In Encore mode most Knuckles paths are altered so other characters can get through without soft locking (like other blocks are added or the walls after the 1st one aren’t only breakable by Knuckles). S3K is a bit trickier though, Knuckles routes are not completable as Sonic and would have to be altered to do so.
Wasn't it rumoured that this will tie into prime? Have we heard anything more on this? I suspect at most it will just coincide with the second batch of prime episodes and maybe the collectors edition has a hideously cheep plastic Prime Sonic like the movie sonic thing included with colours ultimate. Perhaps some optional sprite sheets based off the Prime 16bit flashbacks. I really don't hope they do what they did with mania and forces and ruin the ending to glue something onto it that makes no sense.
Oh, that's right! I forgot about that. But for S3K I still think the best workaround would be to let you switch to sidekick Knuckles on the fly. So if you are playing with Sonic as the hero, and Knuckles as the sidekick, you can just tap a button to switch to Knuckles to get past the offending area. That way, you get all the fun of being able to explore the levels to the fullest without any soft locking issues. I guess making it that sidekick Knuckles can't smash walls is a workaround too, but it limits the fun of having a sidekick.
You know, it would be a great opportunity to use the Compettion Mode stages for Single Player mode for Amy. But yeah, I know I'm asking too much for this, but it would be cool honestly.
Maybe all that's the reason why "& Knuckles" Mania cheat wasn't included in the S3&K remaster for real alongside the others (which seems to be what an unused Knuckles Tornado sprite was for, or new endings for if you'd have Sonic/Knuckles finish each other's stories through Debug Mode). Maybe they wanted your Knuckles sidekick to break into other areas, but didn't have time to also make them traversable with specifically Sonic alone. That or accounting for whatever happens should the duo get into Sonic's MGZ Act 2 Boss, where Tails has to show up and help and the Knuckles partner would presumably dip out for a bit. For what it's worth, the Super Flight cheat from Mania kinda already let's Knuckles explore Sonic's routes without issue because height's no longer an issue, so at least that has been given some level of the OK from Sega. I have no doubt the idea of letting Sonic/Knuckles traverse each other's routes was considered during the long road to the S3&K remaster finally getting made, I remember it coming up somewhere in that Stealth stream of the original game he did for the pitch. Not sure if Knuckles w/ Tails was ever considered for the S3&K remaster like it was for S2's, but it can be temporarily glitched into happening if you use Debug Mode to go to the aforementioned MGZ boss as Knuckles. That too could let you access Sonic paths as Knuckles with Tails carrying you there, so I'm guessing it's easy to implement assuming there were no issues with the Super Flight way of doing that, it'd at least get away with being a cheat code under that scrutiny, like in S2 pre-Origins. The only thing would be changing up at least the ending of Knuckles' story to account for Tails, maybe he'd suddenly be the one flying the Tornado, kinda poetically mirroring the ending of Knuckles in S2. I'm curious as to if Super forms will get a look in SCD, going alongside the new characters and Knuckles routing in making the earliest remaster feel a bit more on par with the others. Within a cheat code, just switch out sprites of the Time Stones for Chaos Emeralds or preferably, reignite the alleged original concept of there being the 8th Special Stage for Sonic to access a weird, gimped version of a Super form that you'd get from a certain Monitor in Debug Mode. Tails' playthrough already takes Amy out of the picture, so I imagine there's no issue there in having Amy not mess with the story, unless they wanted to throw in some original cutscenes there of Sonic getting kidnapped or something just for the fun of it. As for intros, the new Origins cutscene for SCD kinda unintentionally works as Amy's beginning cutscene for her own playthrough, ignoring how I think Origins still plays the Sonic animations even when using Tails. Then the ending just also has Sonic there for some reason I guess. Some quick equivalent animations for Tails and Knuckles and maybe recutting the credits and boom, the characters all have their own flair in the story like with the other games. As they're making SCD on par with the other remasters, here's what I predict: - Restored Level Select/Sound Test/etc. title screen input cheat codes in addition to being unlockables (in