The Sonic the Hedgehog Headcanon Thread of Lore and Time Stones

I think it's more that there was a pillar connected to the Master Emerald that distributed its energy to the island, as the early SA1 concept art from before they came up with the outdoor altar seems to suggest. There is what appears to be a pillar above the emerald altar:


The accompanying concept art depicted the Master Emerald (and the Chaos Emeralds) within the altar, implying that they're separate (but related) things.

 

That sounds ambiguous enough to me. If the pillar's purpose was transferring the ME's energy, then it would be fitting to call it the "Master Emerald pillar".

 

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I don't think there was supposed to be more than one altar at that point, so I'd assume it's indeed the one from Hidden Palace.

 

Well, I don't know why they would refer to the Master Emerald as a "pillar" when it clearly wasn't one. Even the S3 level sketches depict it as a huge emerald, rather than a pillar. But regardless of what the original intention was, the SA1 concept art seems to have interpreted it as a crystal pillar connected to the emeralds' altar, coinciding with the wording in the S3 manual:

Well yeah. But it's uncertain whether it implies that Angel Island had two altars since the beginning, or that the devs changed their minds as to what the altar's location should be before S&K was finished.

It might also be a remnant of early plans where each zone would have had an underground temple per the level sketches. They even show the dragon legend's mural in the scrapped Mushroom Hill temple, suggesting that the altar would have been there.

Worth pointing out that the manual quote I just posted implies that the pillar was always intended to be connected to the emeralds.

 

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Nah, that's just me misremembering, sorry. I just checked the sketches and they imply that Knuckles would have taken an underground path in each zone, but only a handful like Launch Base and Mushroom Hill would have underground temples.

 

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Iizuka changes his mind every time the Super Emeralds are brought up. I think it's fairly obvious that he makes up these answers on the spot.

Remember that when Taxman was asked about the Super Emeralds, he implied Hyper Sonic is non-canon. Also remember that Mania was intended to have the Super Emeralds at one point, and being its dev he would know the reason they were cut.

 

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Theory time. Why does the end of level song in JP/EU Sonic CD go "TELEPORTATION YEAH"? Because originally, each act would have taken place in a different timezone. Act 1 = present, act 2 = past, act 3 = future (or something similar). So when you beat an act, you would be teleported to another era.

This is supported by the fact the devs stated that the reason the acts in Sonic CD are called "zones" is that the word stands for timezone in this instance. This doesn't make much sense in the final game, where the acts are just different areas of the current round and can be visited in multiple timezones, but it becomes more sensible if applied to the original structure.

So the act nomenclature and the level clear song are remnants of the original plans for the time travel gimmick.

 

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Did they ever specify that CD's final time travel mechanism was planned since the beginning? All I know is that Ohshima didn't want there to be loading screens when changing timezones.