Games - Special Zone

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	Games - Special Zone

The Special Zone (also called Special Stage) was an important part of the Sega Genesis/Megadrive Sonic the Hedgehog games. It is a location separate from the usual setting of those games (either Earth or Mobius), in which characters can locate Chaos Emeralds. Note that in the 8-bit Sonic games of the Game Gear and Master System, as well as more recent games from the Sonic Adventure line and the television series Sonic X
, Chaos Emeralds are not found in the Special Zone, and in fact the Special Zone is not mentioned at all. In all the games, the transportation links are called buses. A sound effect is heard when the bus warps you to the stage (and sometimes back to the regular zone in some games).

In the games

The Special Zone first appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog, in which it was depicted as a somewhat psychedelic rotating maze, with the Chaos Emerald ready for collection in the centre. It was accessed through a giant Zone Ring, which appeared at the end of an Act if one had collected enough rings in that Act.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 altered the game mechanics of the Special Zone, though the psychedelic backdrop remained the same. Whereas gameplay in the Special Zone in the first game had been similar to the original game, in this game it was a mini-game in which characters ran along a curving half-pipe tube, collecting gold rings while avoiding bombs, which would knock rings away. There were three sections, and a character had to collect a sufficient number of rings in each section to advance to the next. This format was reused for the Special Zone in the game Sonic 3D Blast, as well as some of the games in the Sonic Advance series for the Game Boy Advance. In Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the Special Zone was accessed via Star Posts, which had previously only been used as save-points.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles once again returned to using Zone Rings as the entryway to the Special Zone (though they were scattered throughout the stages rather than left at the end), and once again reimagined the Special Zone. This time, the characters had to run along the surface of a planet-like sphere, collecting blue orbs and avoiding red ones.

Sonic Heroes marked the return of the Special Stages in a 3D Sonic game (as mentioned earlier, there are no Special Stages in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2). The player needs to collect a Special Stage key in a particular stage to enter a Special Stage. Getting a Special Stage key in odd-numbered stages (Stage 01: Seaside Hill, Stage 03: Grand Metropolis, etc) opens up Bonus Challenges, where you try to beat the timer for points and 1-ups, linking spheres to add time to the clock. getting a Special Stage key for even-numbered stages (Stage 02: Ocean Palace, Stage 04: Power Plant) opens up Emerald Challenges, where you race against time and chase for the Chaos Emerald, powering up the Power Dash by collecting spheres. Despite the nostalgic return of the Special Stages in Sonic Heroes, it was met with much criticism for its slide physics and poor control.

Theories

As the game lines gave little in the way of an explanation as to how such a strange dimension could exist, spin-off media and fans developed their own theories as to what the Special Zone actually was.

Fleetway's Sonic the Comic
pictured the Special Zone as merely another of a multiverse of universes, complete with planets and cities (though, admittedly, the bizarre cosmology of the games was adhered to). This Special Zone resembled Sonic's home planet of Mobius greatly, even with similar anthropomorphic animal inhabitants, and the two planes had a great deal of communication due to the Star Posts and the intervention of the Omni-Viewer. The Special Zone's largest city was called New Tek City, capital of Planet Meridian, and it was protected by the Chaotix team. Notably, the UK fiction presents the Special Zone of the first Sonic game to be not a part of this universe, but a series of sub-orbital space warps created by Doctor Robotnik to keep the Chaos Emeralds out of Sonic's hands.

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