Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Jump to: Curiousity #01, Curiousity #02 Curiousity #01 Updated: 6/3/99, 11:36 AM EST Subject: Sonic 2 Beta's Emulated in 2 Player (5/27/99) (BTW, I apologize for the "artifacts" on the picture. It wasn't the emulator's fault, it turned out, but rather simply because of my low memory. I tried it a second time and little to no artifacts were present.) Finally, one emulator writer set out, and dedicated programming his emulator to working with Sonic 2's 2-Player mode, which required a special interlaced mode. This had the unknown benefit of allowing Sonic 2 Beta's 2 Player Mode to work. ^.^ So, how does the 2-Player Mode of Sonic 2 Beta compare? Well, it doesn't work on all levels (they're selectable, they just don't use splitscreen). On the ones it does, it acts just like a regular game at first. Tails follows you along, you just have two screens to play on, both use the same counters (in fact, "Tails"'s counter says "Sonic" (No quotes), and his icon is that of Sonic's.) However, once you move that second controller, you see Tails' screen move away with him. ^.^ Voila! Two Player! BTW, the emulator? That would be DGen. ^.^ You can find the latest revision at the DGen Homepage. Many thanks to Dave for his hard work! (5/30/99) Thought you'd like some more info on the 2-Player Mode. An interesting tidbit I discovered: almost every zone works with 2-Player! Although some look better than others (don't let the picture fool you. Hill Top's looks pretty good, especially compared to some others. ;>), almost every zone will work with the "2-Player" trick (pressing "B" to select a level on the level select). Curiously enough, even the deleted zones, Genocide City, Death Egg, they even load up two windows! Even more fascinating, there is _one_ zone that does not allow 2-Player. Can you believe it? The programmers probably had to go out of their way to do that. It leads to a curious question as to why... (don't forget, deleted or unfinished zones like Wood or Genocide worked in 2-Player, so why not Hidden Palace?) (6/3/99) Sz left me an interesting e-mail, explaining his theory why certain zones (Hidden Palace 1 and 2, Aquatic Ruin 1 and 2, and Chemical Plant 2) won't work in 2-Player, and it's a very good one. To sum it up: the water. 2-Player will not work in any zone with water. Why? I'm not totally sure, but to theorize, I'd say either handling two water levels was too much for the Genesis processor (each character could be either in or out of the water), or the fact that the color change caused by going underwater was a "pallette buster" of sorts for 2-player. ^.^ But draw your own conclusions. Curiousity #02 Updated: 6/24/99, 3:48 AM EST Subject: Subject: Sonic 2 Beta Hidden Palace Zone in 2 Player Sz informed me on June 18th (I apologize for the delay in posting) that he had managed to enter the Hidden Palace in two player! He also wrote an excellent explanation of the event in his e-mail, so I'll let his words do the talking: Subject: I did it! Did what? Got Hpz in 2-player! Yes, it's true. Not much to see, really. The game seems to eliminate all sprites in Hidden Palace (and Aquatic Ruin) once you get there. Which makes it pretty, um, hairy. (Either way, most of us have memorized the level layout of Hpz, so it's not much of a problem. :P) About the two pics: The first one, titled:"hpz2player1.gif", is taken while Sonic's jumping. (Yes, that blue line thing in the top center is Sonic!) The second one, titled:"hpz2player2.gif", is after I landed. While Sonic has disappeared, the location is revealed to be... The Emerald! (The emerald is invisible, however.) How did I do it? A basic level hack (change offset at 12288 to 08) with a 2-player zone. Mystic Cave worked best (Oil Ocean kept changing the music on me!). -Kulock Last Updated: 6/26/99 (Fixed the Pagejumps)