Call me dumb or anything but today while I was finishing Sonic 3 & Knuckles again I noticed this for the first time:
There's a huge mural in the background depicting the Doomsday Zone. There's the huge Robotnik figure holding the Master Emerald and there's Super Sonic. I never got why it was called the Doomsday Zone, now I figure it's some kind of apocalypse thing predicted by the guys at the Hidden Palace Zone.
I myself also only realized what that mural depicted fairly recently. Like, in the last three years.
Interestingly enough, I played the Marble Garden zone fairly recently and discovered a path I never even knew about (and I played Sonic 3 & Knuckles religiously when I was a teen).
The mural is deep within a hidden sanctuary on Angel Island, which remained a legend until well after Gerald was dead.
That said, I still think it's possible. I think the Chaos emeralds went up with the Master emerald after the Chaos incident. The Chao had lost their old guardian and needed a new one, and the surviving echidnas probably felt indebted (and homeless) for causing it. But having learned of the greed of the world, the Chao knew the emeralds would always bring them war. So they decided to isolate them from everything race they could imagine, sending the shrine into the stratosphere with some new guardians for good measure.
The island is hidden from underneath by clouds, but the sun shines down on it so a military surveillance satellite could have stumbled on it. Maybe GUN slaughtered the echidnas and only Knuckles's parents survived. But Knuckles isn't born for another 35 years, so they'd be some old lovers. That they both died when he was young would also be a big coincidence. So it's more likely GUN did a covert operation, wherein they photographed the mural and stole the emeralds, perhaps unable to carry the Master, or perhaps able and crashed the island, got them to the ARK for experimentation, and somehow or other it all gets back to the echidnas who proceed to vanish 35 years later while the Chaos Emeralds end up in South Island's dimensional rift.
That's about how likely it is that Shadow is based on the mural.
Poison Eggroll wrote:I myself also only realized what that mural depicted fairly recently. Like, in the last three years.
Interestingly enough, I played the Marble Garden zone fairly recently and discovered a path I never even knew about (and I played Sonic 3 & Knuckles religiously when I was a teen).
I seriously love how I can play sonic 3 and knuckles and find pathways I never found before. It still happens today after like 12 years of playing that game.
I had sonic & knuckles but not sonic 3 (which I rented) so I had to play the entire game every day, collecting the 7 emeralds in mushroom hill and passing trough the rest of the stages, I did see the mural the first time and understood it the next time I completed doomsday zone.
This and sonic 2 are my favourite ones due to every hour that I spent in them
WW wrote:The point is, fan interpretation is retarded.
I dunno, the developers clearly put that in there to provoke speculation. I mean, I don't think there's too much to read into, but it's definitely there to be interpreted. By fans.
Are the Mystic Ruins rain forest/temple on Angel Island? And where is the (SA) shrine located in reference to the island itself? It looks like it has to be attached to the side of the island somehow, but I always pictured it as floating in the middle of dried up lake or something. In the past it is suspended in a lake, but in the present it is miles above a rain forest of sorts. I don't know if that rain forest is part of the island or part the mainland and whether or not its the same as the rain forest with the temple. Is Red Mountain/Ice Cap the same as Lava Reef/IceCap?
I think I remember something about a guy comparing the rock of Angel Island (a "mountain from the sky") to the soil in the rain forest, but I could be mis-remembering. If that is the case then they would be seperate...
I'm looking at you Smile with all those Japanese strategy guides.
Second a speculation:
There are Echidna ruins on the mainland in SA2 near Eggman's "Secret Base." It's possible that these ruins had the story of the Knuckles Tribe including The Doomsday Prophecy. This is especially likely when you consider that these ruins are of Egyptian-style Echidnas like from Sandopolis.
...And if the ruins are seperate from Angel Island, then it is possible that GUN/Gerald got the data from those ruins. Keep in mind that the ruins kept record of Chaos (which was similar to the S3K backstory) so its possible that there were also records of The Doomsday.
Frieza2000 wrote:The mural is deep within a hidden sanctuary on Angel Island, which remained a legend until well after Gerald was dead.
The architecture of the last bits of the Cannon's Core level in SA2 disagrees wholeheartedly with your statement.
The architecture of Cannon's Core are very similar to the Master Emerald shrine from SA, but not so much the shrine from Hidden Palace which actually has the mural. There aren't even any walls in the SA-version, let alone murals. So I'm going to say that he was operating under the assumption that they are two different shrines, and not two different takes on the same shrine. So while Gerald may have been aware of the original, he might not have been aware of the Hidden one.
