The UFOs have either gold or silver vertical bands on them which in the original game were greyed out when their hitbox was not active. Since the 2011 remake uses real time scaling instead of different sprites when UFOs are approaching, there's now no indication in the UFOs if they are hittable or not. So the 2011 remake makes the special stages slightly harder. I still find them piss easy though. I once streamed on the Retro Discord how I could blast through all the special stages in the remake, but nobody gave a shit. :P
Sonic 2 special stages are the easiest for me, I could do them in my sleep. Then I’d say Blue Sphere, CD’s UFOs and the rotating maze as the hardest. Seriously can’t stand the maze, particularly the third one where you’re just dumped into a room and are at the mercy of the random bumpers and blocks. It’s to the point where I genuinely prefer the Sonic 4 variation where you’re controlling the stage itself rather than bumbling through it as Sonic.
Note how the bands on the distant UFO are black? When you get close enough to see the bands change to gold or silver, that's your cue to jump for them. In the remaster however, the band colour can be seen from a distance.
What kind of Sonic god are you lmao, these are the only one I still can't consistently beat on original hardware
Not to brag but I find all the special stages to be piss easy now If I were to rank them from easiest to hardest, then I would still go with 3&K, 2, CD, and 1 in that order, only because the rotating maze still has a teeny bit of luck involved due to the bumpers.
The only special stages which give me trouble is the S1 mobile remaster because of the improved frame-rate which makes it harder to control Sonic's movement. Due to the smoother rotation it's much easier to fuck-up, especially in that tricky third special stage.
Someone who's spent way too much of my life playing these video games Pretty much every S2 playthrough I do now I'll just plow through all of them in Emerald Hill. There are eight lampposts between the two acts so you can have Super Sonic by the first boss.
I'm annoyingly bad at Blue Spheres. To this day I couldn't get all the gold emblems in Mania, not even a third of them.
I feel like even beyond scaling cues the hitboxes on 2011 are just less forgiving than hardware? Always felt like it at least
Oh Special Stages: 1 - Surprisingly never struggled with these. Once I figured out how to navigate them they became cake. 2 - Can only complete all 7 with a single character. Tails lagging movement + higher ring counts needed really makes the later stages difficult. CD - Can beat them all but not without retry abuse. The first half are piss easy but the last few often cause me trouble. 3&K - Hahaha when I first played these I had no idea how the perimeter mechanic worked and I wasted my time and struggled with trying to get every blue sphere by touching them. Now I can easily clear all 14 and Perfect most of them.
The one Blue Spheres stage I can't reliably get the perfect bonus for is the fourth stage from S&K, the blue/yellow one where all of the rings are inside of the bumpers. I find sometimes if I go for the rings, the level speed moves too quickly and launches me over a blue sphere when I touch a yellow one. I've definitely pulled it off before, but there have been times where I've just said screw it and beaten the stage without bothering with the rings.
I made my first perfect on that special stage in Mania to get the gold medal, otherwise I would never bother with it. Sonic 1: The hardest, only beaten once the same day I legitly beat the game for the first and last time. Sonic 2: With a single character, everytime until I got bored of doing it; both Sonic and Tails, I don't even bother trying. Sonic 3K: The easiest ones, though some of the K half are more challenging. Sonic CD: Not sure if they're harder, but the lower number of tries and the 2011 remake certainly make them look like they are. On the story mode subject, maybe the new endings automatically give you the jewels you haven't collected during the game so it's always a good ending for story purposes.
My problem with blue spheres is I'm so done with them. Being a bit of a collectormania sperg, I just had to get all gold medallions on the Mania bonus stages... and after 32 of the bastards, my enthusiasm for blue spheres has completely burned out forever. The Mania special stages though, I can't get enough of those!
I just used the cheat code to get all mediallons in the sound test. I think it's Hunter Bridger's birthday. Boom, no medallions, no blue spheres. :P
YYYYEEEEEESSSSSSS I hate that one Imo worst special stage of all the classics- 7th half pipe can suck dick, 3rd maze is where men cried.
I thought about running through Sonic 2 first but I'll just do story mode and try to do all the special stages instead.
