--- By Brendan Cross --- Hidden Master Knuckles --- I have a few theories about Hidden Palace and other stuff. I also have it included as a text file if you want it that way. 1. Hidden Palace theory 1: Sonic 3 (which is now S3&K) was already planned when Sonic 2 was being developed (companies are like that, you know) and would have lock-on. It was planned that Knux, the Master Emerald's owner, could be in Sonic 2, which would be mixed with S3 (S3&K to you and me), and Knux would have the extra level Hidden Palace, which he could get after getting all the Chaos Emeralds (hence the "Now Knuckles can go to Hidden Palace" message). BTW: there are some Sonic 3 only sounds that can be found in Sonic 2 sound test. A bit of proof that Sonic 3 WAS planned when Sonic 2 was being developed. 2. Hidden Palace theory 2: Not only was Tails planned as a new character for S2, but Knux, as well. You'd alternate chars during the course of the game, and Knux would have the Hidden Palace Zone (hence the Master Emerald). However, they decided to wait for S3 for him or couldn't get him done on time, so Sega axed the HPZ. The reason for a Tails 1-up in HPZ was because Knux wasn't programmed yet at that point , and the game knew that the 1-up wasn't Sonic's, so it did the logical thing and put a Tails 1-up in its place. Or, maybe three 1-up boxes were in the game data, but because Knux wasn't programmed yet, two were Tails monitors, so the game put in a Tails monitor, which gave you an extra life because Knux was the only one supposed to be able to get there, the game wasn't picky about just who it gave the life to. 3. Why Knux in Sonic 1 support is gone: If you use Knux in Sonic 2, you'll notice that the colour palette is slightly changed. Well, maybe the colour palette is so changed it's not worth playing in Sonic 1! It couldn't be the conveyor belt bug, 'cause there are conveyor belts in S2, S3 + S&K that don't cause bugs. Someone suggested that Sonic and Knux's palettes are always slightly different, so some colours from Sonic's palette don't fit in Knux's palette and some colours from Knux's palette doesn't fit in Sonic's palette, hence the slightly different-coloured Knux playing as Sonic. However, this can't be true, as both the slightly different Knux with Sonic's palette and the playable Knux are fine when displayed together in Sonic and Tails's version of Sky Sanctuary (gotten by choosing char # 3 for Sky Sanctuary Act 2 in level select). 4. Time travel was NOT planned for Sonic 2: Before the first Sonic 2 alphas were sent out to magazines, Sega announced that time travel would play an important role in Sonic 2. Later, when the alphas and betas were given to the magazines, they discovered that time travel was absent. However, it's known that Sonic CD was delayed early in development in favor of starting Sonic 2. Well, the "time travel" that Sega was talking about was in Sonic CD, which was, at the time, Sonic 2! A guy at the S2 beta board contradicted my theory, saying that it can't be true, because: a) Genocide City's music (in the beta) is Chemical Plant's. b) Wood Zone's Metropolis music. c) OOZ's deserty music. d) Dust Hill. e) Hidden Palace. f)other theories Well... what do Dust Hill and Hidden Palace have to do with it? They're just simply cut out zones. Wood Zone and Genocide City's musics, just simply because they didn't have musics of their own written yet (which is also why Hidden Palace doesn't play the Hidden Palace music). And other theories? They're just theories, like mine. They may be right, they may be wrong, but we don't know and that's why they're theories! Therefore, that last argument of his is just as irrelevant as Dust Hill and Hidden Palace; just because they're there doesn't mean there was going to be time travel; no time travel elements are contained in them, so connecting them and time travel makes no sense. --- Taken from 'Secrets of Sonic the Hedgehog - The Original' http://secretsonic.cjb.net ---