Not sure if this is thread-sufficient, but something that intrigues me is that within the sprites of the Taxman/Stealth version of Sonic 1, there's these new Chaos Emerald sprites. Of course the light blue is the added 7th Chaos Emerald and the purple is to make the set better match the modern Chaos Emerald colours. But what was the purpose of the orange Chaos Emerald here? Spoiler Doesn't seem like it was any sprite related to the glowing sprites of the Emeralds, nor does it replace the yellow when 7 Chaos Emeralds are present. Was there any reasoning behind this, like was it meant to be the Chaos Emerald of the editor-based 8th Special Stage, or is it just another enigma of an unused sprite? EDIT: Perhaps it could've been a nod to the Emerald monitor from Triple Trouble? There was a different kind of Emerald monitor implemented into the remaster's Debug mode.
Well, in Sonic 1 and 2 one of the emeralds is yellow, but in Sonic 3 it’s orange. Perhaps there was going to be a change to make each game’s emeralds one consistent colour? Edit: just checking sprites it seems the other two are also closer in colour to S3’s later emerald colours too.
Went to check how they look like in game, and only now realized the yellow Chaos Emerald changes colours. It has a plastic yellow colour in the inventory + special stage (uses the special stage yellow block palette), but is a nice warm yellow/orange tone in the two endings (using the mountain palette). This is true even in 1991 (as expected with limited palettes). [+] [+] The ED one doesn't match this unused 2013 one perfectly, but it's kinda similar. Having these side-by-side, I now really don't like the look of the yellow/green Emeralds under the inventory + special stage palette. 0/10 game
There's actually also an endings sprite for the unused one, but boy do the two orange Emeralds look very similar! Threw together a quick comparison and yeah, it does seem like orange is the one colour missing from later Emeralds. The S1 7 Emeralds selection in particular most resembles the modern colours of them than S2/S3, so maybe that's why they put it to the wayside if they did initially want an option for colour consistency between games. Maybe it made more sense to imitate those colours rather than only either S2 or S3. That would've been a neat option, but it's cool to see the level of minute detail Taxman and Stealth put into these remasters. Maybe it's even the same orange Chaos Emerald seen in spin-offs like Fighters and R, though the former at least adds another colour or two to what's been established in the mainline games. EDIT: Suppose even the hidden gold Chaos Emerald of S3&K's secret Special Stages could basically fall under being a yellow Chaos Emerald, thus covering all known in-game Emerald colours of the original 4 games, I think.
The yellow Chaos Emerald had this odd habit of shifting to orange. Even when they had streamlined things so there were seven, the yellow Chaos Emerald, for some reason, turned orange for the events of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles in Sonic Jam: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive): Sonic the Hedgehog 3: I don't know why, but I would think that's just supposed to replace the yellow Chaos Emerald for whatever reason.
Huh, the colors are so close that I hadn't noticed; I had to look at the comparison screenshots _Sidle posted for some time before I caught it! This is a neat find.
If y'all are expecting consistent colour schemes from your magical gemstones, maybe you should be trying to get the Order Emeralds instead.
I wonder if the orange Chaos Emerald was originally added in case there were problems with Tails's colors. Amusingly, between Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, the second Chaos Emerald went from yellow to orange.
If that became a secret 8th Special Stage Chaos Emerald, maybe they would've done the same for S1's new Orange Chaos Emerald for its hidden editor 8th Special Stage (which is just "CUSTOM" with no default Emerald placed). S2's new 8th Special Stage in its remaster also just uses the cyan Emerald, as if it's a reference to that Emerald being added retroactively to S1. EDIT: With the Super Emerald being yellow in S&K's secret 8th Special Stage, SCD's secret 8th Special Stage is the only other one without any special gemstone to get. Tangential, but it's cool they all got a secret 8th Special Stage.
