Sonic the Hedgehog 3 LOST BITS | Leftover & Unused Content [TetraBitGaming]

[Music] hey guys and welcome back to lost bits the series where we explore video game content that goes unused altered and unseen it's finally time after a long while and numerous comments the sonic 3 lost bits is finally here now i'm gonna be honest with you i wasn't actually planning on making this video this week but it came to my attention that this past week as i'm making this video is actually sonic's 30th anniversary so i figured what better way to celebrate the blue roden's birthday than finally getting around to making this video touted by many as their favorite game in the series sonic 3 has quite a bit to offer and it doesn't cheap out on the amount of unused leftover content either and as always if at any point you do enjoy this video be sure to let me and the youtube algorithm know with a like below it really helps a lot and if you're new here be sure to subscribe to find your way back in the future anyways with all of that said sit back grab a few chili dogs sip some sonic g fuel to go extra fast it's time to finally check out some sonic 3 lost bits alright so i already covered the sonic and knuckles pseudo sequel a few months ago be sure to check it out if you haven't already but turns out there is a decent chunk of content from that game that's still left over in standalone sonic 3. now for those that don't know a quick rundown initially sonic 3 was planned to be a much bigger game with more zones than what we got in the final release essentially the developers realized that their ambitions at the time were too great especially to meet a mcdonald's happy meal toy deadline and instead of just limiting the scope of the game they wanted to make they decided to split their project into sonic 3 part 1 and part 2 which would eventually become sonic and knuckles anyways now hopefully it's a bit more clear why there's sonic and knuckles data kicking around here despite it being quite fragmented anyways firstly remnants of a good number of sonic and knuckle stages are still found in sonic 3. now granted they don't look anything close to something one would consider good or playable or easy to look at but it's interesting to see these remnants nonetheless now i won't be going into super thorough details in each of these stages as i'm sure you don't want to be looking at these eyesores any more than i do or maybe you do i don't know some of you are weird like that but pretty much all you really need to know is that these stages end up defaulting to using tiles both okay looking and corrupted from other sonic 3 stages they don't look very nice they sometimes have a few rings here and there and the collision is either very scuffed or entirely absent making it virtually impossible to get very far in the stage let alone get to the end thankfully though with the game's debug mode it is possible to fly around as we've seen in most 2d sonic games here on lost bits and as a result we can see the entirety of these stages in all their glory interestingly enough though with this we can also see that some of these leftover sonic and knuckle stages still have the boss data left in them too there's also a leftover stage which just carries a level id of 0d and it's currently not known what exactly this was an early version of this unused stage uses graphics from angel island but it isn't believed to be related to it in any other way i'd love to show you more footage of it but it's even less playable than the other leftover stages you can imagine that unfortunately apparently due to ram corruption upon spawning in sonic will be heated off to the side and then the game will crash apparently act 2 of this zone was later used for the ending sequence in sonic 3 and knuckles but act 1 never ended up having any use leaving its legacy to remain just being this but that said there are several things that lead some to believe that this stage might have been once a two player versus stage things like it being found internally close to the other two player zones as well as there being a total of six two player versus zones listed in the level select with the six defaulting to just the gumball machine minigame instead then in addition to the regular stages there is also leftover stage data for both the glowing spheres and slot machine bonus stages from sonic and knuckles but it's just more of the same garbled mess we've seen already oddly though the slot machine in the sonic 3 prototype appeared much more complete at least visually so it's interesting to see that it was removed and only this buggy mess remains and stages aren't the only things that were scrapped from sonic 3 to be relegated to and knuckles either as there is data or other stuff for a few bosses and enemies that were apparently once planned to make it to this game for enemies we got the techno squeaks as well as the blaster enemies and not only are the sprites that were in the game but interestingly both of these fellas were still seen drawn in the sonic 3 instruction manuals in both the north american and european regions thus suggesting that their removal might have been done pretty close to release then although not seen in the manuals like we can also see when force loading the unused leftover stages there are leftover graphics for the capsule boss from flying battery act 1 the laser boss and robotnik's hang mobile from act 2 and then on top of all of this there are also several other graphics left over in this game that would go on to be later used in sonic and knuckles these include graphics for both sonic and tails climbing in flying battery zone hanging onto the rail at the end of mushroom hill zone swinging on the mushroom hill poles as well as jumping down the walls in sandopolis zone for ya boy nux there's this leftover heads up display life counter a sprite for the character selection screen one for the continue screen as well as this graphic that was meant to appear at the end of a stage when completing it then other miscellaneous leftover graphics include these robotnik bombs robotnik or eggman during the flying battery laser boss fight these which do go on to be used in the final flying battery fights well except this last one which never gets used as well as this set and this thing whatever this is so i mentioned the unused knuckles graphics earlier but there's actually a bit more to these as