Proto:Sonic the Hedgehog 3/Stage Differences/Other Stages

This is a sub-page of Proto:Sonic the Hedgehog 3/Stage Differences.

2-Player Stages

Azure Lake

• There is a spring that was removed from the final.

Balloon Park

Proto	Final	Sonic & Knuckles Collection

• The arrangement of the music is very unrefined and light on bass.

Chrome Gadget

Proto	Final	Sonic & Knuckles Collection

• The background scrolls differently.
• The music is arranged differently.

Desert Palace

Proto	Final	Sonic & Knuckles Collection

• One of the background palette's colors is incorrectly set to black instead of brown.
• The music is arranged differently with a quieter lead instrument.

Endless Mine

• The large breakable gold nuggets aren't present.
• The music is almost exactly the same as in the final.

Bonus Stages

• The HUD has SCORE and TIME listed, as the smaller HUD isn't yet implemented.
• None of these levels have title cards. This is due to zone IDs past The Doomsday, which the bonus stages are, hiding the title card. The "Bonus Stage" title card isn't implemented yet either.

Gumball Machine

Incredibly barebones at this point, but a start has been made.

• Plays the Special Stage theme.
• The map only features a layout - there's no collision detection for the walls, the gumball machine itself doesn't do anything, and most importantly, there aren't any bumpers, meaning you unceremoniously fall... to your death, as the code to end the bonus game isn't present. The tiles for the spring net are present and are even a different color, but alas, there's no springs atop them, nor does said net have any collision itself.
• There's some different graphics, namely in the tileset for the walls - the final has more shading details. The background is filled with placeholder tiles instead of the finalized checkerboard, and the layer in front of it is quite different in design. The gumball machine itself is more or less finalized, however. The floor structure is the same in both versions, in the final version only the palette will be changed.

To do: Add the final map for comparison

Proto	Final

Full Map

To do: Add the final map for comparison

Proto	Final

Glowing Spheres

• Plays the Slot Machine theme.
• Even less complete than the Sonic 3C 0408 version, if you can believe it.
• The stage's background does not exist in the ROM, and instead uses placeholder number tiles. These numbered tiles are intended to be animated by a reloading routine that doesn't seem to be present.

Slot Machine

• Plays the Gumball Machine theme.

Proto	Final

• The slot machine looks different:
  • The simple hole that operates the machine was replaced with an elaborate glass cage.
  • A bunch of shadowing was added. The top arm's shapes were shifted down for the newly added shadow.
  • The squares and triangles had their colors changed to a cycling yellow palette.
  • The indigo color used by the slot machine was updated to a proper blue.
• The prototype's second palette is missing the colors needed for Rings, which is obviously a problem.

Proto
Final

• The colors in the object palettes had to be shuffled around to accommodate both the Rings and the updated slot machine, resulting in the slots themselves losing some of their details.
• A layout is present, but collision has not been implemented.

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Unused Chunks

Some unused chunks exist, most of which are blank, but some appear to be laid out to test the background animations. Blank chunks include C-F, 2A-2F, and 34-4E.

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  4F

Special Stages

To do: Map differences. Check if the other special stages existed in this build

Merely tech demos at this point in development, using different sprites entirely for the spheres. No proper gameplay has been implemented, though the proper Special Stage music is used.

Holding A and pressing Start will return you to the title screen.

Special Stage 1

A pre-rendered gray sphere with red spheres rotating around it. This set of spheres remains in the final game in Angel Island Zone Act 1, unused.

Button	Controller 1	Controller 2
Start	Toggles between automatic and manual rotation.	Toggles between automatic and manual rotation.
A/C	Rotates left or right.	Zooms the spheres in or out. A zooms out, C zooms in.
B	Resets the spheres to their point of origin.	If automatic movement is enabled, stops the spheres from rotating along one of the axes if held down.
Up/Down	Adjusts how fast the spheres rotate on one of the axes.	Moves the matrix up and down.
Left/Right	Rotates the spheres along the Y-axis	Moves the matrix up and down.

Special Stage 2

A flat square of spheres bouncing up and down while rotating. A secondary animation causes them to contract and expand. Parts of this animation overload the VDP's sprite bandwidth, causing some of the sprite pixels to disappear (as can be seen in the expanding animation below).

Button	Controller 1	Controller 2
Start	Toggles between automatic and manual rotation.	Toggles between automatic and manual rotation.
A/C	Speeds up or slows down the rotation when automatic, or rotates the spheres left or right along the X-axis when manual.	Zooms the spheres in or out. A zooms out, C zooms in.
B	Toggles between the primary and secondary animations.	If automatic movement is enabled, stops the spheres from rotating if held down.
Up/Down	Rotates the viewing angle in the given direction.	Moves the matrix up and down.
Left/Right	Rotates the viewing angle in the given direction.	Moves the matrix up and down.

Bouncing	Expanding and Contracting