I always liked the Cloud cheat in Sonic CD. Just a shame Sonic Team didn't look to make more use of the ASIC in the game proper.
I remember finding that monitor in Scrap Brain when I was a kid and thinking it was some weird easter egg I'd happened upon. But, I couldn't figure out what it was doing.
I'll add one to the pile. As much as people complain about Marble Zone in MD Sonic 1, I have always found it to be a great level (Labyrinth Zone, too...) but something that always bothered me was that area in act 1 when the lava flow happens and you run from it. That in itself doesn't bug me but the fact that it only happens once ever and is only in that one particular spot. In fact, that gimmick doesn't really happen again in any of the classic games (running from a big lava flow specifically). Edit to add that I'm all in favor of neat idiosyncratic moments in video games, such as Kuribo's Shoe only appearing in one level in the entirety of SMB 3, but having lava chase you down a narrow corridor seems like something that could be expanded upon.
One thing I always found very weird in this series is the way two yellow birds will randomly materialize in act 1 of Sky High Zone in GG Sonic 2 if you walk into the left side of the 1UP monitor that is on the far left of the stage practically high above the starting position. I showed this strange thing in my own playthrough of the game (Skip to around the 5:32 mark);
They did expand on it in a game with the very same name no less. With a tornado (that's carrying a car) What I always found weird is how in Sonic Heroes you could control fly characters on the floor only in Rail canyon during button press puzzle. You could even perform their special attacks (like Cream's cheese attack). Why even program that in if you're never gonna use it? Also how Espio's Tornado attack would also grant him invisibility. So whenever you'd want to activate those pole things you'd leave the other two characters behind.
There are other ways to get only the flight character in Heroes. Get your other teammates caught by the KLAGEN badnik (the two-armed jellyfish) to see - the alone-attacks may have been considered necessary to come back from that.
Some things I find kinda weird are: The graphics in the Sonic 2 special stages depicting a half-pipe, when it actually functions like a full pipe. Eggman having a logo with the letters EG in Wing Fortress. Wouldn't it have made more sense for it to be EM, making it initials for EggMan? In Pocket Adventure, Knuckles uppercutting Sonic so hard that he literally sends him flying high into the sky, where he lands on the Tornado as Tails just happened to be passing by. Has to be the goofiest level transition in the series' history. In the same game, the fact that when fighting the Gigantic Angel boss, you can stand on the explosions caused by the bombs dropped by this one against all logic, and they don't even hurt you. Also the fact that holding up in Sonic Advance 2 makes the character do what looks like an idle animation instead of looking up. Not pressing any buttons for long doesn't trigger it. It feels like a debug function that they used to test the animation and they forgot to change it for the final version. In the same game, the characters surviving falling from space to the Earth like it's nothing.
On a similar note, many people use "SOZ" instead of "SPZ" to refer to Sandopolis Zone, even if the latter would make much more sense since "Polis" literally means "city" in Greek and it would be a natural point to split the word. Even if you think about it as "Sand-O-Polis", it should at least be "SOPZ", but abbreviations traditionally only use 3 letters, so I'll never stop my crusade against "SOZ". People who use "MTZ" instead of "MPZ" for Metropolis Zone are even worse since you're literally splitting it as "Me Tropolis" instead of "Metro Polis", which makes even less sense, since there is no "O" in the middle of two perfectly valid words in this case. You might as well start using "LYZ" for "Lab Yrinth" Zone at this point.
I've never liked SPZ or MPZ, despite them obvious being the clear place to define them, based on "polis" like you say. (tho Mania would agree with your way of handling it) Going approximately off the first meaningful syllable looks more satisfying and sticks in my head better: "Sand-o-po-lis" + "Me-tro-po-lis" Never really thought about it, but did the three-letter acronyms (really two-letter plus a Z) start as fandom short-hands specifically for the classic trilogy? People always call modern levels by full name. It'd easily become a mess long-term as the chance of repeat designations occurs as more zones are included, and arbitrary distinctions need to be made somewhere. (Sandopolis and Studiopolis can't both be SPZ!)
It’s likely because in Japanese, the two phonemes that compose “Egg” begin with E and G. Egg = エッグ = E (g) Gu. It still would have made more sense to pick EM but that’s probably the reason.
Are you a native English speaker? I'm curious because simply separating "Sandopolis" like that feels incredibly alien to me, but that could just be a Romance language thing to never ever use syllables like that.
Yup, native English. I'm just taking the exact spelling of the word and spacing it out where the syllables would fall. How I personally think of it is "sand" first as it's own complete thing, and then sticking "opolis" at the end; similar to how Studiopolis is cut into "studi" and "opolis" like that. But I can also easily see "san-do-po-lis" as a way of spacing it out as well, like how Metropolis does it. Maybe that's a more pleasing way to do it.
Many people used it in the past, and I already complained about it a few times on this very forum before, I think it's used in some of the disassemblies as well, it wouldn't be one of my personal crusades otherwise. I'm both glad and honestly surprised to see more people being against it, but mostly surprised to see you never noticed it, given how prominent its use has been. Even some files on our wiki are labeled like that, such as http://info.sonicretro.org/File:SonicandKnuckles_MD_Map_So1.png (ironically it looks like I named it like that since the revision history has been broken). Then again on our wiki there's also this: http://info.sonicretro.org/File:Snzboss.png (same as above, I didn't name it).
They run out of spce to add the second G, but I'd bet EG is for "evil genius", though it could also be "eggman gear", a trademark of his company. Studio is a word in english, yet you separate it like that? Now that we're talking about the polis of these games, it irks me the levels are hydrocity and sandopolis instead of hydropolis and sand city (I refuse to add the 'o' here). Hydropolis is full greek, mixing english and greek the way they did only causes english people to argue about the pronunciation of hydrocity (please, don't pronounce it like atrocity) or get this weird "but the 'o' is the second sylabble!" thing.
Indeed. It's a mixture of "stu-di-o" and "me-tro-po-lis" the way I have it down. In case it matters, according to the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary for North American English... studio is "S T UW D IY OW" metro is "M EH T R OW" metropolis is "M AH T R AA P AH L AH S" according to the site... but I can also see "M EH T R AA P OW L IH S" as another valid way. I'd again combine studiopolis from that like either "S T UW D IY AA P AH L AH S" or alternatively "S T UW D IY AA P OW L IH S", both of which seems perfectly natural to me. To say metropolis like either "M AH T R OW P AH L AH S" or as "M EH T R OW P OW L IH S" would sound absolutely hilarious and wrong to me. That's why I cut studiopolis off at studi and not the full word studio.