well by using this game genie code not only can you get this graphic to appear as intended but you can also play with what seems to be remnants of knuckles being playable in this game when used unfortunately you still only play as sonic but this will trigger various other things that would only happen when playing as knuckles for example the otherwise unused end level graphics will now also appear and the end signpost will also feature nux although in a cool blue variety in accordance to sonic's color palette pretty cool stuff lastly several tracks from sonic and knuckles can also be found in this game's sound test but they're just the same as the ones heard in sonic and knuckles so i don't think there's really a need to get into them in this video so yeah unsurprising why all of this sonic and knuckles content is left over here in sonic 3 given the nature of its development but i gotta say it is a lot of stuff to have remaining and with all of those sonic and knuckles leftovers out of the way now let's finally talk about some unused content for sonic 3 itself we just marathoned a bunch of graphics and although there are tons more to get through from the final game let's switch gears and now talk about some unused audio besides the sonic and knuckles leftover tracks i mentioned earlier we got a bunch of unused sound effects left in the game too now these are all accessible in the game via the sound test i just always get some wieners in the comments saying something like uh it's in the sound test so it isn't unused no sorry this doesn't count as used like i said there are a good number of these to go through so in the interest of time i'll just go through the unused sounds quickly but if you're interested in checking out more detail on them like where they're from or what they could have been meant for as always be sure to head on over to the cutting room floor page as linked in the description and that goes for basically everything in this video here i'm only scratching the surface with this game so if you'd like to dig in even deeper again go check out tcrf sonic retro sonic 3 unlocked and the hidden palace anyways here we go here are all of the unused sound effects as ordered in the sound test [Music] bye [Music] um uh [Music] oh oh also if you're wondering about the whole sonic 3 debacle with michael jackson yes that michael jackson be sure to check out my video on the sonic 3 prototype i go in all about it there next let's talk about some unused color palettes i hope you like looking at squares in a bunch of different colors for those that don't know what color palettes are essentially it's just a range of colors that are used to color certain screens and such so all left over unused left from sonic 2 we have palettes for the intro sega screen the title screen as well as oddly enough the level select screen but from the prototype of sonic 2. then we also got unused color palettes for launch base act 2 lava reef zone the glowing spheres and slot machine bonus stages as well as the color palette that's used for knuckles in sonic 3 and knuckles it's weird the middle of this is kinda looking like a burger lastly there's also pallet data for the gold spheres seen only in the sonic and knuckle special stages these are apparently always loaded in the sonic 3 special stages though when getting to the special stage they just never appear then in addition to some of the sound effects and color palettes being left over from sonic 2 even more weird is that there are leftover menu screens too and not just in a graphic form as they can still actually be accessed and interacted with now the menus don't unlock any secret modes or anything as they're still pretty basic for this one we got a player select option one for versus mode items as well as a sound test which works just like the one in the normal sonic 3 level select what is really cool though is that here on this menu you can enter in the sonic 2 sound test code 1965 917 to gain access to the sonic 3 level select it's pretty cool then for this menu it appears basically the same as seen in sonic 2 though sometimes the stage icons will just default to an x and unfortunately selecting any of the options here won't boot up one of the stages or anything and it will just bring you back to the title screen and also associated with the screen there's a set of unused graphics for the multiplayer result screen also left over from sonic 2. and now i guess let's use those unused graphics to finally segue to the rest of sonic 3's unused graphics strap in we got quite a few to go through here first are several stage chunks that go unused in each zone in order we got these from angel island these from hydro city marble garden carnival knights ice cap and finally launch base zone next are several placeholder tiles that are actually loaded into the stages but are then replaced with animated tiles we've seen a few of these in those garbled unused stages earlier i'm sure you're probably missing them by now anyways these are normally never seen by the player and here we got them for all the zones with the exception of icecap zone for whatever reason these come in all shapes and sizes including this really long vertical one from launch base the most interesting one though i think is this one from hydro city zone which instead of letters and numbers and such appears to feature dots representing numbers kind of like you'd see on a die or a domino it's unclear what purpose this could have had if any in terms of debugging at least to me it's interesting though that in each of these there's a differently colored section in the bottom left almost as if it were a hint or something for a puzzle then moving on we got more unused sprites and animations of sonic including an idle animation of sonic dozing off from boredom using his hands to whistle and of course the signature unused black and white death sprite that we've seen countless times here on lost bits by now i've legitimately lost counts but yeah this unused sprite just keeps on creeping into these games i guess as i've mentioned in the other videos it's thought that this sprite was perhaps meant to be associated with a death by fire then we got these chibi sprites of sonic and tails from sonic 2 as well as this leftover continue screen animation of tails also left over from sonic 2. for eggman we got him running away attempting to jump as well as him