Paraemon's Comprehensive Ripping Project Thread [Expansion Station]

[Paraemon]

Thanks, Ton!



Now for one of my major pet peeves from the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles archives on TSR: the Emerald palettes. The colours as seen above are from different palette sources - the left-most lilac Emerald, the orange, lemon and pink shines and the Master Emerald need to be rechecked, as I don't believe they fit in with RAW or my previous non-RAW palette posts, but all the others are non-RAW palettes (RAW palette pending). I'll get back to them.

Super Emeralds
We all know that the top nine Super Emeralds palettes are accurate to their appearance in the Hidden Palace Zone. However, from what I've noticed, the Blue Emerald is susceptible to being changed in ROM hacks to accommodate characters like Amy. I'll return to this point. Right now, I want to focus on the Red Emerald.

So, what are the dark purple and red ones doing below the powerless Emerald and the glow/shine? These are alternate palettes to the Red Emerald. If the Emeralds have previously been directly ripped during the Robotnik scene at HPZ, then it would be easy to gloss over these two palettes. The dark purple one has been an interest of mine for years, since it was such a unforeseen shift in the fact that I had clearly acquired the Red Super Emerald in the Special Stage. Surely I can't have been the only one to have seen it? So I check the TSR archive and it's not there. Sad face.

I don't know the reason, but it's moot, I've ripped it now. Best I can tell, it requires Sonic (maybe Tails, not properly tested) to win the Red Emerald and view this palette (best done first, I think). It should appear again when you acquire the Blue Emerald later, and the Orange if part of the Emerald is in frame. As for the alternate red palette next to the dark purple one, this is something I've uncovered since I started ripping, and seems to be reactive to Knuckles. If the dark purple palette does not show up, and the original palette does not show up, this one will.

Below those are palettes unseen unless you make Knuckles fight himself in HPZ and move on to the Robotnik scene. But Observer, that's impossible, unless you cheat...ohhh. Yes, these two fall away from the purposes of the project, but let's take something into consideration: we can, through the two-tier level select cheat performed in Angel Island Zone and then in Mushroom Hill Zone, allow Knuckles to visit the Death Egg Zone, the Doomsday Zone, the Lava Reef Boss and Sonic's Sky Sanctuary Zone, and Sonic/Tails to visit the Echidna's Sky Sanctuary. Yet Knuckles is still unable to fight himself with this cheat activated. So what gives? We already know from sticking him in Sonic's SSZ, that you will have the player character palette for Knuckles and the regular cutscene palette of Rad Red, side by side.

So why can we not have them fight in HPZ? That darn pesky screen lock. Sticking Knuckles into HPZ with the two-tier cheat active, and it plays out like it would without the cheat being present anyway. So, after taking note from watching a playthrough of Sonic 3 & Amy wherein the Blue Emerald became Pink, I decided it would be fair to see what happened when Knuckles took on his cutscene cousin, whom I dub "Cuticles". This led to seeing that, as the Red Emerald changed to the secondary palette as described above, the Blue Emerald took on the Red's main palette, leaving the two lightest shades of blue left, similar to how the lightest red shade appears on the dark purple gem. Of course, I anticipated that from having seen the video already, but I didn't anticipate the shift that befell the Orange Emerald. I have no idea what that colour is. Puke, probably.

Moving on, the middle row of three Emeralds. The Lilac and Lime Emeralds are the 0408-prototype Green/Mint Emerald; the lime-coloured gem reflects the colour of the Altar behind it, and the lilac colour only appears as the lime colour is replaced throughout HPZ if visiting the Bonus Stage before fighting Cuticles. Fun fact; the White Emerald is replaced with the Green/Mint palette. The broken Orange palette? Seems to be in effect in the 0517-prototype when the Echidna is defeated in Super/Hyper form.

I'm not going to lie, it's stupid hard to get all the Super Emeralds in the 0408 and 0517 prototypes. I can just about manage with the original Special Stages, but depositing all the Chaos Emeralds to HPZ (0517) is an exercise in frustration. Because it's a lengthy process and will require save-states deleted to get anywhere, expect me to take time to resolve the palette issue I highlighted at the start.

Now, the weird powerless Emerald and the variant glows. The two left-most ones are from the 0517-prototype, when Robotnik's floaty pod is hit, the Emerald colours are effected to reflect a strike against the mad scientist's machine. The other three glows/shines come from the 0408-prototype, which appear regardless of Sonic, Tails or Super Sonic; they appear over the lavender and white, light blue and green gems, respective in order as seen on the image.

Super Sonic? This brings me onto the final 10 Super Emerald palettes. In the earliest prototypes available, turning Super Sonic or being Super Sonic (or the Super Flickies in 0517) in the presence of the Blue Emerald yields a glowing Super Emerald that matches the glowing animation of everyone's favourite Seiyan-hog. This covers the first three of the ten. The other seven, you guessed it, Hyper Sonic's palette. But why? Because Super Sonic's palette is broken in the 0517-prototype and he flashes the Hyper palette. So going into the Emerald area in 0517 gives the most energetic Emerald in the entire area, surpassing the Master Emerald's fine glow.

And the Master Emerald brings me on to the palette of the Master Emerald as displayed. This seems to be limited to the 0408-prototype, as the final version of Chaos' prison doesn't have that shade of purple, at least. This is the only frame I have for it at the moment, but I shall investigate further since I only uncovered it tonight. So now...

Chaos Emeralds
Another reason for my interest in ripping anything and everything from the Sonic 3 games was the removal of SupaChao's Hidden Palace Emerald animation sheet. Granted, I know the reason now and agree that it was a bit ridiculous that every little frame was incorporated, but nevertheless, the alternate palette (top circle) for the Emeralds, which largely seems to be indicative of the palettes of the incoming Super Emeralds, was removed with no compensation of them being included on another Emerald sheet. This palette is easily missed, as are the Emerald palettes (bottom circle) seen when you've collected zero to six of them in Sonic 3 (standalone!) and get the "Try Again" screen. But Observer, the bottom circle of Emeralds are just a glitched palette! There's video evidence to the contrary, and you can play the game without winning the Emeralds to see for yourself - why they appear this way, I know not, but real they are. If you want a glitched palette of the Chaos Emeralds, I have intentionally ripped the colours when screwing about with debug in HPZ, but the version of the Emeralds is that from the results screen - I am holding onto these on the main Emeralds WIP sheet until I find a more suitable home for them.

Now, the Special Stage Chaos Emeralds. Why is the Red one there? It's actually a semi-different palette to the Red Emerald seen in S&K/S3K - the darker shades are different, while the lighter red shades remain the same. It appears in Sonic 3 and the prototypes - this palette does extend to the Super Emerald variant as well. The Turquoise Emerald? It's in Sonic 3 and the prototypes, and fills the spot of the Light Blue Emerald we see in the seventh Special Stage of S&K/S3K ; like its displayed Red cousin, it also has a Super Emerald variant that is in the prototypes.

I trust this was enlightening.