Sheesh. With all the HUD palette conflicts, you'd think they would just make the shadows black and get done with it.Unlike Sonic 2, there isn't a consistent black color in Sonic 3's enemy palette. Most levels keep it in the slot just before the three-gray gradient, but this isn't universal, and more to the point, it goes right out the window as soon as cutscene Knuckles appears.
Knuckles' palette does have black in it, but the enemy black doesn't line up with it because the slot is already taken by the dark yellow. The reason the dark yellow has to line up with Knuckles' black? Rings.
In Hidden Palace Zone, there's this unique situation where cutscene Knuckles is on screen, but when the player takes damage, so are rings. The game reconciles this by writing the middle yellow back on top of the red, which messes with Knuckles' shoes, but combined with the strategic placement of the dark yellow allows both sprites to look acceptable.
Not even the black color is consistent between the enemy palettes? Huh. How weird. Especially considering that from looking at the palettes, they all seem to have a black color, or close to it, but in different places. Makes me wonder why they didn't keep its place consistent so that they could use it for the HUD. Perhaps its design was a late addition, and there wasn't enough time to reorder the colors in all enemy palettes and redraw all enemy sprites.
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