While wandering around some random message board I had stumbled upon from an image search in Google, I found a rip of the UFO graphics in Sonic CD's special stage, when I noticed... The hand item. I've never heard of such a thing before, and the guy who discovered it doesn't seem to know that he's actually found something, so I'll ask here. Is this really real? Does the UFO code have a function for this unused item? Does it make Sonic stop running around like an idiot or something?
FYI: That sprite sheet appears to have some sort of filter applied. Also, I'm pretty sure the hand item was brought up years ago, but I don't remember who found it. EDIT: Disregard the filtering; Firefox was zoomed in, so it applied bilinear filtering to the images itself. The sprite sheet is fine. (The enlarged hand image, on the other hand, isn't.)
I like how you uploaded the resized version posted by ICEknight, (which, since it uses a filter, required Andlabs to add a {{replace}} template for "using filters"), instead of cropping the perfect rip which was present in the sprite sheet, which is indeed correct, I actually went to a Special Stage to check the VRAM, so I can confirm this: Back on topic, it's good to see more unused stuff. It's always been there, it only needed someone to take a look at the VRAM, I wonder how many other pieces of art are still waiting to be discovered in the same way...
First thing which comes to mind with a hand is to either stop sonic or stop the UFO's moving, personally I can't see how the hand fits in well enough on those special stages.
The blue and white UFOs don't appear in the final game either, only the blue and red UFO which gives you more time. So the "stop" sign could have come out of the blue and white UFO.
About the "filtered" icon, I just resized it to its correct aspect ratio, only because that's how it's supposed to look like... Not to derail this topic, I've just made a new one regarding the aspect ratio issues in the Wiki. EDIT: Why does the wiki say it was found by Chaofanatic when he's still not even aware of it, is beyond me.
Jazz Jackrabbit's bonus stages, which are heavily based on those seen in Sonic CD, have hands. They basically just act as solid obstacles. A bit pointless really. But that's the first thing that sprung to mind.
High Five for bringing that up. They're like the White Spheres in Blue Sphere. Jazz 1's Bonus Levels are like a hybrid of S3K and SCD's Special Stages, and, like the rest of the game, it's pretty awesome even though it takes so much from Sonic.
See how the Purple and Blue UFOs have white alternatives? Could it be possible that if the UFOs were frozen for a certain amount of time, then flashed white before moving again?
The grey/purple UFOs are the ones that first appear in the Special Stage, the yellow ones contain ten rings and the white ones contain speed shoes. The timer drops to 15 seconds, the blue and red UFO will appear, if smashed it will give you another 15 seconds, this will keep happening until you either smash all the remaining UFOs or allow the timer to run down to zero and the stage ends. The blue and white UFOs never appear in the game, it's possible that they were to contain the stop hand and would have appeared with the extra time UFO.
This sounds very logical, it would also mean the Special Stages were more challenging at one point if that's how it worked since you would no longer get the increase of time when destroying that particular UFO. I also believe the hand was at one point an item found within the regular UFO's and its purpose was most likely to temporarily freeze the UFO's in place allowing Sonic to easily hit them. Also remember that in earlier development the UFO's looked very different, and in even earlier development they were hot air balloons with lights on them. There could probably be even more unused items we don't even know about and their functions. EDIT: I also just had a thought, since the blue and white UFO did not appear in the final but the blue and red one did for extended time, who's to say both didn't appear at one point, one giving you more time and the other freezing the UFO's briefly? Then the regular purple UFO's just give you rings and speed shoes.
Actually, notice the white strips also appear in the purple UFO. Are the blue UFOs using a different palette row? Because it looks like that's the case. If so, maybe those UFOs were never in the game at all and it was just a coincidence.
You know what is REALLY weird? After watching that video I can only ever see three coloured stripe 'steps' towards the UFO (anything further away shows black bars) but in that sprite sheet, it shows 5 'steps' before the UFO gets black bars. Whats the deal?
From what I can tell, this is most definitely the case; the purple UFOs have their own palette row, while the blue ones share Sonic's. They explicitly made sure the purple UFO palette line lined up with Sonic's palette to do this, too, so the blue-with-white-stripes UFO was most definitely intentional. Has anyone tried memory hacking the special stages, out of curiosity (like, savestate hacking or something)? Maybe we could turn one of the UFOs into this mysterious fourth UFO, if we stumble upon the right memory address...
Anybody looked through any of the Sonic CD protos for any possible further sightings (or unused code even)? I'd do it myself but I don't have the proto ISOs handy right now.
