He's Blue (da ba dee): Sonic 1, Act-by-Act

Part 4: Green Hill Zone Act 3, Or, He Floats Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease

I came in like a wrecking ball
-- Miley Cyrus, from Wrecking Ball

Zone0 link. This one's pretty important, and you might find this post hard to read if you don't look at it a little bit.

A while back before I had finished up the post on GHZ 2 I had figured that this post would be incredibly fun to write. Now that all the main gameplay mechanics have been described, I've changed my mind on that a bit, since it's a little harder to find an angle to get GHZ 3 into. What I'd been doing in the previous posts was taking the pictures and then describing what's going on in that part of the level, like a less inane take on the average Powerpoint presentation. But compared to the last two levels, there isn't quite as much to talk about. GHZ3 doesn't introduce much in the way of new mechanics, instead bringing back the ideas shown in the first two acts and making them harder and longer. If you look at the previous maps, GHZ3's is a decent amount bigger than either of them, and has more path options.

Really, that's what GHZ3 is about. If GHZ1 was the participatory lecture and GHZ2 was the homework, GHZ3 was the midterm exam, requiring synthesis of the lessons and just a little bit of creative thinking to get by, serving a comprehensive review of all the material laid out so far. Hard to argue against this sort of design; it wouldn't make sense to have the final level in a stage be outright easier than ones it preceded. Coming out of this stage, you as the player should have knowledge of everything that makes Sonic, well, Sonic. I'll get a little more into what I mean by that when I get into talking about Marble Zone, but compared to GHZ as a proof of concept, most of the other levels borrow more directly from mechanics already familiar to people playing the platform games that predate Sonic. Which, again, is fair. Like I'd said in the introduction, Sonic was breaking a lot of new ground, and I have trouble blaming the developers from wanting to play a little more conservatively with an idea that hadn't been tested much before that. The sequels, at least those on the Genesis, would all play a lot more like what you see in this level than the rest of this game often does.

So GHZ3 is harder, and longer. Along with that, there's a risk of taking damage that's higher than it was for the previous levels. Correspondingly, there's also no way to get into the special stage in any zone's third act. In its place, however, is an encounter with Dr. Robotnik, a.k.a. Eggman, at varying degrees of difficulty. Here, Eggman is pretty easy to predict and has a fairly passive attack, and the level does a lot to make your first encounter with him fairly painless. Plus, a certain not-obvious route makes the encounter with him fairly trivial.

That route is the one that the fastest TAS for this level uses, and it's almost entirely done in the air. The relevant clip starts at around 1:33 in the embedded video below, which I'll link to instead of making several screenshots:


Already we have a review of both acts here at the start. Spikes are bad, stuff is hidden in the treetops, sometimes Sonic accelerates faster in the air, and the level design cues are sometimes more like guidelines. Maybe I'm just reading a bit into that invincibility monitor hidden in that tree, positioned right at the peak of Sonic's jump so that he will hit it if he jumps right when he gets control of Sonic if he's been holding right. Maybe not. In any case, it allows Sonic safe passage immediately over the spike pit to the right of the start of the level. I have to confess that as a kid this was one hidden power-up I never knew about, but damn if it isn't helpful.

So right after that, passing the spikes leads to a downward slope. As always, a cue to start rolling, allowing Sonic to pick up more speed. A spring up is placed near the end of the slope, before a destructable wall. Hitting the spring is a little more challenging since Sonic's jumps are fixed trajectory after a jump, but, hey, this is a TAS. That spring is tempting, and sometimes the upper routes offer a more direct route through the level. Taking it leads to another block of land, where a speed shoes monitor hides behind a tree near some horizontally-moving platforms. That speed shoes is key to the rest of the TAS. The rest of the level almost plays itself, just by holding right across a series of enemies and power-ups, but there's still one last cue to make, jumping at top speed right where the checkpoint in this level is.

After that jump, Sonic maintains top speed for the rest of the level and stays up in the air, ricocheting across a line of enemies, to land on top of Eggman to finish him off before he can even attack. After this, the end of a level hits the robotizing machine that Eggman was probably guarding, releasing a ton of Sonic's animal friends. The level is now over, bringing an end to the zone.

Now, looking at it, this route may or may not have been planned by the developers. It's a very narrow window and hard to pull off. Someone who's been testing this game for months, though? Might be able to do this. There's video proof of a guy pulling this off (at least in a run of just that act) at a recent AGDQ, so it's certainly feasible for humans to do it, and the enemies do all seem to be perfectly placed for this to happen. On the other hand, Sonic gets to Robotnik so quickly that the game can't load all the artwork in time, suggesting that maybe testers didn't catch on to this secret route. It's not a clear cut case one way or the other.

Anyway, here's the AGDQ playthrough, by Naegleria, from 2013. The relevant bit is at around 25 minutes:


Pretty cool, huh?



Now, let's go back to near the start of the level and smash through the wall near the bottom of the stage rather than take the spring back up toward the super sneakers. Sonic goes through a tunnel and ends up even lower into the stage, at the very bottom. Enemies are set to ambush Sonic all through this path, including several more missile-newtrons and some buzzbombers, with deadly spikes showing up in several places to harass careless players. Why, there's even a trollish pit below a collapsing platform! Just like always, the bottom route is packed with hazards.



So this spring here is particularly disppointing, with spikes near it, blocking the side of the platform it's on. This path has few obstacles that have to be taken slowly, but it would also be the first time a bottom path didn't lead to a clear reward. Unlike the spikes at the end of the pit in GHZ1, however, these spikes look like they might be clearable in one leap, more like the spikes in GHZ2, despite the upward curve. Are they?



As it turns out, yes, actually, they are. This is an incredible haul of 50 rings and a 1-up. Past here is another spring, and a longer row of spikes that can't be cleared by jumping (and, naturally, nothing past them). With no invincibility in sight, it's clear that Sonic must take the spring up. That ends this branch of the level, placing Sonic on what is effectively the main path at that point.

Now, if, at the choice between spring or wall, Sonic takes the spring, he can just continue right, past those speed shoes. There's another tunnel. It leads to a loop and one of the more interesting momentum-conservation bits in the whole game.



Going around the loop you'll see that there's a 1-up on top of the loop. After the loop there's this sideways-facing red spring. As always, red springs are one-way trips to wicked fast speed. This bit foiled me as a kid because, again, I didn't know about the speed shoes, and I didn't fully understand the speed cap (which, let's be honest, is definitely buggy), so the trick to getting on top of the loop didn't make total sense. The spring knocks Sonic up a small hill; jumping at the peak will give Sonic enough of a boost to reach the top of that loop to get the 1-up.



The easiest way to do this without triggering the speed cap is to roll into the spring (hey, it's a downward slope, so why not?) and then jump at that peak. Done correctly, Sonic will jump into the 1-up as he lands. This works because jumping after rolling has that fixed trajectory, so the speed cap isn't triggered even if you hold left or right at that point. Probably the most reliable option and the one most supported by hints in the layout. The speed shoes also don't trigger the speed cap, though, so having them here makes this challenge fairly trivial.



A bit past that spring is the one unique gimmick in this level, a spiky log that rotates, forming a tricky trap that Sonic should walk across carefully if he doesn't want to take a hit. It's an easy trap to fall too, and it's good that they didn't place this in one of the first two acts, as it would keep a lot of players out of the special stage. It's hard to avoid and feels a bit out of place in a level that's supposed to be speedy. But that's assuming that you don't have the speed shoes. With them, this is yet another tricky obstacle that can be lept over in basically a single bound.

There's another one in an upper route that's reached if you take the upper route but don't do the aerial trick, but that one has an invincibility monitor on a ledge above the start, making it seem even more trivial and absurd. But getting up to that point is fairly slow anyway (precision floating platform jumping again), so it's not really the recommended route through the stage.



