Sonic 3 Complete

Hi folks. I joined after seeing this thread and thinking someone might be interested in a similar edit I'd been working on for my own purposes.

Head to the Sonic 3 Complete (hack) wiki page to download the latest version and read about what it does.

Since I'm putting this into the public domain, allow me to take a moment to credit shobiz, whose code to do the initial music switch stuff got me started on this project (found at SSRG), and apologies to the Megamix folks for making off with the B+C Super activation concept, which turned out to be just the solution to "NO KNUCKLES STOP TURNING HYPER" I'd wanted since I first played S3K (though it has partly been replaced again now). Plus about a squillion other contributors who've helped since this original post; they are now listed on the Wiki.

 

I tend to do it by holding C and pressing B - I'd hate to have to mash them at once too. You could equally hold B and press C if debug is off.

Incidentally, I didn't mention it in the notes, but the debug sprite check function that used to be on C+B is on C+A in this version to accommodate the super switch.

 

To make it an FBZ reorder perfectly, I think you'd have to do the following, in order of least to most difficult:

• Change the level exit object definitions in Carnival Night and Mushroom Hill
• Re-order the level select
• Probably do something about the flashing rings... I haven't looked into any of that code but it's probably fairly mundane to alter, and it might even be possible to simplify it since you no longer have the special case of zone 04 being out of sequence.
• Do cruel and unusual things to the save game level order and icon sequence (although if you used the Sonic 3 FBZ icon, the icon stuff would be simpler)
• Construct a sensible alternative cutscene between Mushroom Hill and Sandopolis (and possibly Carnival Night and Flying Battery if you don't buy the idea that the cannon would fire you up there by chance - might be able to port the MHZ one over?)

I'd love to have a version that does this, but not quite enough to go through the pain of putting it all together myself, at least for now.

 

I like to think of this as "Fix Tails' obsessive compulsion with painting the Tornado symmetrically."

Indeed, it's a shame to lose the simplicity, and short of giving the game away in the manual, it'd be nigh on impossible to find the transformations at all if it had been set up this way originally. But ultimately I couldn't think of a better solution to the enforced transformation problem, which was one of my biggest problems with the original, personally. Triple jump is an elegant idea for Sonic, but Tails relies on that anyway for flight, and I also wanted to make sure I didn't make impossible any manoeuvres that you could do in S3K - which includes jump-super-glide, jump-super-fly, jump-hyper-dash.

It's probably a bit of a pain if you usually jump with A though. I might look at making it anything-plus-B sometime. I've used C for a long time due to debug.

Simply to imitate pure Sonic 3, which had no fade. I always preferred it that way, and after all Sonic 1-2 got away with it.
I'm not sure whether this comes down to my having been stuck with the PAL version for years - with the fade there combined with lower speed, it seemed like we almost dropped to eerie silence before coming back with a jaunty victory theme. This isn't nearly so jarring at NTSC speed, but I still prefer the lack of fade.

I did add it back in a couple of places where no fade sounded especially wrong - specifically where we go straight from boss music to victory music. That used to be Launch Base, Lava Reef and Sky Sanctuary, but now Sky Sanctuary is the only one left that works that way.