Also Hidden Palace is inside a volcano. The shrine in SA is next to a volcano.
Are the Mystic Ruins rain forest/temple on Angel Island? And where is the (SA) shrine located in reference to the island itself?
According to the in-game maps of SADX, the SA incarnation of Angel Island (in the present) consists of the Master Emerald shrine, the ice caves and the entrance to Red Mountain. The Lost World temple and the surrounding forest are a part of Mystic Ruins.
but in the present it is miles above a rain forest of sorts. I don't know if that rain forest is part of the island or part the mainland and whether or not its the same as the rain forest with the temple.
This cut-scene suggests that forest area under the Emerald shrine is a part of the Mystic Ruins.
Is Red Mountain/Ice Cap the same as Lava Reef/IceCap?
Snowy mountains and volcano-like structures are visible on Angel Island in the cut-scenes. The humans in Station Square, however, make reference to visiting both Red Mountain and Ice Cap. Furthermore, the snowboarding section of Ice Cap contains human-like houses. This would suggest that at least a part of Red Mountain and Ice Cap are located in the Mystic Ruins.
So I'm going to say that he was operating under the assumption that they are two different shrines, and not two different takes on the same shrine. So while Gerald may have been aware of the original, he might not have been aware of the Hidden one.
The Chaotix back story talks about ‘the Gods’ relocating the Master Emerald to a new shrine, which supports this assumption.
Last time I played through SA1 I did my best to locate where Angel Island might have risen from. Originally I thought it was the massive crater that Final Egg is in, but then I noticed that the temple is facing <i>away</i> from it so unless the whole thing turned around it's in the other direction. My dreamcast isn't hooked up, but I believe the doorway that lead from the temple to the shrine is now an underground river. We don't know how long or winding that tunnel was though, so it could have come out a few different places...heh. Something just dawned on me. The echidnas <i>dug</i> a tunnel to reach the shrine. Maybe that's how they got past the "sacred barrier."
The placement of the shrine is really bizarre, though. I'm pretty sure we're meant to connect that chasm around the shrine with the lake that was there in the past, but that would suggest that this is the original position of the shrine. Maybe the echidnas created the shrine in hidden place to better protect the emeralds, and after S&K the Master was moved back to the original one. But why, when the island rose, would the boundaries of the island form behind the shrine instead of around it? If it's not the original one, 'the Gods' sure put it in a strange place. Out in the open, dwindling over the edge of the island? And who built that bridge? It looks a bit too well constructed for Knuckles and I can't think of any echidna structures made of wood. They always worked with stone.
For cannon core, I was working under the assumption that the legend of the emeralds was so well known that they could have found a model of the shrine in other ancient drawings, perhaps somewhere in the Lost World temple. But are you sure the pyramids are of the Echidnas? I can only recall one or two echidna reliefs at the end of Hidden Base. There were also a few images of Chao on the walls, so it might just be this world's version of the actual pyramids of Giza and the Egyptians just had some contact with the other races of the world. That brings up an interesting point though. The architecture of Sandopolis is nothing like the South American inspired stuff of Tikal's clan. It and the stuff in Sand Hill in Mystic Ruins could have been a culture the echidnas conquered. If it was just another branch of the same culture, they had grown very far apart.
The Doomsday prophesy probably wasn't made until after Angel Island was born, if the translation can be trusted. "There was no doubt that this egg was the one that appeared in the writings on the altars of the Chaos Emeralds, the one that was to bring catastrophe to the <b>island</b>. " The mural depicting the final battle, whether adapted from a further description on the altar or from prophetic vision, probably wouldn't appear on any of their Earthly structures. There could have been other echidnas separate from the ones that lived on Angel Island, but they seem to be extinct as well and that'd be a sizable coincidence, and there's no reason for them to have had a prophesy about a disaster on an island they probably wouldn't know about. This seems further doubtful from the quote, "The civilization collapsed in an instant, and it disappeared from history altogether. After the incident, the gods, descending from the sky, rebuilt the civilization's land as an island and released the "Stone of Power" into the sky."
It took me a few years to notice the Sonic statues at the very top of Hydrocity Zone's background. I think there were also depictions of Sonic in the ruin levels of Sonic R and Sonic Adventure 2.
