The only two buttons in the entire level, which control the lights in act 2, simply use the same generic button sprite seen elsewhere in the game. I guess the developers didn't want Knuckles to have a different button for just this one level.
Speaking of the lights in act 2, the area where Knuckles kills them features a unique object which isn't placed anywhere else in the stage: a pair of lightbulbs, seemingly for decoration. Peeking into the object's art file, though, reveals it has a second frame of animation, in which the lightbulb has shattered!
That's not even the shocking part, though. The lightbulb object actually contains logic which causes it to shatten when it becomes submerged in water!
Given the placement of the objects, along with the fact that the water rises once Knuckles presses the button, I think it's fair to assume that originally the button would raise the water high enough to shatter the lightbulbs, causing the lights to go out. Here's a video illustrating what that may have looked like, as well as the unused button graphics:
Note how Knuckles becomes discolored once the water level crosses over his sprite. This is because his palette is only loaded to the normal palette slot and not the water palette slot, and it could have contributed to the scene being altered for the final version of the game.
I definitely remember GoldS showing off how Knuckles can be discolored in the Launch Base Zone water if you glitch into the "punch!" cutscene near the end of the level.
ReplyDeleteWhy does the underwater palette in the video look different?
ReplyDeleteGood catch.
DeleteNormally, only the above-water palette is changed during that scene. Unfortunately, this makes the flicker effect less perceptible when half of the screen is filled with water, so I jerry-rigged some code which produces a watery palette on the fly, in order to make the effect more pronounced.
Just another reason why it was easier to leave water out of it.