I found a bug at the end of Act 2 of Labyrinth Zone zone that I haven't seen documented anywhere. I've seen other people report the point bonuses that are placed too far before the sign post area, but if you enter the place that has the misplaced point bonuses and then go backwards, the screen will lock at that point and you will be unable to proceed to the right in order to cross the sign post (the screen locks in the correct area, but the signpost object disappears). The only thing you can do is wait for the time to run out. An even more interesting find is that if you have over 50 rings, the big bonus ring will appear in the area you're stuck in. If you jump into it, Sonic will disappear but you will still be stuck on the level screen. If you wait for the time to run out, you will hear Sonic's dying sound and the time will stop at 9:59, but you'll be stuck on the level forever. The only thing you can do is reset or turn off the game. Here's a video I made of the bug: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsgzzld8lEw
Interesting. I've never heard of this before, so thank you for documenting it. Any tech members who can explain this?
My only guess is that when you get close, the signpost loads, but when you go backwards, because of "markobjgone", the signpost gets deleted (like any other object), except when you go back to it, the signpost fails to reload itself. That may explain why the big ring is there (2nd time 'cause of your ring count) and the points objects you jump at is there, but no signpost. Does this happen to any other level in Sonic 1? Or just LZ2?
Only on this act, I think -- I'm pretty sure the screen lock is much closer to the goal on all the other levels.
The erroneous screen lock is actually much further to the left than where the signpost is. Now that I'm thinking about it, the fact that there are misplaced point bonuses before the signpost means that there is probably an extra big ring object placed before the signpost as well. The big ring sprites only appear when you have over 50 rings and the tiles for it are loaded only when you get near the signpost screen lock area. Basically, it's like the designers originally planned for the level to end in this area to the left, but then later decided to make it so you have to run a bit further to the right to finish the level, but they forgot to delete all the leftover stuff to the left, like the point bonuses, the big ring, and whatever defines the screen lock area. ^incorrect
hmmm, nevermind then. I guess the signpost just isn't loading. redhotsonic's hypothesis is probably correct.
Therefor, I am guessing I am right. You got close to the signpost so it loaded, ran away so it deleted itself, and then it never loads back up again. Whereas the big ring "probably" loads, then gets deleted when you run away, but does have the ability to reload. You said it only happens to this level/act because the screen lock happens a lot earlier. This explains why in all other levels, because the screen lock happens a lot later, when you try to run away and you meet the screen lock, the distance to the signpost isn't far enough, so it doesn't delete itself. And the signpost won't load in the first place until the screen lock comes into play. Anyone correct me if I am wrong. EDIT: I will say though, those first three points objects do seem quite far away from the signpost. But then again, the object's art doesn't load 'til the screen lock comes in. Maybe that's why it locks itself early?
Well it could possibly occur in other levels besides LZ2. If you really wanna confirm that, you could always test it out. I mean it's not like anyone would normally pass the point of screen-lock, stop before the signpost area, run backwards, then forward for the signpost to disappear.. on purpose. So you could try and figure out if this is a recurring bug.
Yeah, as you suggest, I recall those first 3 points not actually having their art cues properly loaded at the point where you can first encounter them. It seems like they did expect the level to end a lot earlier than they did. I'm not sure why this is inconsistent for this level -- I could hazard a guess they might have done this to try to prevent the end-of-act crouching glitch, but clearly that didn't make a difference in that regard.
Nice find! I'm disappointed that the point bonuses have been re-purposed as airtime trick points. Sonic 2 had a complete absence, but Sonic S3&K added the clever "we're dropping the signpost from the SKY bitches!!!" along with bonus points and monitors full of fun. Whatever happened to the little things like that?
I found this bug hilarious for some reason. Especially when you hear him die after going in the ring and nothing happens lol. It's sorta surprising that not to many people recall experiencing this glitch since it looks pretty easy to have occur.
And from the looks of it, it was a huge hurry considering the extra points weren't even moved (I highly doubt they meant to put them that far away from the post). Act 2 must have had a slightly different layout at one time.
Considering Sonic 1 was released incomplete (the most obvious proof being how most backgrounds have incomplete parallax, which was added to REV01 released a few months later in Japan), I'd say they probably rushed all that in order to meet the Western release in time.
It seems like a stretch to say it was released incomplete just because they didn't have time to add every little bit of polish they would've liked. I think it's more likely they just changed it at some point and didn't notice that it created any issues.
Well, they did release a more complete version later in Japan that wasn't just a few quick bugfixes =P