There is one last major timing/momentum-based setpiece before the boss, an invincibility monitor hidden in a tree that's too tall to be hit by Sonic from underneath. To grab it Sonic must jump off the hill at its left with good speed in order to hit it. It may take a few tries for an inexperienced player to hit, but is useful for dealing with the boss efficiently. A decent player can probably beat Robotnik before the invincibility wears off, since it's so close to the boss encounter.

The boss encounter is marked by a checkpoint that's on the only path at this point and has no other obstacles around it. It's definitely a signal that something important is on the horizon, and it's naturally the boss itself. Notably there aren't any easy rings around this checkpoint. In fact, no pre-boss checkpoint -- and every Act 3 boss has a checkpoint like this one -- actually has loose rings around it, so getting past the boss first try is always recommended. For a game that prides itself on being forgiving, it's an odd choice to make. Between the invincibility and easy backtracking it's not a big issue in this level (thankfully!) but will come to be nearly ruinous in later stages.



As you may have noticed in the video I linked above, Robotnik's introductory encounter is quite player-friendly: he doesn't even launch any attacks for several seconds before he shows up, allowing Sonic to get some easy hits on him. Robotnik is the first (and only) enemy in the game to take multiple hits before defeat, and the game is happy to make that a point easily learned by giving those first hits away. Robotnik does launch an actual weapon, though it's mostly a passive threat, a swinging wrecking ball that damages Sonic on contact. It's easily avoided by hiding on the side of the screen below one of the floating platforms, but from that position it's impossible to reach the craft. The timing of the wrecking ball makes it so that if Sonic jumps up to hit Robotnik as the wrecking ball is about to reach the platform, he'll hit Robotnik and land back on the platform as the ball starts to swing the other way. Landing eight hits on the craft causes it to blow up, angering Eggman and causing him to flee the scene. Past this is the animal prison and the end of the level, bringing Green Hill Zone to a close.

*****

Green Hill Zone's place in Sonic canon as a classic is, I think, fairly well-deserved. Going back to it after some 20-odd years worth of Sonic games shows it to hold up well as an introduction to the playstyle of this new blue mascot, and provides an interesting challenge even as it tries to welcome players who may not have even played a game before in their lives. If there's one big problem with the level, it's that it's the fastest stage we'll be seeing for a while but spends so much of its time in introduction that the challenges of Act 3 just don't quite feel like enough. There's not a ton of room to really break loose, and it won't be for a bunch of levels that we'll get to again, and just after we got adjusted to it, no less!

While most Sonic sequels don't have first stages that are quite as friendly to new players, or at least not such easy subjects for textbook analysis, they do give the player more easy opportunities to speed through them, a trend that continued over time to the point that in Sonic Advance 2, Sonic was going so quickly through some stages that the screen could almost never keep up. It's because of this that I think Sonic 1 really is the best place to start the game: Green Hill Zone can be a little dull if you already understand how to play the game, and several traps that require good control of Sonic's rolling momentum can be frustrating to players used to relying on some of Sonic's newer techniques like the spin dash. On the other hand, almost everything that Green Hill Zone has to teach about how to play Sonic is relevant to later Sonic games, especially those on the Genesis.

Part 5: Secret Zone 2, Or, Cameldo: There is no Cameltry.

You spin me right round, baby, right round
- Pete Burns, from You Spin Me Right Round

As always, zone 0 link.

OK. So I said I'd do a little interlude about each of the special stages in between zones. This is special zone 2, which ratchets up the difficulty a lot over the previous one: the exit spheres are placed a little more prominently, and outside of the first oen which is mostly just for appearance's sake, the others are are placed near the exit spheres. Trying to avoid them is much harder, and due to the lack of control that Sonic has over his jump height in this stage, it's easy to jump into a bumper and be knocked back into the exits. On the other hand, following the rings leads to the emerald pretty easily with no other major tricks. This is still only the second stage, after all.

One thing that you'll notice here that wasn't really true of the first special zone is that the stage is a bit more color-coded, with the blue walls becoming yellow and then red on the path to the emerald chamber. Not a bad way to judge relative distance to the goal, though it's disappointing that they didn't use it in the first stage, short though it was. Note that despite what the images might suggest, the walls aren't a single color, and each block flases a different color. Blue blocks flash green, yellow blocks flash blue, red blocks flash yellow, and green blocks flash red. Basically each block flashes the color of the blocks in the previous segment of the stage. A minor effect that's not so important to the level design other than to make the transition between sections a little less abrupt, but it certainly looks cool in motion.



In lieu of screenshots of this update, here's a video of a madman collecting all the rings in the stage that shows off the color-flashing really well. Note that the flashing is timed such that it gives a pathing effect, leading along the outside of the stage. I'd like to say that it's designed as a subtle way to direct the player away from the exit spheres and toward the emerald, but that's not really true, at least no more than the stage design to the emerald is direct -- on the other side of the starting point, the path effect leads directly to easily avoided exit spheres.

Ultimately it's not too different from the first special stage. Rings, bumpers, exit spheres, and breakable blocks encasing the emerald. Next time, Marble!

I somehow missed the Act 3 post (the Zone 0 link is missing, by the by), so I've just caught up. These continue to be great. Thanks for writing.

I don't know how anyone ever got all the chaos emeralds in these games before the invention of save states.

Part 6: Marble Zone Act 1, Or, How Do You Say "Déj� Vu" in Greek?

'Cause he wants to play another way,
Play another kind of music
- D'Abo, Hugg, and Mann, from Another Kind of Music (As Is)


At last, we get to Marble Zone.



In early development, Marble Zone was probably not going to be the second level of this game, instead showing up later on; in the American release of the game, the level select puts it at third after Labyrinth Zone. Changing this to place it as the second level was a very good idea, since Marble introduces new traps and challenges, and is definitely more difficult than Green Hill, but is of the remaining stages probably the easiest one of the bunch. Plus, the hilly grass serves as a nice continuation to the previous level. There definitely is a sense of continuity behind Sonic's level progression here, and once again the aesthetic is particularly well thought-out.

I would argue that undestanding Marble's aesthetic is key to understanding its identity. Certainly the purple blocks that make up most of the level structure proper provide a good transition between the green grass, light-olive pillars, and the reds and oranges that make up this level's main obstacle -- it's still a bold and vibrant level. But compared to Green Hill's omnipresent slopes, Marble doesn't stay grassy and hilly. It's much more blocky, something that you might expect out of an NES game rather than something new on a newer console. (It also looks a fair bit like the first level of Altered Beast, the common link to those two games probably being the greatly underappreciated Rieko Kodama.)

Not only does it look like an NES game, at that point Marble Zone also plays like an NES game, and it is one of the reasons that I'm doing an anatomy series on Sonic 1 at all. Gimmicks in this level would feel just about as much at home in a Mega Man, Castlevania, or Metroid game -- the level doesn't hide its inspiration at all. Plus, the level looks like Greek ruins; I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that the games this level has its basis in are being portrayed as, much as we think of Greek civilization and philosophy today, the cradle of modern game design reasoning. Even if Sonic team couldn't pick the brains of folks like Miyamoto or Yokoi so directly, they certainly imply understanding of their predecessors' design philosophies.

Of course, the level is also ruins. They're putting as much a point on this that they're trying to move game design away from dated NES ideas, however slowly. Again, Sonic 1's playing it fairly conservatively and it won't be until the sequels that we see Sonic really breaking out from NES ideas, but we've already seen a bunch of traces of them in Green Hill, and will see some more as the game goes on. It's a bit unfair, I think, to call Marble outright padding, since its design is still very thought-out, though it's definitely the most conservative of all the Sonic 1 levels, offering very little in the way of novelty.