seemingly turning away from the player's view about to fly away into the distance now it's very likely that this last set of sprites was meant to be used at the end of the game as the death egg falls in the distance it honestly seems to fit really well and it can actually still be re-enabled by using a cheat code so it really makes me wonder why the decision was made to scrap it then next we got leftover sprites from the prototype for the competition mode unused lap counter digits as the maximum in the game is 5 an unused set of numbers thought to be for a timer in the competition mode this switch structure believed to have been meant for the angel island act 2 boss fight sprites for this animation thought to be the shadow of the tornado as seen in the opening intro this thing which apparently some think looks like a metal or a clock of some sort i don't know i don't see it but since apparently it's found near the timer font i mentioned earlier it might have had something to do with awarding the player for completing a lap in a certain amount of time or something then next we have this low resolution image of what looks to be the death egg this unused save file icon of flying battery zone which is also different than the one that did go on to be used in sonic 3 and knuckles and lastly there are two unused gumballs for the bonus stage one flashing s gumball that based on the s and having a similar color palette is theorized to have been somehow related to supersonic as well as this generic blank gumball which is apparently loaded in the back of the gumball machine but is never normally visible as it ends up being blocked by the other gumballs and speaking of supersonic there's also apparently a single frame from his idol animation that due to a bug doesn't get used it's not a huge difference but the way the animation was intended to play out seems a bit more smooth next up we got unused title cards for each of the competition mode stages these are also all fully implemented but are disabled but as such can also be re-enabled for us to see them the way they were intended oddly the order of these cards is different than how the levels are ordered in the final game here we see desert palace precede chrome gadget and perhaps this was an old level order before they decided to order them alphabetically a through e though that seems like such an obvious way to order them so i don't really know next are compressed unused copies of the ensign posts for each character as well as eggman they look roughly the same but if you look close enough you can spot a few differences especially with sonic and knuckles now i believe i talked about this in the sonic 3 prototypes video but in this final version 2 we can see remnants of the old intro where sonic was to surf onto the island instead of fly in on the tornado still using his sonic 2 style basically keeping the head the exact same although not fully implemented like we saw in the prototype this animation can actually still not only be seen but placed into the stage via the game's debug mode in angel island zone by doing so we can see sonic ride a fat wave of miscellaneous graphics it honestly looks kinda cool to be honest in addition to the one gumball i mentioned before there are a few more instances where a graphic isn't fully unused but parts of it are never normally seen these include most of the upper section of the green bomber as seen at the end of angel island zone you know where tails eats absolute for about a whole minute there's a flower bed in the background graphic of azure lake zone which is heavily obstructed due to the stage being in the way and similarly much of the chrome gadget's own background is also obstructed and never seen and furthermore many of the details here are made harder to see due to the color palette that's used moving on we got several unused objects in this game some which have associated graphics and some which don't at least not proper ones there's this button from carnival night zone thought to maybe be an alternate version of the switch that knuckles presses in act two also for carnival knight is this weird slope object that for some reason defaults to a ring graphic with an incorrect color palette when placed in slope collision will appear for angel island there's this unused long tree object as well as this wall piece object with two alternate forms one which opens with a switch and one that can be broken with a spin dash for ice cap zone there's this unused breakable ice block and then there are these unused spikes for competition mode suggesting that they might have been planned to appear in the multiplayer mode but the decision was ultimately made to make the stages spike free then all thought to be associated with launch based zone are several objects with either missing or partially corrupted graphics there's this grabable platform some sort of unused elevator as well as rotating platform and there's also a structure that's thought to have been meant to be spinning which also damages the player if they touch the top next up are two unused monitor types the first one also seen in the sonic 3 prototype just featuring some static and this damages the player if broken similar to eggman monitors in the rest of the series then the second unused monitor sports a big s and yup you guessed it here it transforms sonic into super sonic and tails into something a very nifty monitor for getting the super abilities without needing to get all of the chaos emeralds it's a shame it was cut but since it can still be accessed with the game's debug mode it might have never been meant to be usable by the end user and was just a quick way for the developers to test supersonic functionality quickly within a stage and lastly for the unused objects here there's leftover data for a fourth type of shield the original elementless one as seen in previous sonic games its functionality can still be re-enabled with some memory editing but unsurprisingly it just gives the player a second hit before losing rings and now let's finally move past the unused graphics that was a lot to go through next is for all intents and purposes a quasi-unused mechanic in the game which awards the player a cool 100 000 points if they do the small task of completing a stage with 9 minutes and 59 seconds on the timer or less than a second to go so not technically impossible but extremely hard to do