Sonic 3 Development Lore: Unused Zone ID 0D, Prototype Sound Cue 2E, Concept Art Discussion

The tracks in Sonic 3K have names?

 

Could you be thinking of the Virtual Sonic track "City in the Clouds"? Not based on Sky Sanctuary (outside of its title) but is related to the Sonic 3 & K Soundtrack by it existing on that album.

It was recorded during production of Sonic 3 (Prior to October '93 atleast) and wasn't released until 1996.

 

Sonic Adventure's Perfect Chaos may or may not have been a conscious (and heavily modified) recycling of Sonic 3's dragon idea. However, the only Nausicaä specific part of that idea in Sonic 3 & Knuckles was the stylization of the tapestry. Without a tapestry in that specific style, what we see in Sonic Adventure has no connection to Nausicaä.

We don't even know if the idea to make the Hidden Palace Zone legend look like Nausicaä's tapestry came before or after the dragon idea was scrapped in favor of an Eggman robot. Sonic 3's manual doesn't go into detail about what form the dragon legend took: it could have been a painting, a stone carving, a mosaic, or something else. The same goes for the concept doodles seen in Sonic Origins.

 

There's obvious Miyazaki influence in 3&K with or without the mural.

The island in the sky itself looks a lot like Sky Sanctuary and even Beta Windy Valley if you ask me.

 

an aside, both series also draw directly from south america, with the rebel base in A New Hope having a shot that is just composited onto a photo of Tikal, and Sonic Adventure being obvious.

IMO, without question.


both are previously inhabited but now abandoned overgrown technologically advanced hidden cities floating in the sky, with gold stonework, invaded by a technologically advanced figure. though in the case of Castle in the Sky, the villain wanted to use it to his own ends, while Eggman just basically throws robots at you to make you go away.

 

Windy Valley is Sky Sanctuary's remains, clearly

I joke, but it is curious how there's ruins in the skies above both Angel Island and the Lost Ruins... and with the reveal of a Cyber Space Portal in Sky Sanctuary in Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Divergence... Best move to the Headcanon thread...

Which also collapse, and an island rises high into the atmosphere away from those that would do it harm...

 

What I want to know is why the manual has a story that is obviously wrong. It says Knuckles was doing his rounds to check on the emerald altars that each had an emerald. You know, the emeralds that are in Sonic's possession? Then for plot reasons they supposedly disappear after the Death Egg crashes on the island, yet they're still somehow there because Robotnik can detect them.

It makes one wonder what the real story of Sonic 3 is.

 

Consensus seems to be that the Classic Era had multiple sets of Chaos Emeralds scattered about, and that was Angel Island's set while Sonic had Westside Islands set. Sonic Adventure streamlined it into only being 7 Chaos Emeralds later, resulting in the confusion.

Sonic the Comic also addresses it with the idea of the Chaos Emeralds being split into two sets, and sees the two sets being re-joined as one with the events on Angel Island:

 

Let's assume you're right for a second. Which set are you collecting from the Special Stages? Why do I get a good ending when I collect 7, even though in this context there's a second set within Robotnik's reach?

My point is that Sonic 3 the game disagrees with its own manual, and Sonic & Knuckles reinforces this by introducing the Master Emerald.

 

I did say consensus, I'm not saying it's correct. It's just the thought I've heard mentioned the most when this comes up.

 

This is what I've heard, but how about Yasuhara's zone concepts then? They're most likely the earlier pieces of Sonic 3 development material that we have, yet they already feature the one and only Master Emerald, not this supposed set of seven Angel Island -exclusive of Chaos Emeralds.

How much oversight did the manual get from actual developers of the game, anyway? Maybe its writer was only given a very vague description of the plot ("Eggman's after the Chaos Emeralds while Knuckles is trying to get his island's stolen power source back" or something like that) and filled in the blanks with their own imagination.

 

The Master Emerald was referenced in the manual as a huge Chaos Emerald signal:

Also, the use of "he noticed there are Chaos Emeralds on the floating island" kind of supports the idea that there were multiple sets at the time, since Robotnik would know there couldn't be if there was just the seven, after trying to steal those seven on Westside Island for the Death Egg that just crashed.