When it comes to the music, I can't say for certain that Masato Nakamura was told to make something that was a cross between Greek folk music styling and an NES game. But I have no other way to describe this song than a cross between Never On a Sunday and something out of Mega Man. Well, I think I hear some traces of Bloody Tears in there too. Again, about as close to a perfect fit as we could get for a level that compares 8-bit level design to one of the major Classical-era societies.

As further evidence that Marble Zone is at once both an homage and ribbing of NES game ideas, the temple structure right at the stage start has one of my favorite variations on the "vase or two faces" optical illusion, in what might look at first like an image of two lions resting their front paws on a central pillar:



'Sup, Mario?

*****

That's enough talking about Marble Zone as a concept, then. Let's take a closer look at Act 1. As always, Zone0 has the map.



Once again, the level starts off free of hazards with 3 easy rings in sight. Past this is a few more rings and a platform moving up and down. While the rings are in an arc that Sonic can jump along, they also form the same shape as the chunk of rising platform, being just barely a little more than Sonic's height off the ground. A very subtle signal to even a speedier player that, yes, the platform is actually going to go up as high as it is, and also a way of indicating the upcoming lava. The platform also sinks below the surrounding terrain a little bit, so if you pass right over it you might still be able to tell that there's more where that came from. And, indeed, right past it is another moving platform like it, but with open lava pits on either side. If you could clear the jump over the rings for the previous platform you can clear it here safely, most likely, though there is a new enemy to be dealt with on the other side that requires some care.





Caterkiller is one of the nastiest enemies in the entire game. It can only be destroyed at its head, and landing hits on other parts of its body will not only hurt Sonic but also cause its segments to all detach and go bouncing on through the level, possibly causing additional damage to Sonic while trying to gather any lost rings. Rolling into it from the front is a much safer way of dealing with it, at least if you're not going too quickly. Unfortunately Sonic can go fast enough to trigger a race condition with the caterkiller defeat routine, such that the game thinks Sonic has come into contact with the other parts of its body even if they shouldn't really be there any more. Ouch!

After a couple more moving platforms and another caterkiller, there's another platform surrounded by exposed lava. It's continuing to get harder -- this time there are fireballs in each of the lava pits. The first one can be jumped over easily even at its height, but the second one can't be so easily. Sonic's only hope for getting past it are to be moving fast enough to beat it on its way up, or wait for it to go down so as to not get hit. So far, all the jumping in Marble, just like that set of rings over the first moving platform, is actually really easy with good control over Sonic's momentum, but gets even harder on slowing down. Taking Marble Zone slowly is probably the only way for a new player to get through the stage without taking damage, but a more skilled player would have little trouble getting past any of these traps.



The hill you see above Sonic is deceptive, in that it's one hill that it's unsafe for Sonic to roll down, as it practically funnels him right into the next lava pit. However, if you've been keeping up your momentum up to this hill, you'd have jumped over most of it in clearing the last couple obstacles. By not rolling down the hill, you get to the first secret of Marble Zone, which really isn't much of one; super ring power ups worth a combined 30 rings to the left of another moving platform. Caved areas in this level hide several secrets, most of them incredibly lucrative.



So far, what I've been saying about Marble as an NES game with Sonic in it doesn't seem like it holds all that much water, huh? What we've seen so far isn't much harder (and in some ways is actually more forgiving) than that one segment in Green Hill 2 and has been a similar test of maintaining Sonic's speed and momentum. It's longer, and a little less exploitable, but still very much in the vein of what the game's been feeding us so far. Certainly it's slower -- Marble has no speed shoes power-ups in any of its acts -- but it's still something keeping Sonic at his top running speed.

These sinking platforms don't change that at all. It's easiest to clear them by running across them quickly, since if they sink more than a few pixels the grass catches on fire (as shown), which can damage Sonic, but jumping quickly while running makes short work of them, and can even keep the platforms from becoming engulfed in flames. Past that is a hill that it is safe to roll down, and a transition into the first of the several caved sections of Marble Zone.

Now, up until this point, everything you've seen here you'll have seen already if you let the demo sequences play out. So after this point, where Marble's character changes, you won't have seen much of if this is your first time playing. Keep that in mind.



So NOW we get to the point where Marble Zone really starts looking like an NES game: the underground areas. (That makes some intuitive sense; the majority of ruins tend to have been buried underground, especially if their decline was the result of war and conquest.) There's no grass under this point, and so the level structure tends to be much flatter, which sometimes makes gaining momentum a little easier since Sonic never has to start moving uphill. The level design uses this to its advantage, and the nature of efficient play changes a bit. In the open-air sections, success tends more to be a matter of maintaining momentum between each set of obstacles. Here, the challenges are a bit more disjoint, and Sonic can stop between each setpiece and still regain enough momentum to cruise past most of the harder challenges.

You'll also notice that there's no way to go but left, another sign that we're breaking with the rules that Sonic has established so far in favor of something a little different. You can tell this is the correct route as there is no path either right or upward. The path to the left is actually pretty narrow, which the game uses in a few places to signal that the left path is the correct way to the exit -- you'll see this again in later levels.



So we start out with a segment that feels a little bit like it could have come out of a few Megaman games -- a series of staggered pillars that move up and down, ready to crush Sonic into the floor below, killing him instantaneously. It's a bit easier than Megaman since Sonic's more maneuverable and there aren't any enemies to get in his way here, but already something that feels a bit out of character from Sonic's previously forgiving nature. Certainly pits and spikes have proved fatal in GHZ, but those are stationary obstacles and fairly obviously fatal overall. By the standards of pointy thing you wouldn't want to be impaled on, the instakill of these pillars is a bit subtle.

They look pretty cool though, since the dithering effect gives it a glassy texture -- the easiest ways to see this are by playing the game in Fusion with the CVBS TV mode setting on, or in the 3DS release with TV mode on. I don't think there's a similar blur filter in the Android/iOS version (there wasn't one in Sonic CD) which is a shame. And, of course, you can see by playing it on an original Genesis. It's actually a really clever effect, since you can see how they actually made it in that picture above. Who needs hardware transparencies when all the analog video decoder components out there are blurry and inaccurate anyway?



This obstacle introduces two different gimmicks at once that will show up multiple times in Marble Zone. The pushable block and the crushing spike platform. This instructional setpiece gives a much tamer version of both -- the pushable block stays on solid ground here, and the spike platform only moves when something pushes on the switch to the right. Neither of these will be true later in the game. One of the things you learn in jumping on the switch as Sonic is that these spiky platforms ratchet upward slowly but drop almost immediately -- though the path onward is below that platform, trying to jump from the switch to slide underneath it is impossible, even if you push the block out of the way, since the platform falls too quickly for that.

Since the block is exactly the same size as that gap, though, that's a pretty big hint for what to do here. Indeed, the correct solution is to place the block in that gap so it triggers the switch, keeping the above platform held up. It's a really clever idea, but sadly there won't be any other block-switch puzzles like this until Sonic 3 (or to be more precise, Sonic & Knuckles, but I dislike treating the games as distinct entities). Seriously, we have to go past multiple games before we see something like this again. But then, even in other games' ruins stages, they don't resemble Marble much in how they play (but that's a whole other story), perhaps because they'd just be rehashes of rehashes.



After a short drop and a checkpoint, we get to the next setpiece, which feels like it could have come out of a Metroid game -- falling blocks that fall into the lava and float there that Sonic must hop across. These can also crush Sonic if he manages to get between one and the lava, but that's fairly hard to do. Since the blocks fall one-by-one from left-to-right (which makes it a little easier than a comparable Metroid screen) as long as Sonic doesn't move too quickly, he has nothing to be hurt by. It's the first obstacle in the level that is harder if Sonic tries to go past it too quickly, in which case he'd be more likely to knock into a platform as it falls and not get over it -- landing in the lava instead.



