Has there ever been a trick to that notorious Sonic 3 cheat?

Kega is the ONLY emulator that you can do the code on. I've tried it on Gens, Genecyst, KGen, Retro-Drive, and several others -- only Kega can pull it off.

Also, I agree totally with people who say the D-Pad is helpful -- I couldn't do it on a 3 button controller, but could pull it off on a 6 button. The arcade pads are just easier to manouver, making doing the code easier.

Also, I always found that to perform the code successfully, you need to have a good rhythm. Press each button with proper timing so that you hit the first "up" the moment the screen turns black, and the last "up" right before it flashes white, and have equal timing between all the button presses. I'd say aim for roughly (because I haven't tested this) somewhere between 135 and 145 BPM in your button pressing rhythm. This is for the NTSC version -- I don't know if the PAL version goes slower or not.

 

I've heard that Sonic 3 was the point at which the PAL versions stopped being crap.

 

Does anyone know why it's so hard to pull off?

I mean, does the programming behind it require to you to press the buttons during specific single frames?; is it just because there's so short a window in which to enter the code?; or what?

Also, why did Sega bother making it so hard, when all the other games' codes are child's play? I highly doubt the testers used this code, as it's so unreliable.

Is the difficulty actually unintended behaviour, such as a bug due to slowdown?

It would be very interesting to know these things. The Sonic series has so many little mysteries like this!

(You know, perhaps they gimped the code when Sonic 3 and S&K were split, so that gamers couldn't access the screen with Flying Battery and Mushroom Valley in plain sight; although you'd think if that were the case they would have just taken the code out altogether.)

 

Somehow I doubt they really intended gamers to use that code, what with the save feature's zone select readily accessible and the leftover, nonexistant zones in the level select...

 

IIRC, they all ran at 5/6 speed, but S2 onwards had corrected (I.e. sped-up) music.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW105FpSXWs&fmt=18

So here's what's going on:

The code is UP(2), DOWN(2), UP(4). Pretty easy to do within the intro time. The problem is that you'll need to hit the button and release it during an empty frame, and hit the same button again in order to register it as a button hit, and not a button hold. Also the hit must be within a Sonic frame upload. The music tempo has nothing to do with it.

The sequence will abort (restart) if you press the wrong button.

While the next Sonic frame is being uploaded, the button should be registered, meaning that you'll have 11 times to hit a button right, and you'll need 8 of those 11 to succeed.

When I did that video, I pressed [UP] [UP], [DOWN], DOWN, DOWN, [DOWN], UP, [UP], UP, UP, [UP], UP, UP, UP, [UP], UP, UP, [UP], UP, UP.... etc, then starting over to try to make it twice, just to show how the frame updates the cheat counter. It is not important how many times you press, only the ones that is within a frame update will be counted for.
So at the end of the intro sequence, the frame updates are so far from eachother (except at the end, where there are 3 frames very close together including the whilte flash frame), so it is so much easier to just hit UP as many times as possible and by luck hoping to register the 4 needed UPs.

Yes, in the video I tried to make the cheat twice, but as you see, there aren't enough frames to do so.

This cheat code has caused many tears for me in the past. I spent my emotional teenage years debugging my way through Launch Base.

Yes, the range where the button will register is during a new Sonic frame uploading, not counting the first, but counting also the white flash frame at the end. That makes it 11 total.

(Note that I haven't checked if it is possible to register two button presses during a frame upload, but you can understand that would require 4 frames, and that is crazy fast! Succeeding with 3 frames only, and you might miss the next frame upload, so it isn't worth it. In the end, it is luck anyway!)

My guess is Sonic 3 was unfinished (obvious), and the level select revealed too much about the upcoming levels in Sonic & Knuckles (or the unfinished menu system from Sonic 2). Sonic & Knuckles was probably already started, or Sonic 3C was the aim at that time, so Sonic 3 was like a Beta and they probably wanted the cheat in there for testing, but not more, at that time.

Yes, difficulty. It is not a slowdown or a bug. They would never have made the range 8 of 11 total hits unless they intended it to be difficult.

 

YIKES! I was able to do it on Gens 10a! I was able to do it on a standard keyboard at least, with the up and down buttons, then pressing up multiple times after doing initial code, until I hear a ring. Now I should see if I could do it with a USB game controller

 

That can't be. I remember getting the ring sound at a different time, in different tries.

EDIT: Oh, I hadn't seen LOst's post. Awesome.

 

If you press UP at the very moment the screen is black (not becoming, but is), you might get it right, but it is actually not registering the first frame. While Sonic is moving so fast in the beginning, you really need to press UP UP really quick, and DOWN DOWN really quick. This is basically where everyone fails. The rest is just to press UP as many tiles and as quickly as possible.

Typical example of failing because you hit UP to early (brakets = registered hits):

UP
[UP]
[DOWN] <- Fail
DOWN
[UP] <- Cheat code is restarting here
UP
UP
[UP]
UP
UP
UP
[UP] <- Second fail

If you managed to get UP UP DOWN DOWN registered, there might not be much frames left to input 4 UPs, and you'll need every new frame upload to registered UP hits. Just press UP like super crazy many times, but as the white flash is on, it is over! The ring sound might appear after a while, but that is just an illusion.

No matter how many times I will explain how it works, it will not make it easier for you. The only thing you'll get out of my explainations is that this cheat is possible to do by anyone. It works.

 

Thanks, LOst. With this information, I attempted it and got it on my 3rd try. I then proceeded to try it several times and try to get the timing right. The first 4 inputs, (^^VV) have to be put in really quick, but I seem to be having more luck now than I ever used to as about 1/3 of the time I attempt it now, I can get it to work. Thanks.

 

I don't remember having any trouble with this as a kid. Not done it in years, mind.

 

That's really cool to know, thanks!

 

You are all welcome

 

My point wasn't that it was how it worked so much as how to "get" it to work. If you have the right timing and start and stop it just right, you can get it without too much trouble. I can usually get it with only a few tries using this method.

 

Cool explanation. I've only done it once on SMG for Gamecube and I really hate how much better STH3's Debug is to S3&K's in that you get a box with an 's' on it that, if broken, will cause Some to turn Super. I didn't get to try it with any other character but that box beats having to redo all the special stages with the Level Select cheat. It's been so long since I cared though I've forgotten if we were allowed to use the debug on S3&K. That was a fun code, too. I built my own levels from it.

 

I've only done the level select code on hardware once. I just wanted to get a look around, then I got bored of it when, other than Mushroom Valley and the HPZ icon, there wasn't much more to do (the "8th" special stage came later)

 

Truth is, you don't need to stop mashing Up at any moment to make it work, as long as the first four key presses were recognized.

 

I never been able to do it in the real hardware. I called it bullshit. I always used the hotswap trick. It was by pure chance; My cousing though: "what if we do the level select trick on Sonic 2, and then remove the cartridge, put Sonic 3 and reset?". I said to her: "No. You don't understand. That's not how it works...". For my surprise, it did work. I could never imagine it. She used to use a similar trick to get several extra-lives in Shinobi or Strider, if I'm not mistaken. It was when I grew up that I realised that a kids thing was serious business.

I used to do the "up up down down up etc" trick in the emulator 10 years ago, when there were no S3K roms, and it always worked. I mean, in the begining, it was really hard to pull it off, but, after I got the hang of it, I could pretty much do it at will any time on the first time.

After seeing this topic, I started up my emulator, and attempted to do the code; wasn't able to do it on my first nor second try. I got worried. But I followed LOst's recommendations and was able to do it in my thrid try, and fourth, 5th, etc, etc, in a row.