Wrapping things up: besides
Angel Island Zone and
Icecap Zone, Sandopolis Zone is the only other stage in which the act transition doesn't happen during the act 1 results. Instead, it takes place immediately afterwards, during the fade to black when entering the pyramid. This isn't nearly as exciting as the other two stages, but there you go.
Interestingly, this the only instance in which the player palette gets reloaded in the middle of a stage, which means that if you're playing as Blue Knuckles and turned red upon reverting from a Super transformation (admittedly an infrequent scenario!) then you'll be blue again at the start of act 2.
This act transition prevents you from utilizing the ring monitor properly if revealed and popped after the score tally.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually a fair point I hadn't considered before. It's the title card object that clears the time and ring counters, so if you hit the monitor between the results and the title card, the rings are effectively worthless.
DeleteThe same thing would happen in Death Egg Zone, if there were any hidden monitors in that stage at all.