Now for the first spike platform, which moves on its own. It will move all the way up to the top of the wall, so if Sonic isn't careful he can be crushed by either end. While this seems scary, if Sonic is about to be trapped by it as it moves up, heading to the right will push Sonic into the first truly hidden passage of Marble. In general any time there's a spike platform like this, there's a safe exit from it on either side -- aside from one wall-adjacent platform in act 2, any platform you get onto from one side you can get off of from the other. So since you have to jump onto this one from the right side, the hidden passage is to the left, near the top of the platform's height. Not only do you avoid being crushed, but you also get to enter a chamber with power ups worth 40 rings and an extra life (which, if you haven't gotten hit at this point will probably put you over 100 rings -- meaning this diversion gets you two extra lives).



Riding the platform up leads to another ledge that has protruding blocks moving in and out from it -- as one moves into the wall, the other moves out, and Sonic should probably jump to the other when the one he is standing on starts to retract. After that is another ledge next to another spiked platform, and a smaller object that behaves just like it but lacks the pointy underside -- jumping into it may be safe, but it is deadly when it lands on top of you. This time Sonic needs to jump from the left side of the spiked platform across to the right, though there's not a lot of time to do so. Jumping onto the smaller platform can make it easier to jump onto the larger spiked one, but Sonic can jump onto the larger platform when it crashes down, and still have plenty of time to clear it to the other side.

This leads back outside. There are a few more moving and sinking platforms, and a few more caterkillers, but that's all there is before the end of the stage. Definitely longer than any of the acts in GHZ, but mostly because there weren't any opportunities to gain speed beyond Sonic's running cap. That's what to expect from the rest of Marble, too. Here, rolling is mostly a way to get rid of caterkillers, and not a way to gain ludicrous speed.



So ends Marble Act 1. Next time: more block pushing!

I just wanted to say that I really enjoy this.

Indeed. Very detailed analysis, muteKi!

I had no idea about the Marios. I always thought they were lions too! Holy craaaaaap

They are lions.

I can't unsee Mario now, though.

But is it a nose or a mouth?

I'm assuming nose and moustache, personally.

Yeah, I don't see it. I mean, at first, I thought you might be saying it kinda looked like the M on his cap? But yeah, I don't think it's what you think it is.

It's subtle enough that I could be reading into it, but I still get a kick out of it.

Part 7: Marble Zone Act 2, Or, No Really This Game Is Fast I Swear

Ah, push it - push it good
Ah, push it - push it real good
- Salt n Pepa, Push It

Marble Zone Act 2 is probably one of the easiest levels for me to write about so far. Compared to the other levels, there really is something of a coherent idea posed by the level. It's about momentum management again, yes, but it does it through a specific mechanic that shows up multiple times in this level and which is the main focus -- pushing blocks across lava to form a ride.

Compared to Act 1's NES Greatest Hits layout, Act 2 seems to have its sights set on one game in particular: Super Mario Bros. 3, the one particular must-have game for the console. Act 2 mirrors SMB3's design ethos by being focused on this single gimmick that Sonic has to engage with somewhat passively. Mario 3 loved its riding and autoscrolling levels, as well as plenty of insta-kill lava, but as with Act 1, Sonic has a much easier time of it than Mario ever did.

To be a little more precise, I'm thinking about levels from SMB3 such as 1-4, 5-9, or 6-2, which are autoscrollers where Mario must ride on blocks or clouds or other such moving platforms and hop from ride to ride in order to avoid blocks and walls. Some similar levels also show up here and there in Super Mario World, where the platforms actually follow the flow of scrolling and Mario must avoid hazards while riding them. It's definitely an idea that feels very specifically Mario, especially given that SMB3 certainly came out early enough in Japan to influence the design of Sonic, and Super Mario World may have been the new big thing for Nintendo during most of Sonic's development, having come out in Japan late in 1990.

So here's the Zone0 map link.



We start out outside, just like in Act 1, but this time it's only a short hop across a few moving platforms and past a few fireballs to get to the caved portion of the level. (If you keep a good pace, though, you won't even see the fireballs.) Unlike Act 1, most of the above-ground potion of the stage occurs near the middle of the level, rather than at the ends. There's a switch to push down one of the glass pistons, allowing access through the rest of the stage.



Past another irritating batbot, there's a block. Given there's no other way to continue, the next thing to do is push it off the ledge. After it falls off the ledge, it floats along the lava, and Sonic can ride it.



The block slides under the platform, but there's no clearance for Sonic, who must jump on top of it. And here's the twist -- after having jumped off the block, there's no need for Sonic to go back onto the block. The level isn't actually autoscrolling, and if Sonic can keep up his momentum, the next stable platform is easily reachable from here. There is, however, a staggered lavafall that Sonic must watch out for above here, which is likely to hit him.



The lavafall is fortunately no more deadly than most other obstacles in the game, and just another obstacle that causes damage and knockback. It's irritating, certainly, but there's not a lot of rings to have lost by hitting it, only about 9. As a result it's not much of a cheap shot, even if it isn't really announced, though riding the block will probably give you a chance to see it do its thing safely, and you'll be able to stop on the edge of the platform where you're safe, as shown above. It's harder to stick the landing if you're running from the one fixed platform to the other.



If it does hit you as you move forward, though, you'll probably get knocked to this platform with a super ring and shield. When I was playtesting and getting screenshots for this run, that actually happened to me, even though I expected the lavafall. There are a couple batbots, but more irritating is the caterkiller probably hiding behind the monitors. It's hard to see, and if it's in the middle of changing direction is even harder to hit. The best option is probably to wait a second and roll into the monitors, killing the caterkiller along the way.



There are a couple more platforms that Sonic can jump across to get past the first lava pit. If you moved quickly enough, you'll see the block you pushed sinking into the lava, but staying here isn't a good idea, as there are fireball jets ready to fling flames at Sonic. No rest for the weary, huh?



Actually, there is some rest! This point here is a notable safe spot in the level, and Sonic must push this block chain into the wall in order to continue. On the other side, or rather, down the newly opened pit, there is less respite.



The lava oozing out of the gap begins to chase Sonic! This is a much more exciting idea on paper than it is actually in playing the game. It's not very fast; Sonic can outrun it without much effort at all. The most exciting bit of this setpiece is the retractable spikes that can pop out and stab Sonic if he tries to get through too quickly, and which serve as a temporary gate past the obstacle. This is actually fairly common for Sonic chase obstacles -- they'll enforce moving forward but won't actually serve much harm unless you're almost completely stopped. Sonic 3, Sonic Adventure, and Sonic Heroes in particular have examples of obstacles like these, but the details are probably best saved for another time.



The lava fills up the passageway, preventing backtracking, though if you go far enough it will actually despawn. Right past here are a few rings on a platform with spikes coming out of the sides. They retract at about the same speed as the spikes we just passed, meaning that they're not hard to avoid if you make sure of the timing; the spikes alternate so that only one side of the platform has a pointy protrusion. A couple batbots are on the ceiling, but they are easy to deal with.



After this is a setpiece that I've seen in some commercials for the game: Sonic has to navigate across a series of swinging pendulums like the one in GHZ2 without falling in the lava. It's one of the few pure tests of patience in the game, as there isn't any particular trick, shortcut, or helpful item to get you across; the only exception is that if you still have your shield, you can time a jump across and risk falling in, and use the temporary invulnerability time to high-tail it across. Sneaky, but effective.



