Found this little gem while having fun with Debug Mode, Knuckles, and DEZ2. I went down the grav-tube, and landed on the floor there. Seems to be a slight glitch in the engine, but it might have something to do with Debug Mode. Also, at this point in time, Super Knuckles had been fully completed, pallete, sprites, the whole shabang.
During Hydrocity Zone's 2nd boss, when transformed as Super Sonic and after getting sucked into the whirlpool going up, you're still Super Sonic, but without the Super hair-do and without the double attack jump. Once you defeat the 2nd boss, keeping in mind that you follow these directions, you still remain as Super Sonic with the music playing after Robotnik's music. You remain as Super Sonic just until the transition to Marble Gardens Zone, along with the music still playing until the zone transition. You don't lose your rings between the time you crack the egg prison cell and the time when the water plunges you to the ceiling. By the way, has anyone encountered the problem of spindashing as Super Sonic and trying to zoom through the level without slowing down? It's like the effect that occurs in the Final game when (as Hyper Sonic) you destory a super-shoes monitor. The shoes slow you down.
Another little detail, but mentioning for the sake of recording: In Doomsday Zone, during the first boss, if you move all the way to left, you actually trigger two missiles from the end of the asteroid field segment. See? Nothing special.
I also noticed that in both versions of the protos, that the speed of switch the character travels, (HS,SS, Knux, Tails) is actually slower than what you see in the final. I believe.
I got the end sign in the 408 build to work fine as S&T in Fusion, and there was no transition. The signpost also made the monitors it hit launch up like a rocket.
Here are some pictures of Flying Battery's (Zone 2) different layouts. Pic 1: Instead of handle bars with rings, there's 10 rings. This is the area before the 2nd claw machine that brings you to the other side of the spinning metal net. Pic 2: This is the bottom of the room in Pic 1. Instead of two of those metal magnets, there's three. Pic 3: There's no spring to thrust you to the left. Pic 4: The yellow spring in around the middle of the floor instead of the right. Here are pictures from Sandopolis Zone: Pic 5: Instead of a Super Ring here, there's lamp post and two ring monitors (destoryed). Pic 6: Act 2, there's no breakable ledge in this area. (I'll have to check the final for this one. Not entirely sure.) Pic 7: The wall that cames down is quick, instead of slow like the many others. Pic 8: There's no wall coming down on the left in order to get the life monitor. This area is the second event where sand fills up the room.
Some stuff I've noticed so far while playing S3C 0517: (I'll edit this post as I continue playing) - The save data screen does not show the number of lives and continues. Sonic 3 did not show this, either. Sonic 3 & Knuckles does show this. Also, there are only 6 save slots, while in S3&K there are 8. (S3 Final actually had 14 save slots; 6 for S3 only, 8 for S3&K.) Playing as Sonic: - Hydrocity 1 boss plays the Sonic 3 Act 1 mini-boss theme instead of the Act 2 boss theme. (S3 final plays the Act 2 boss theme, but switches to the S&K miniboss music if the drowning timer starts and you get out of the water); S3&K final plays the S&K Act 1 mini-boss theme.) - Hydrocity 2: The spring at the beginning has been replaced with a 1UP, which is the same as S3&K final but not like S3 final. - Carnival Night 1: Tails randomly appeared after the boss, even though I was playing as Sonic only. :o - Mushroom Hill 1: The Super Ring at the beginning of the level doesn't seem to flash if you enter here via Level Select with no emeralds. If you go to MH1 with emeralds, the Super Ring flashes, but entering it merely gives you 50 rings. (Strangely, the rest of the Super Rings aren't flashing...) - Flying Battery 2: After defeating the WFZ-style miniboss, the floor begins to move up. In addition, there's a horizontal wall that moves right. Dying here not only garbles the clouds (as mentioned by someone else), it garbles the horizontal wall. Also, Sonic doesn't roll out of the Flying Battery in the level transition - he simply runs out. He appears to be rolling in the Sandopolis intro, though. - Sandopolis 1: Sonic doesn't get stuck in the sand after he falls into the level. Also, as MK said, you can move left and right during the intro. - Sandopolis 2: The boss seems ridiculously easy to beat. I was just standing where Eggman was in the Pyramid boss and Eggman was taking damage. - Lava Reef 2: Debug mode movement is affected by the lava slope at the boss. Odd... - Hidden Palace: Not only can Knuckles hurt you as Super/Hyper Sonic, Knuckles can hurt you if you're in Debug mode placing an object, at which point Sonic's graphics might be corrupted. (The corruption only seems to happen if you were Super/Hyper Sonic at the time.) Damn, Knuckles is good. - Death Egg 1: The objects that count down from 3 and then send you across some paths have a slightly different countdown tick. It's four low tones, instead of three low tones and one high tone. (I'm pretty sure the final was three low, one high. Someone correct me if I'm wrong please.) - Death Egg 2: After I beat the boss, the HUD turned green. This means that the game loaded Knuckles' 1P palette into the Knuckles CP palette slot. :o - Credits: The S3 Final credits roll, but the extended S3C medley is played. Also, the medley is longer than the credits, but the credits automatically restarts to the Sega screen a few seconds after "Try Again" appears. (I'm not sure if the same thing happens if you have all the emeralds.)
It has almost all the zones in it, which would not make sense to use except in a combined game. Naturally they coulda switched it in with Sonic 3 and Knuckles and it'd make sense, but they probably forgot it somewhere. All the better that we have it now, so we can fix that! :P
Some of the transitions are a bit dodgy, it's entirely possible the medley was never finished before they abandoned the idea of releasing S3&K as one contained cart.
Hidden Palace Zone - you're no longer are able to stand on the Master Emerald during the Knuckles & Robotnik scene starting in this build.
I haven't seen this questioned yet, so I'll ask it now: As we know by now, a credits theme that implemented Sonic 3's level songs WAS indeed created, prior to what we received in the final, however, does the Stranger In Moscow "clone" exist in either of the betas?....regardless of the fact that they play pre-S&K-esque true level music credits, I wonder if that particular song was implemented AFTER the split. I infer that if it isn't in there, it had to have been the last song added into Sonic 3, which means they never deleted MJ's music...they just found a way in which they didn't have to directly credit him. I haven't had a chance to go through the sound tests myself....because my computer was stolen over the weekend. I assume someone had a change to go through everything the sound test has to offer though.