The Angel Island set are otherwise gone. Where, I don't know, all I know is Knuckles collects the Westside Island set. I would assume he hides those, and the set we collect are Angel Islands, since they're scattered in the Special Stages after Knuckles stole your set. But that's assumptions on my part.

 

Hold on, I think that I just realized something.

What if this set of "Angel Island Chaos Emeralds" is actually just a misinterpretation of the Super Emeralds? That would explain why they're nowhere to be seen in concept art predating the S3/S&K split, but are mentioned in the former game's manual as being located at an altar that only Knuckles has been to.

 

Ninja'd by Jaxer, but heres my original post below:

Probably just a load of nonsense, with probably several contradictions (colour for one) but what if Angel island's emeralds were only ever collected in Sonic and Knuckles alone... and the Sonic 3 and Knuckles "full story" fuses the two sets of emeralds into one set (super emeralds) as a way of Sonic Team shadow retconning the mixed up story. This would allow for the two sets of emeralds ( collected separately in S3 and S&K) and then one set in all games following.

Obviously the colour and shapes changing from S1/2 to S3 is a plot hole here... as well as 3D... and probably gives Sonic team too much credit, but it could bridge the gap from a certain point of view.

 

That's probably just a byproduct of going back and forth with the story to fit, miscomunication and time constraints. And let's be honest, for a 90s platformer standards that's too much lore already.

From the manual of Sonic 2:
"In the distant past, the people of the island used mysterious stones to develop their civilization and achieve the prosperity they desired.
However, all of that prosperity came to nothing overnight when people tried to use the stones incorrectly, and the stones were sealed away somewhere on the island by the gods."

From this we can assume that South Island and West Side Island emeralds were not the same and the story of the 7th joining in the other 6 in Origins animation is just a retcon. So it's reasonable to think that many islands have this kind of stones, and Angel Island just happens to be extra special among others for having also the Master Emerald.

It's probable that the original intention was that the emeralds from West Side Island stayed there after the battle in space, like what happened with the ones from South Island, and time passed between 2 and 3 (this makes sense since Robotnik had a ton of tech developed in Angel island). In the prototype Sonic reaches Angel Island surfing and he was not carrying the emeralds, so we can ssume that was one earlier intention. Probably when they had to split the game in 2 parts, came with that idea of tying up the story to the ending of Sonic 2 to explain having more emeralds for both parts and the manual story was not updated.

 

I'm not saying it's unarguable fact. Obviously we don't know anything for certain without official word, and the similarities could be coincidences.

But I don't think it's a reach to make the connections, considering how much Ghibli influence is in the old Sonic games, and the fact S3K does directly homage the Nausicaa tapestry. SA1 was developed by Naka too, and it also shows some possible Ghibli influence, with Beta Windy Valley as mentioned above.

Here is how I see the possible connections:


And yes, the Perfect Chaos mosaic obviously dropped the Nausicaa tapestry style, as SA1 depicted the echidnas as more of a Mayan-esque civilization, so it went with a stone-based representation instead.

 

I like it as an idea, although I was always under the impression that the super emeralds exist solely due to Sonic 3's split, and therefore ultimately due to external business factors. Hence why they never appear in concept art.

It is really weird how inconsistent it all is though... I never really noticed before.

 

Or maybe when they opted to the split the game, they decided to have the player collect two sets of Chaos Emeralds in the full game, to justify the 14 special stages. One set would be the Angel Island emeralds, the other would be the Westside Island emeralds, making for a total of 14 emeralds. But when they made S&K they changed their minds and opted to have only one emerald set, which would be upgraded into Super Emeralds through the S&K special stages.

That would explain why Floating Island had only one big emerald in early concepts, but a whole emerald set in the S3 manual. They gave it its own set when they decided to split the game and have two special stage sets.

 

Here’s a problem I have with S3: why did Sonic selfishly take West Side’s set with him? In S1, he uses South Island’s set to restore South Island and doesn’t keep them. We know S2’s original plot featured Sonic using the emeralds to undo Eggmqn’s destruction and time travel shenanigans, but the final game clumsily omits anything like this, all we get as a good ending is that we see Sonic is super. S3’s original surfboard opening doesn’t depict Sonic losing any emeralds.