After that is a narrow passageway with caterkillers. Reminiscent of World 4-2 of the first Super Mario Bros., a few caterkillers come toward Sonic in a narrow corridor. Sonic thankfully has little trouble dealing with them, since unlike Mario he can roll; I would advise against trying to jump onto these caterkillers' heads, since you're more likely to miss the jump due to the low ceiling and their harmful segmented bodies. Don't roll too quickly, as there's another red spring ready to launch you back into the lava (although as we've seen the speed cap bug makes it easy to correct from this). Jump over it and there's another switch that lowers another pillar. Above here on the left side is another shield to replace the one you might have lost (suggesting that for the experienced player, yes, go ahead and lose it where the pendulums are).



And so it's time to ride another block! Once again, actually riding the block's mostly for chumps, since if you can keep up momentum you can land on the two large stationary platforms it moves under without having to wait long. Jumping from each at the right time will secure a landing that leads Sonic to a ledge that leads back upward and out of the caved section.



If you stay on the block, though, it will actually be pushed up by a few geysers of lava. They will make it a little easier for Sonic to reach each platform, but only the last one leading to the ledge up is all that important; the first two are mostly instructive. Since the block is much lower than the platforms, it's not possible to reach the ledge from standing on the block as it approaches, and you need to time it so you reach the ledge while the geyser carries the block.



If you stay on the block across the lava pit, you'll see that there's another block right in front of the wall, hinting that, yes, actually, there's another hidden area here. If you jump early from that second platform using the speedster method, you'll easily reach this hidden area (the opening is actually pretty large and hard to miss).

One of the reasons I'm pointing this out is that since the entrance is marked by the extra block, it's the only secret in this level that has any indication of its existence. Remember how in GHZ1 I suggested that the highest path in that level existed to lead players to the first chaos emerald, as those were originally placed in the levels? This is my guess as to where the second emerald would be, a likely spot that isn't too hard to find but is one of the few places in the entire stage that's out of the way (as the maps make clear and as I suggested previously, neither of the first two acts of Marble Zone have any branching pathways).

Plus, I think it's a good idea to make at least one of the emeralds a near-freebie, or at least something someone already experienced in games would think to try and that an inexperienced player could also probably find without too much trouble. Since the freebie's in the second level, it means that such a player probably wouldn't get the good ending on a first playthrough, if they don't know to look for the emeralds already. More so than the later Sonic games, the good ending is actually really hard to reach -- the first 5 zones have special stage rings in their first two acts, meaning at most 10 chances to collect 6 emeralds. It stands to reason that the hidden-emeralds-to-collect mechanic was also designed to require a hint guide or multiple playthroughs to get the good ending. Either way, anything beyond basic beating the game isn't trivial to do.

But now, it's a 1-up and some extra rings. Still nice, and completely optional.



There's one more damn caterkiller before the end of the cave; the exit is shown above. These rows of blocks move in and out on their own, and if Sonic gets on the one coming out of the wall on the right side, he can make it up the ledge on the left leading to a checkpoint and a super ring. A nice place to put it, and it takes a little thinking to get to, but it's in a really good position in the level; should Sonic get hurt or die the nearby super ring plus the power ups in the pit will let him regain his life and get him already 30 rings toward a special stage entry.

The right side is more moving platforms and annoying fireballs. They're harder to dodge now, making this actually one of the tricker spots in the level where Sonic must go a little slower and more carefully. After that are some buzzbombers and more caterkillers, but at least you have plenty of room to avoid them here. Past another slope is another small cave section with 2 super rings. Backtracking from the checkpoint to the power-up pit would already put you at 50 rings if you didn't get hit up until this point. Ultimately there's nothing here you didn't already see in Act 1, but the timing's different.



After that, though, there's another cave section! This time the entrance is blocked by, well, a bunch of blocks. Unlike every other block so far, these can't be pushed and don't move on their own. That hill is, yet again, a cue to roll. When in a ball (you can jump to destroy these too, which is actually the better option compared to rolling here, since it gives more control), each of these blocks smashes apart, and actually gives Sonic points like badniks do.

Hitting multiple things without landing increases a points multiplier that you get to see very clearly here. The first block is worth 100 points, the second is worth 200, the third is worth 500, and the fourth is worth 1,000. You'll keep getting 1,000 points for each remaining block in the first set of twelve you smash. If you can hit the next set of five without landing on the floor, you can keep the chain up. The first three blocks in the next row are still worth 1,000, but the final two are worth more than that.



If it is possible to chain 16 or more enemy attacks together from jumping or rolling (and if you've rolled into consecutive caterkillers, you've seen that the second one gets you 200 points rather than just 100), you start getting 10,000 point bonuses. This really doesn't actually count for anything in Sonic 1, but the multiplier is there in all the later games, where 50,000 points is worth an extra life. Getting 16 enemy hits in a row is worth over a fifth of an extra life, and additional hits are worth another fifth of a life -- but the details of extra lives in other games are best saved for another time (though it's quite clear they never put as many smashable blocks together in any of those games).

But if you chained that entire sequence together, those last two blocks netted 20,000 points, plus the 12,800 from all the blocks before that. That's 32,800 points total, which is a lot of points!

After that there's a shield, a batbot, a very hard to hit caterkiller (this time, since it's moving away from the wall where you are, you'll have to hit it on its head and probably won't want to wait long enough to roll into it), and the next major setpiece. Again, it's block related.



Those are, in fact, two lava falls back-to-back. The timing between them isn't shared, though, so even after the first one is done you may need to wait a second before jumping past the other one. Clearing the jump across both of the lava falls leads to an important power up in the corner on the left side.



It's invincibility! Time to cheese this last block ride. Why ride when you can run? There are 3 small platforms that are easy to jump over, with rings in between. If you're feeling dangerous, you can try rolling under each platform, but beware that if you run out of speed or jump while under the platform, there isn't enough room for Sonic to stand up. That's a fatal crushing, believe it or not. I usually just jump over them since it's safer, and there's plenty of invincibility time to make it across the lava.



Actually, you even have enough invincibility time to get past the series of the chained spike platforms, and can use it to slide under some of them, along with dispatching a few more caterkillers that you'll encounter on the way up.



But that's it for Marble Act 2! Next time, there will be more bosses.


======

As an addendum, I should note that while Super Mario levels do definitely seem to have had a hand in Marble's design, some of the last few Mario games (3D Land and World in particular) strike me as being as much like Marble here as the 80s-90s Mario that inspired it.

For example, here's one of the end-game levels (not counting bonus worlds) in Super Mario 3D World:



Unlike all the autoscrolling platforming examples I could find in SMB3, this is one where the block you ride directs the autoscrolling -- one of the sources of challenge in SMB3's autoscrolling is that you can almost never stay on a single block as it goes through the level. While this block certainly doesn't allow idleness because of its flipping, it also moves in a predictable manner, and it's also the one thing you ride in each segment. There are ways to skip around it (and you have to get off it for some of the collectibles), but mostly you're tied to the block, which is a good distinguisher for how these sorts of setpieces work for Mario vs. how they tend to work for Sonic.



Super Mario 3D Land has a few similar ideas in it, but the blocks aren't always self-propelled. Here, Mario has to ride a platform along a track which he directs by standing on one of two sides marked by an arrow; the platform moves in the direction of the arrow that he is standing on. There are a few levels using this mechanic; this one is the first.

Of note is the fact that at a few points in the level, there are hidden objects (star coins) that are accessed by having waterspouts push the platform. It's a little more involved than the blocks in Marble Zone because the waterspouts aren't always guaranteed to be on, so timing and momentum management are necessary; again, though, Mario's approach to this is much more strongly tied to the block itself rather than his own abilities.

And that's really the point that I'm trying to get at here with how MZ2 works -- Sonic's ability to get through this level is barely dependent on most of the gimmicks in the level, and after that first push he can basically ignore the blocks that make up most of the level. It's not totally trivial to do, especially if you don't realize that these acrobatics are even possible, but it definitely continues along with this theme of "Sonic the Hedgehog is so cool that he laughs in the face of deadly hazards NES-era characters would run away from screaming" that MZ1 seemed to be establishing.