fairness, they are CHEAT codes after all, and these have to be unlocked SEPARATELY for Classic, Anniversary and Mirror Mode) - Miles name change title screen cheat code - Possibly new title screens for at least Knuckles and Amy (making the former feel like the SCD>S&K Lock-On we never got!) - A proper Level Select and integrated options menu to select different characters and throw in more cheat codes (including some of the following) - Sonic & Tails (maybe Knuckles & Tails if we're lucky and they want to unify all games with it) - Super forms, presumably by beating an 8th Special Stage (though we may have to suffer through another brand new Jun Senoue Super theme...) - Elemental Shields/Insta-Shield - Random Item Boxes (also missing in S1) - S2 Invincibility/Shield - All Time Stones cheat code (perhaps also other cheat codes keeping consistency with the other games, like 14 Continues) - Rings fade-out after being dropped for a while - Debug Mode not resetting to the first cycled item every time Side note, Amy must be getting her own title screen for S1 like how they made new ones for Tails/Knuckles/S&T in the original remaster, presumably also S2 as they reinstated KIS2's for Knuckles and there's precedent with that one. Maybe S3&K because she was never playable in the original game and conflicting 2D sprite and pre-rendered sprite wasn't an issue for KIS2. Might even get added to Blue Sphere's, with her new title screen 2D sprite art being present in New Blue Spheres. That'd be a cool way to kill two birds with one stone there, rather than making entire new 1P versions of those levels, though I guess technically it's not S3&K's expected level design to draw from and they'd have to figure out which Badniks to reuse where. Also wonder what S1/SCD/S2's Amy Missions would be like, with Knuckles also needing some for SCD.
I would be happy if they added missions for Amy (and Knuckles in CD) that used assets from the 2P zones and scrapped zones. Amy’s Sonic 2 missions could be in Wood Zone, her 3K missions could be in the 2 player zones and Knuckles’ Sonic CD missions could use a combo of R2 and Spinball assets.
The only problem is how little there remains of any Dubious Depths stage assets, from what I can gather, unless they discovered more in the topic on it. Of course there's also the abandoned new SCD stages of Desert Dazzle and Final Fever to work with. With a little tinkering, they could also get the 8-Bit Zones for Sonic 1, if not also Sonic 2. Maybe they'll even throw in the Sonic the Hedgehog Level Creator stage somewhere just for the hell of it.
There's a desert, there's a volcanic valley, there's a snowy mountain range. While in-game the place isn't as big as it was in Sonic 3 (pacing, technical, and development limitations) it's certainly pretty big. It's not just the tiny little island with the Master Emerald shrine on it.
Given that the only way for her to fight the MHZ Act 2 boss would be to either have Knuckles' grounded fight or to have Tails randomly show up to carry her, I bet Tails will still be the one piloting to make it clear that he's Around in some capacity.
Sand Hill appears to be in the Mystic Ruins, not on Angel Island, since you access it via a tunnel there. Though considering the close proximity of the Sand Hill to where Angel Island was, and Sandopolis being on the edge of Angel Island, I must ponder if Sand Hill and Sandopolis were once the same desert before the Master Emerald took half in the divorce...
That was what I figured. All of it was the same island, but when the ancients misused the emeralds the god (or chaos) sent part of the island into the sky.
Not an island: Sonic the Hedgehog 3's Japanese manual confirms that Angel Island was once part of a continent, which is where the Humans are noted to live in current lore.
My guess is Tails flying the Tornado and Amy on a wing like the regular intro with Sonic, but instead of going Super, the Tornado lands much like it does in Tails' opening and Amy hops off and runs in from there. Simple and the code mostly already exists to tweak.
It's usually Sonic who pilots the Tornado when you're not playing with him, so I can see that being the case here too
https://twitter.com/SonicOfficialJP/status/1647736630843768832?t=aa5S6GIWGoAJGeyw0Q2WLQ&s=19 Judging by the JP Sonic Twitter recently using Origins S2 for a Tweet, it can be presumed that Eggman's glasses in S2 still aren't fixed to be a consistent blue with the other titles. Oh well.
Eggman's glasses changing is obviously just a cheeky reference to Tom Wachowski breaking his glasses in the first Sonic movie.
Oh so that's why when I tried to go left at the start of Emerald Hill I ended up in Optical Illusions Zone.