considering you have to perfectly time a boss fight i'm sure only a fraction of a percentage of people that played this game have ever gotten this at least not without specifically trying for it another oddity that's sort of similar in that it's not technically unused but i'm sure very few people ended up hearing it is that the music on the data select screen actually changes if you wait around for a whopping 47 minutes or 169 000 frames one instrument in the track starts to get way louder than it's supposed to presumably due to a glitch anyways explaining it is one thing you really gotta hear for yourselves [Music] [Applause] next up we got an unused credit sequence where the text was planned to scroll as opposed to fade between the different pages as seen in the final due to the very unfinished nature of the sequence as it only credits the letters b through f for developing the game yeah let's give it up for bcdef for developing sonic 3. it's likely this was just a test and it seems like this scrolling idea must have been scrapped pretty early in development if you're a big fan of the blue sphere stages like i am you may be disappointed to learn that there is an eighth normally inaccessible special stage kicking around in the game that said if you can get your way to the level select screen you can access it there with a little secret trick all you gotta do is set the sound test to zero seven and then press a and start on special stage two easy as that the stage isn't anything crazy basically just a long straight edge spiral of sorts i guess due to the number of spheres that are loaded in the stage does tend to slow down quite a bit at times and this might have been one of the reasons for its removal thankfully enough though this layout although updated would later go on to be re-implemented in the masterpiece known as sonic mania so i've referenced to the level select screen a few times this video but let's talk a bit more about it in detail first off it's interesting to note that it reuses not only the font and background from sonic 2 but these stage icons are also still from sonic 2 as well we can see chemical plant zone casino knight the unused sonic 2 hidden palace and all the rest in their low res glory additionally we can see here what's thought to be an initial planned level order before the game was split in two flying battery between carnival knight and ice cap as well as both sandopolus and mushroom valley the early name for mushroom hill appearing right after launch base it's kind of cool to see this level select screen basically playing tug-of-war between sonic 3's predecessor as well as its pseudo-sequel and lastly another thing i referenced quite a few times this video is of course the game's debug mode now this has become somewhat of a crowd favorite here in these 2d sonic game lost bits videos ever since i first showed it off in sonic 1. well here it returns in much of the same way as we've seen it before on the show with it enabled we can zip around through walls to make clearing a level a breeze there's also invincibility unlimited time and of course the ability to place in several objects in each stage pretty much the closest we've ever come so far to an official sonic maker with this placement mode in addition to other normally used objects we can place in several of the unused objects i mentioned earlier including the unused surfing sonic but one thing i haven't mentioned yet though is that in angel island's own act 1 you can also place in these weird rotating red spheres when placed in these spheres can actually also be controlled by a controller plugged into the second player slot now these red spheres used to be a bigger mystery that is until the sonic 3 prototype was dropped there these red spheres were also seen as part of a sort of tech demo showing off the 3d capability for the 3d stages although not 100 identical to the ones seen here placed in with debug mode it's likely they serve the same purpose but who knows maybe they could have been an early concept for a replacement teleportation method to the special stages instead of the traditional ring or something regardless these red balls are pretty slick then on top of that using the debug mode to zip around also reveals a few normally inaccessible areas they're all unfortunately pretty empty save for this area and launch base zone which still has an i assume misplaced spring just floating here then even more strange occurrences can be seen like these monitors hidden in the floor of the carnival night zone act 2 boss area or some more misplaced objects like this little lonely ring found in the bonus stage for the monitors in the floor though i believe i remember reading somewhere that these might have been used as markers for the developers to remember where the spots were for the end goal post to land on in order to spawn the secret monitors honestly guys i don't know what much else there is to say about this awesome debug mode that i haven't already said in my previous videos i just gotta say i'm super happy the developers left this mode in and all of these games in a rather easy to access way too it honestly is one of my favorite things to come back to when making these videos and my friends on that note finally wraps up sonic 3 at least for now fingers crossed we see more prototypes drop in the future which pull back even more curtains from this game's development till then i hope you enjoyed i thank you all for your patience if you've waited for a while and boy am i glad to finally stop seeing people asking when i'm making this video while you're here be sure to check out some more of my lost bits videos and as always thank you all so much for tuning in today and i will see you in a bit [Music] you

Channel: TetraBitGaming

Views: 372,623

Keywords: sonic the hedgehog, sonic, Sonic 3, Sonic the hedgehog 3, Sonic 30th anniversary, S3&K, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic 3 Lost Bits, Sonic 3 Bonus Video, Sonic Lost Bits, TetraBitGaming, TetraBit, TBG Common, TetraBitGaming Sonic, Sonic Cut Content, Sonic Unused Content, Sonic 3 & Knuckles Lost Bits, Sonic 3 & Knuckles Cut Content, sonic 3 gameplay, video games, gaming, sonic 3 and knuckles, sega, Sonic Prototype, Sonic 3 Prototype, Sonic Beta, sonic debug mode sonic 3, Lost Media

Id: 2LLgIBLXyMQ

Length: 25min 54sec (1554 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021