It's a nice touch that the game requires the player to push those blocks out of the way while in view of the flowing lava below, giving you a moment to prepare for what's about to happen. And putting a back-facing red spring after a series of enemies best handled by rolling is cleverly mean; as you say, there's plenty of room to catch yourself, so it's more the game winking at you than an actual cheap hit.

Looking back over the map, I realized that one thing I didn't point out about this level that I should have is that the lavafalls and the fireball emitters are all placed near sources of lava. While it's not immediately obvious, for example, that there's going to be lava coming out of the tubelike protrusion in the ceiling, it IS placed directly underneath the small pit of lava you cross over, and the fireball spurter picture shows a pocket of lava in the wall next to it, presumably the source of the flames it spurts out.

While Sonic tends not be quite as plausibly architected in the way Castlevania was, it's actually a pretty thoughtful touch to have that sort of environmental awareness. Since it's easy to be caught unawares by some of these obstacles, it's nice (and probably the reason why) they had some environmental cues about the stage hazards.

I might be misremembering, but if you jump up and left in this room, you can pass through the wall again into a seemingly pointless little alcove. Very bizarre.

Also, that lava chase terrified me as a kid.

Yeah, all these little hidden coves are like that, though only one of them actually uses it for anything...

Part 8: Marble Zone Act 3, Or, Can You Feel the Lava Tonight?

No need to remember when
' Cause everything old is new again
- Allen and Sager, Everything Old Is New Again (from the musical Chicago)


It's been a while since the last time I did one of these -- an almost embarrassingly long time, in fact. But I have a good reason for it. Well, a vaguely acceptable reason, anyway. OK, it's a shoddy excuse, but here we go anyway:

Marble Zone 3 is really boring.

Well, to be more precise, MZ3 is really boring to write about. I've been on-and-off racking my brain trying to find a way to explain why that is. So I think it's time we get a little bit down into the technical specifications of the Genesis and the engine of this game.

But first, the Zone0 link.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get more specific about what makes this act a dull topic of discussion. We'll start out with the Genesis resolution, as odd as that sounds. In general, at least for games running in the US or Japan, the standard resolution is almost always 320x224 pixels. Some games run at a shrunken horizontal resolution of 256x224, and some games switch between them. (A few games also supported an interlaced mode that doubled the vertical resolution to 448. PAL regions' lower framerate means the time between each frame is longer, and so some games were 320- or 256x240 instead, which could be doubled to a full 480i with the interlacing.)

Now, Sonic 1 is built out of a bunch of large tiles which fit together into a level design vaguely like a jigsaw puzzle (these are themselves built out of smaller tiles, about the size of a single brick in Castlevania -- and these are split further into 4 subsections which are 8x8 pixels). These large tiles in Sonic 1 are 256x256, larger than the vertical resolution of the system, and very close to the size of horizontal resolution; in the lower-res mode, they would be exactly the width of a screen. These are pretty big chunks!

One of the nice things about a game as famous as Sonic 1 is that its internals have been thoroughly publicly documented. I can actually get a rip of every single one of the chunks in each stage. I compiled them into a single picture, which you can see below -- I've labeled a couple of the tiles I want to use to explain some things:



All of the chunks you see here are compressed together into a small part of the game ROM; they are decompressed into memory when the level begins and copied into the Genesis display chip's RAM. The cross-hatched pattern you see here denotes parts of the ROM that are used to indicate lava; because they must update every time and display RAM space is limited, they are stored in the ROM uncompressed and copied into memory every frame. It is stored uncompressed because decompressing would be too expensive an operation in computer cycles to do it that frequently, and since it is uncompressed, you would be able to find the lava art patterns if you opened up the ROM in a program like Tile Layer Pro.

In the above image there are 6 rows of 10 chunks, making 60 distinct foreground chunks. Of these chunks, about 19 of them are used in the above-ground areas, most of which are easily identifiable by the fact that the topmost bricks are covered in grass. Only one of those chunks is possibly re-usable in the underground areas, meaning 42 chunks are available there. Above-ground chunks are further limited by the desire to keep curves as continuous as possible, making it so that hilly terrain should only be like 1 or 2 pixels different on its edges than its adjacent chunks. If you look at the two chunks with grass near the lower left of the picture labelled A and B, they may look like they fit together well enough, but the disjointness over a smoother slope removes from Sonic the thing that makes it that much different from the games it's been cribbing from here -- rolling downhill.

Of course, the underground chunks are where this level's action is, and there's a lot more freedom here, though several tiles require additional object placement to function. Aside from the lava, which has a stationary, invisible object designed to hurt Sonic placed over them, there's also the chunks labeled C, D, and E. Fireballs (from C) and lavafalls (D and E) come out from these tiles, as seen in the previous stage. Even then, given how much the level tries to make a strong physical sense, placing anything other than solid ground under lava chunks would be a bad idea.

MZ Acts 1 and 2 were also a bit larger than Green Hill Zone, because they almost loop backward on themselves with the leftward passages. GHZ Acts 1 and 2 also had simpler layouts than Act 3 in order to be friendlier to inexperienced players, and aside from being slightly longer it also introduced the spinning spiked logs. MZ3 has neither a significant advantage in length, nor does it have one in any unique elements. It is simply a harder challenge than either of the previous acts, providing a remixed take on the challenges seen in the previous levels.

Anyway, that's why I never got around to writing about MZ3 until now. That's not to say that the level is devoid of any interesting features, merely that most of them are ones I've already explained. So I won't be going as in-depth into the structure of the layout as I did in the previous entries (which is probably for the best, since I don't think these entries are as compelling when the majority of the content is just screenshots with a one- or two-sentence blurb after them).



After a very short above-ground segment, the path in MZ3 splits up, which is unexpected given that the previous acts were both entirely linear affairs with no alternate routes or shortcuts. The path to the left appears more rewarding because this setup was only used in the previous stages as a location for extra power-ups, but here it is an alternate path that doesn't offer many benefits. While the obstacles in this path are easier to avoid, there also aren't any additional rings on it except for a super ring powerup at the end; the other path has more rings but also requires careful jumps over a larger lava pit with only a few falling blocks and piston counterweights to cross. Even in the course of taking damage, though, the path on the right is probably a few seconds faster if the shield powerup after the lava pit is ignored. It's nice to have some variety in this stage, but it doesn't feel very necessary since the one route is more direct and Marble has had a tendency to reward situational awareness and jumping control over navigational skills. It serves to make the stage a bit larger and slightly more complex, but aside from being a bit easier offers little in the way of reward over what would appear to be the main path.



The path split feels like a particularly missed opportunity in consideration of the fact that right after it is the only mandatory block ride in the entire level. The block needs to be active in order to trigger the two lava updrafts, which push Sonic up to the next part of the stage. This segement is probably the most questionable point in Marble's design, even more than the previous path split, because of the fact that immediately after the first updraft (which takes Sonic to a ledge on the left) there is a second one that puts Sonic a little farther along in the level: taking the first updraft means waiting for a block to come out of the wall, and it's on a slow cycle; the second updraft is visible onscreen while waiting for it to show up. If the cycle for the block coming out of the wall were just a little bit faster, it would make getting off at the first updraft a valid choice for speedrunning at the cost of a slightly more hazardous series of jumps over the lava pit; as it stands, the path is both slower and more hazardous, since a missed jump is almost certainly going to land Sonic in the lava, and from there he has to backtrack to the block again and push it to get back up; it's hard to get back there safely, though, since it's impossible to avoid touching the lava on the way back and the platforms blocking the way make it harder to collect scattered rings.

