing 14 out of the total 16 colors (3 of which being exclusive to him, that being the shades of his fur) the other two are possessed exclusively by Tails, those being his fur color. While in Sonic 1 and 2, Sonic had 4 shades to his fur, that was because there was room for it in the palette. In Sonic 1, Sonic had an extra red shade to use in his shoes, but in Sonic 2, that had to be cut out to make room for Tails's colors, of which there were two- the other came from the yellow shade previously present in Sonic 1, used for the HUD's yellow text and the act number in the title and end cards of each zone. In Sonic 2, the HUD used an entirely different palette instead to preserve as much detail in the character sprites as possible- though in Sonic 3, Sonic's palette was cut down AGAIN, to just 3 fur colors instead of four, seemingly just to make room for the yellow in the HUD once again- despite the fact that the HUD still samples from a different palette anyways. Why that is is unknown, even though it could have just as easily gotten rid of one of the middle shades of gray since in the first two games they were virtually indistinguishable from one another, though in the third game the teal hue they got must have given them just enough difference to be noticeable. How does this relate to Blue Knuckles? Well, Knuckles has an entire palette to himself as well- and it's identical to Sonic and Tails's in every aspect but the fur color. Knuckles's palette replaces Sonic's fur colors with red shades of themselves, but otherwise remains the same as Sonic's- with the exception of that one extra palette slot, a dark green color instead of yellow. This is where the HUD draws its palette from, and that's why Knuckles's presence turns it green. Since the palette is normally reserved for badniks, that slot is usually yellow, but it's replaced because for whatever reason Knuckles's socks are green, and that crucial detail overrides everything else apparently. In fact, the slot in Sonic's palette where yellow used to be is also green in the final game! You never actually see it, though, unless you're playing Super Sonic- in which his eyes use that color. It's the same exact reason the title card in Sonic 2 has its yellow replaced with green when connected to the Sonic & Knuckles lock-on technology, because it also draws from Sonic's palette, which turns the yellow color to green when playing as Knuckles. So, while in some cases, Blue Knuckles is a result of the game loading the regular badnik palette when Knuckles is still on screen, in other cases it's because his sprites are in the presence of where a sprite belonging to Sonic or Tails SHOULD be- case in point, the signpost when playing as Tails. It's using the same palette as the current character, and since Tails uses the same palette as Sonic, it draws from that palette despite displaying Knuckles, resulting in him looking blue instead. Also, the level select screen from the Sonic 2 prototype is literally just the Sonic 1 level select screen anyways.
This makes me wonder, if you were to go in the capsule elevator in launch base that takes you to different places depending on which character you're playing as, while playing blue knuckles, which way would it take you?
I'm glad they swapped out the music for Carnival Night and Ice Cap for the released version, they're my favourite. Also on the conundrum of the soundtrack choice for the prototype, maybe they put them on for this one because the composers of the MJ stuff wanted to rework some of the music and they weren't ready?
All the monitors for the Act 1 mini bosses are layered behind the floor data in the coding. If the game glitches it layers them over the floor data instead. I'm surprised nobody has ever made map images of the placement of all the hidden floor monitors, even the original '94 guide book didn't.
I have a hunch - level id 0D is knuckles's opening. Now hear me out, if act 2 is the closing and there are no other levels in S&K and unlike the Angel island cutscene which is connected to the act, the knuckles cutscene is of him getting bombed and knocked back into the act. And its not for angel island, no, its for mushroom hill, hense the garbled graphics. Anyways thanks for listening to my ted talk
Something else to point out: Sonic Origins uses remixed versions of Sonic 3's prototype music. I was surprised that the discovery of the prototype helped with the production of Sonic Origins.
I think it's interesting to note that the Origins tracks are not in fact the prototype versions, but seem to be the PC tracks with an appropriate sound font applied (perhaps why they sound so fuzzy and weird.)