When I say this all feels like a missed opportunity, here's a bit more precisely what I mean. The left branch near the start had no rings, but also didn't have as demanding a series of obstacles as the right branch; because of the relative lack of space in that route, placing a few more enemies in that section could be an easy way to make it more challenging. Then, instead of the super ring at the end, leaving an invincilibity would make the harder route reward the player with another skippable block ride; if the lava flows could be triggered by Sonic running over them (instead of when the block reaches them -- Sonic has to ride the block to get to the next part of the level), it would make taking the left path more rewarding and offer an additional challenge that's in the spirit of the previous stages while still requiring the player to be careful and aware of their surroundings.



After this, however, is another path split, albeit one that isn't as obvious except to players who are desperate or found the secrets in the previous acts. Once again, rather than submit to death between the crusher and the ceiling, there is indeed a hidden passage to the right in the wall, where the number 6 is. Aside from giving a 1-up, this time there's also a path out of this room in the other direction, and it cuts out roughly a third of the stage, including a couple otherwise-unskippable block rides. The other hidden rooms in the previous stages did have holes on each side, but they didn't lead anywhere since they were right next to solid blocks anyway; it's also possible a desperate player might as easily find this room from the other side, though, since there's another crusher that falls right at the part of the level where it leads.

Now, the third of the level that's skipped doesn't really do anything you haven't seen before, only in slightly more lethal combinations: the chained platforms have fireballs moving between them (though, again, the cycles on these fireballs are slow enough that you may not even see them if you keep a good pace across them), the pistons are timed slightly differently than their counterparts in Act 1 due to their different spacing (but there's plenty of time for Sonic to get past each one; the greater risk is being knocked back from the spikes into where these crushers are), and the moving bricks after this start moving as soon as Sonic lands on them -- like the one in Act 2 move faster than the ones Sonic pushes across the lava (though once again it's possible to skip the blocks and carefully jump across the small platforms). There is a checkpoint here, the only one in the level aside from the one before the boss, but otherwise it's safer (and more rewarding!) to take the shortcut with the 1-up. The final block ride, just like the one in Act 2, can be skipped by careful jumps across the platforms at speed; even if the shortcut isn't taken, that first block ride is the only one that's mandatory.



Sonic loops back around one more time past the fourth instance of wall-mounted fireball spitters in the stage (again, you've seen just about everything in this level a few times already), to what is probably the most interesting obstacle in this act, arguably this zone, and maybe even most of this game. It's especially reminiscent of Castlevania, crossing a series of the narrow counterweights above the lava pit which have small bits of ground between them that spikes pop out of. There are also bats flying around, but they pose no direct threat since Sonic can't reach them without jumping, which destroys the bats -- the only risks are getting knocked back from hitting the spikes or from missing a jump onto the narrow platforms, which isn't very easy to do even with Sonic's good aerial mobility.

It's the last real challenge before the boss, so it's appropriately hard, and, as before, Act 3 doesn't have strict ring requirements due to the lack of a special stage. The counterweights are also almost directly above the safe platforms over the lava, so moving a little to the left from a missed jump usually keeps Sonic safe for an easy second chance at the trap -- it's hard, but there's still been some forgiveness baked into it. Fitting for the end of the second zone -- challenging, but not a make-or-break moment for an inexperienced player like we'll see in the end of later zones.

After this the level leads back outside. Another set of lava pits with fireballs and moving platforms is there, and past that is a checkpoint, the one right before the boss. Once again, there are no convenient rings placed near it, and so dying at the boss still carries a risk of needing to avoid any hit -- doubling back to get those free rings leaves Sonic very vulnerable to those fireballs.



Thankfully the boss's gimmick is pretty simple. Eggman's ship is outfitted with a fireball spitter on its bottom, and he drops fireballs onto the two platforms on either side of the lava pit in the middle of the arena (the arena boundary is marked by the black box in the Zone0 map). He first drops a fireball on the left side of the arena. Since Sonic needs to reach the right side of the arena in order to trigger the encounter, this gives a free chance to observe the boss's behavior without taking damage. The flames he drop spread out to the entirety of that side of the platform (there's a subtle hint to this in the fact that these are the only tiles used above-ground that don't have any grass on them, presumably because they've been burnt off by Eggman testing his new contraption), so in order to avoid taking damage, Sonic needs to stay on the other platform while this happens. After dropping the fireball, Eggman moves over to the right side to drop a fireball where Sonic is presumably standing. His approach can be delayed by hitting him, and it's easy to get in 3 hits on the machine before it reaches the other side -- giving the fire time to spread off the platform so Sonic has a bit more room to land safely on the other side. There are a couple fireballs that hop out of the lava pit, though they are easy to avoid.

Compared to most of the bosses we'll see in this game, I think Marble's here is the one whose immediate level design provides the fewest hints of what to expect. The fireballs certainly tend to come out of the pits, but it might be nice to have one of the sinking platforms we saw in act 1 show up right before the boss, just to drive the point home that the main attack Sonic will have to worry about is the ground being set on fire.

This concludes Marble Zone, at long last. But wait! There's one other thing to point out about this level, and it's unique to the recent iOS/Android ports of the game. Because these ports include Tails and Knuckles as playable characters with their signature moves, this act has been changed around slightly to adapt to their movesets. It's a good thing too, since in previous implementations of Tails and Knuckles in the game the level has been mostly trivialized, as you'll see by Tails flying over the entirety of Act 1's underground here:



I have not played the mobile port (I'm quite satisfied with the 3DS port, thank you very much) so I don't know if this shortcut is still there, but I've gotten the impression that it is. Similar skips are available in act 2, but it's only in mobile act 3 that I've been able to find any indication of a modified layout, likely because of its increased size. There are a lot of blocks in the middle of the stage that are just solid wall and easily could be replaced with yet another alternate route; neither of the previous acts have as much space in them to make this modification.

Unfortunately the redesigned area doesn't feel like it's had the care put into it that the rest of Marble has, since it mixes up the above- and below-ground tiles without keeping the background consistent to match (it's quite a shame that the background doesn't change to the underground one in this area, especially considering that the mobile ports aren't restricted by the limitations the Genesis has on backgrounds, or even the number of tiles; you'll notice that there are a few extra chunks here that don't show up in the original).



Surpsingly, there aren't a lot of videos of this segment. This one, that shows Tails in his two-player assist mechanic first introduced to the series in Sonic 3, also reveals that the hidden area isn't well-tuned when Sonic is playing with him as an assistant, due to how easy it is to get hit in the sections that require airlifts, bringing Sonic back down to where they start. Doing something like this isn't a bad idea given the inclusion of Tails and Knuckles, but wouldn't even be necessary if neither character was included in the game; it certainly wasn't designed with either of them in mind, and they feel superfluous here. Ah well, at least it's something to put on the product description -- "Now with Tails and Knuckles!".

*****

Marble Zone is a level that gets a bad rap since it's not in keeping with the style that we associate as Sonic, but I think it's an important part of this game. It's heavily based on ideas from some of the most carefully-constructed NES games; for players who have played these games, this zone is an excellent way to see how Sonic's control makes these sections different (and thus is a very gentle increase in difficulty from GHZ), while giving inexperienced players an indication of some of what they missed out on in the previous console generation. It's done in a manner respectful of the previous games' design, despite the way Sega's offerings tended to be marketed as antithetical to them (see, for example, the infamous "Genesis does!" ad campaign). It's fair to say that Marble doesn't feel like Sonic is, at least not for someone who's played several games in the series, especially since it rewards thinking about its inspirations -- once Sonic hits the game's speed cap, his jump trajectories stay fixed if he doesn't slow down, and suddenly Marble Zone is not an inconvenience, but a mix between a reflex game like Canabalt and a traditional Castlevania (a "Canabaltslevania" perhaps??).

That's the anatomy of a game, all right. Now I can't help but notice those chunks when I look at the full map—especially that corridor with the three fireball shooters, which always has a bit of lava in the top-left, whether it makes sense or not.

In that video from the mobile port, aside from the new route, I noticed they put a solid block in the middle of the lava pit right before Eggman and covered the rest of it with crumble blocks. I wonder what else they did.

Part 9: Secret Zone 3, Or, Look But Don't Touch

Hands off. Do you need persuading?
- Rory Gallagher, Hands Off

Zone0 map. You know the drill.

Secret Zone 3 is different from the last two. There aren't a lot of goal spheres and the ones that are here are blocked off, but the stage is the most open one we've seen so far (in fact, this is the only stage so far that doesn't block off Sonic into a smaller chamber where the emerald is). It's also probably the hardest.

One of the dirty little secrets of most of these stages is that Sonic can actually get really close to the emerald if you keep your hands off the controller. The first stage funnels Sonic directly into the emerald room. The second stage brings Sonic right by where the emerald is held, though a jump is necessary to reach the closed-off chamber where the emerald is. In each case Sonic is led very close to where the emerald is -- and if control isn't taken at that point, the layout funnels him back into an exit sphere violently.

Since the screenshots of these stages all tend to look a little samey, here's a video of what happens in each of the first three stages if you don't touch the controller:



That said, this may be the hardest stage but it is also one of the most lucrative. Without control, you'll see that Sonic gets not only a continue, but at 73 rings is most of the way to an extra life. Since the stage is open, it's possible for Sonic to get almost all of the rings in the stage at any time, and if there's one level that it's probably a good idea to intentionally lose, it's this one, since a continue can be guaranteed from the level structure! Go ahead and get yourself a glass of milk while the game gets you three extra lives for nothing!

What makes this level so hard is that since there isn't anything keeping Sonic from flying back through the whole stage, it's nearly impossible to keep Sonic near where the emerald is. There aren't a lot of blocks to rest Sonic against while the stage rotates, and trying to jump to a safe place can just as easily get Sonic to fall away toward the goal spheres due to the way jump heights are fixed in these stages. Between that and the many spaced-out bumpers here, losing control of Sonic is pretty easy to do in this stage, and all the progress you've made in uncovering the emerald can quickly be lost as the stage turns around to dump Sonic out back where he came from.

Coming at it from the sides or the bottom as pictured in the Zone0 link is risky because of how easily Sonic can fall into one of the exits. Coming from the top is easily the least risky because of the huge clearance between it and the exit spheres (in fact, there is no exit sphere directly underneath it when that section of the map has rotated to the top of the stage), but it's also the hardest point to come back to due to all those bumpers and the great distance back to stable ground.

It's good that special stages don't have a timer, because in this one especially it is very easy to waste a lot of time trying to chip away at the emerald. It's still worth writing about, because it serves as a good interlude to our next stage, which is all about trollish bumpers and confounding physics!

The romhack I just let's played aslo includes those weird skips. I used them to skip basically the entire level.

I'm not sure if they're there in sonic 1 classic. I've never bothered to go into the debug mode and find out.

Ah, "the turtle."

Beat: Oh yeah, I fiddled around in debug mode a lot with Sonic 1 and it's how I found out that skipping the levels as Tails and Knuckles would be feasible. I assume the reason the stage has the gap at the top is to make sure the background works correctly, though I'm surprised they just didn't re-code how the background scrolling worked for this stage -- then again, the background coding in the initial US release of the game is pretty paltry, neglecting to include the parallax effects later added to the Japanese release which became a staple of Sonic backgrounds.

Kishi: OH! Yeah, one of the funny things about each of these special stage maps is that they almost look like physical things. One of the upcoming stages looks a little like a dragon and the sixth one definitely looks like an urchin (or at least Treasure's idea of an urchin vis-a-vis Seven Force)

Huh! They maybe we're not talking about the same thing! In the Hack there's a straight up hidden passage at the top of the stage, complete with hazards item boxes and even a spring!

Weird.

This isn't strictly on-topic, but I'd like to see a breakdown of the rings-as-health mechanic. It's always struck me as really odd that you can stay alive nigh-indefinitely as long as you're sort of okay at picking up rings after you're hit.

OK. So I went to take a look at what BEAT was talking about, and the areas in Classic Heroes are definitely added to the game (there's a hidden 1-up at the top of act 1 and a couple secret areas in acts 2 and 3; one of the ones in act 2 has a 1-up, invincibility, and speed shoes). The act 3 extra area is also different from the one the mobile port uses.

I went ahead and got the mobile port just because I wanted to check the differences between versions. Marble Act 1 has an invincibility power-up in an alcove accessible only by Tails and Knuckles, while Act 2 has had its upper paths completely blocked off (a good idea, in my opinion) so Tails and Knuckles have to go underground just like Sonic must.

Well, so far into the game we haven't really come into too many sneaky traps. Hazards have been telegraphed well and Sonic usually doesn't go so fast as to make it impossible to read the surroundings. We'll be seeing levels in the next few updates that focus a lot on spring gimmicks that make Sonic difficult to control, and past there are levels with obstacles that are more hidden or harder to react to either because Sonic is going faster or slower than normal.

In later games, Sonic gets more consistently faster, obstacles tend to push him into danger more frequently, and level layouts are a lot denser than we're seeing here. Since Sonic can avoid death easily by regrabbing lost rings, the game rewards bravado and pushing Sonic's limits. Some of the jumps across the pushblock routes that we've seen in Marble Zone aren't made obvious, but a player wanting to see if they can get through that area faster on their own will find they have a chance -- and if they mess up and fall in the lava they still have a hope of getting back to the start of that section without dying.

People who don't have a lot of experience playing Sonic games take the implication that they're losing rings as a sign that they're playing the game wrong. I don't think that's quite correct -- taking a hit is a bad thing, but it always leads to a chance to learn what Sonic is and isn't capable of, and the game is a lot more interesting when you're willing to take risks or push your impatience just a little bit. Embrace taking damage a little bit! You don't need to get a good rank or bring 50 rings to the end of a stage on your first attempt at the game, but you should definitely take a chance to see if you can clear those spikes in a single leap. It might kill the flow of your first playthrough, but it will probably help you when you come back the next time and need to find an easy way across a set of obstacles. Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy! Don't ride in a school bus that shrinks you down to the size of an oxygen molecule because what the hell do you think you're gonna breathe at that size?

It's certainly true the developers knew that even only one or two rings are hard to grab, and I think that's why most pre-boss checkpoints don't have convenient rings: it would trivialize most of the game's bosses. While they're hardly the focus of the game (and most of them aren't particularly challenging on their own), they still serve as a sort of quick reminder of some of the lessons of each stage and definitely gate player progress (and we'll be coming up to a really dramatic gate of this sort in a few stages).

Now, in the more recent games, especially the ones by Dimps? Your rings go flying ever farther away the more damage you take, meaning that you can't take hits indefinitely -- eventually those rings will fly across the screen before you can reach them. Combined with more aggressive boss behavior, I can definitely see why people have mixed opinions on the later games' bosses (and even I am pretty thankful they have an "easy" option for them, yes, even me), since it's easy to take a bunch of hits and be left with nothing unless you do a lot of rote memorization of boss patterns.

Amazing work! I've been eagerly savoring every update of this, and I love how in-depth you go. You've given me new appreciation for Sonic 1.

I just wanted to say that it may make me a heathen, but I like getting to play as Tails and Knuckles. It may wreak havoc on the game's design, but I'm always fond of having different movesets, and I enjoy the feeling of getting away with something. Of course, I thoroughly enjoyed that Super Mario Crossover hack as well. They may be superfluous, but I think they're fun, and that justifies their inclusion for me.

Sorry for the still-glacial pace of updates. Spring Yard 1 should be up by this weekend.