All the main stage music from Sonic & Knuckles IS in the sound test in the final build of Sonic 3. I remember having all the music from the sound test in 3 recorded on cassette, and then being disappointed when S&K came out and most of the music wasn't new.
I just want to say thank you for all the hard work you put into showing us this content, i can't imagine the countless hours of research that goes into finding this stuff, it is extremely fascinating.
Can't believe they yeeted the drop dash for the crappy instashield which isn't immediately obvious what it does nor is it immediately gratifying to use smh.
in the Sonic 3 prototype, you can force the game to load Mushroom Hills terrain by forcing some important assets, but there is no background or even collision detection.
the prototype music was actually the music used (except for credits & the mega collection) used in remade versions of the game, & the debug mode [through level select] needs you to press up 4 times at the end to work, not just 2
Fun fact: in the mid 90s russian “”””””official”””””” Sega games guide said that “Sticking Sonic and Knuckles cartridge in Sonic 3 cartridge will expand your game”, but ALL sega mega drive (or genesis) game cartridges were the same including sonic 3 cartridge
Love your content. Watched you for 4-5 years👍I know that prototype but anyway I watched you because you do awesome content and sometimes I really learn new to me lost bits in the popular (and not very) games)
I think that this prototype being so close to release does potentially solve a long standing disagreement about the music. Some in the know stated that in subsequent releases the MJ tracks were removed because of the SA allegations. Other source state that they were removed because MJ didn’t like the way the songs turned out because of the limitations of the sound chip. I think that this prototype might suggest a bit of both. That perhaps that the MJ songs weren’t in this prototype so close to release is that the songs were not ready. It could have been he was brought in at the last moment and thus could not complete them to his liking because of time constraints or the hardware limitations. A time and hardware issue could also explain why MJ didn’t do all the songs as shown when the title was released again subsequently not all the songs were replaced (meaning the remaining ones were not MJ songs). The other is that perhaps that after the SA stuff came out sega felt between that and potential royalties/rights questions it was best to replace them.
14:06 I don't think it's used for sprite scaling, I think this might be an early version of Marble Garden act 2's boss since you can see the square flying up and down while the entire level is crumbling
Finally the epic duo games have been combined into a video! I always like it when you combine two games that have been covered from the same series into the same video. It’s rlly good to binge and listen to when im going to sleep. Except maybe not the sonic 3 Proto because of the glitch sound bugs.
Me: See’s this video Video Name: Sonic Me: Ok that’s cool I guess Plans to ignore: Me: Actually reads title Also Me: LETTTTTTSSSSSS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!?!?!?!!??!! 😂 sorry I just really enjoy Sonic 😅
One difference In the sonic 3 prototype lava reef(the restored version, not the buggy mess thats in the prototype already) is that in the background, the death egg seen in the distance is upside down, instead of being face down like it is in the final version of the zone seen in sonic and knuckles
I kinda miss these videos of prototypes, betas, unused content and etc... I loved Sonic's videos and would love to see something like this with other games like Dinosaur Planet/Star Fox Adventure that had its beta leaked a while ago. (and that a lot of people like me prefer the Dinossaur Planet beta than the final GameCube game since the game had a lot of potential as a unique IP and had everything to become one of the Nintendo 64 Rare classics and close the cycle of system with a golden key, but it became a forgettable Star Fox that not even Star Fox fans like. )
2:55 I think it's worth noting that this song being an "unused Super Sonic theme" is pure speculation, and is actually pretty unlikely to be true. Apparently, it's listed next to all of the multi-player stages in the files, making it more likely that it's for a scrapped 6th multiplayer stage.
You should make a classic sonic found bits video as sonic origins DID bring back some things that were previously scrapped from the games in the collection!
Fun Fact: The Reason Blue Knuckles Exists is because of a Color Palette Issue As when it Occurs Knuckles Palette Overlaps with Sonic's and He Ends up using Sonic's Color Palette instead of his Own
![ALL Sonic 3 & Knuckles Unused Content | LOST BITS [TetraBitGaming]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
