This article has a talk page!This page details bugs of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
Sonic the Hedgehog is rather infamous for being riddled with bugs, owing to its rushed development cycle.
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General Bugs#
Invincibility Effect#
The visual effect for the Invincibility power-up does not appear for any character other than Sonic, due to the particle not loading in the common effects. Even then, the effect's timing seems to be broken and disappears before the power-up runs out. The power-up's unique music similarly seems to have a timing error, cutting off right before the song ends naturally.
Floor Oscillating#
The game was originally intended to heavily feature Rotation Interpolation, wherein the playable characters would always naturally rotate between directions they're facing, be it angles of the floor or directions they're sent from springs. Due to bugs in the feature's implementation, its presence was heavily stripped back for the final game, aside from Homing Attacking into grind rails.
As a result of its removal, some strange behaviour can be noticed if one stands between two floors faced at different angles, such as those found on the roofs of Soleanna, where the player character violently vibrates between the two floors.
Multiplayer HUD#
Certain elements of the HUD do not display correctly in Multiplayer, for example the blue part behind the life icon.
Kingdom Valley Super Speed Waterfall Landing#
During Sonic's Super Speed section in Kingdom Valley, there are parts where he lands on the side of the waterfall with a landing visual effect displaying. Due to a programming error, this effect displays at the wrong angle and looks out of sync with the animation.
Move w/ Dialogue Prompts#
Anytime the player is given the "Yes or No" prompt, they are usually speaking to an NPC, and are thus incapable of moving. Should the player die while such a Dialogue Prompt is active, the "Yes or No" prompt won't be removed and they'll be able to walk around with it still active. The prompt will still function properly in this state, taking you to whatever level/mission it's associated with.
This glitch has been used for speedruns of Sonic's and Silver's stories by activating the prompt whilst in the middle of another mission. Completing a mission from within another mission will cause the game to get confused and deload all level scripts, at which point the game is programmed to send the player to the credits.
Physics Issues#
Clipping#
The game's collision detection is rather poor, making it incredibly easy to clip through walls or out of bounds.
Notable issues arising from clipping:
- All three main characters can clip through locked doors, allowing for sequence-breaking.
- Sonic: the player must use the Sky Gem in the corner of the door.
- Shadow: the player must stand in the corner of the door, jump, then immediately pause, jump again, and use the Homing Attack. If the player does this to access New City before completing Dusty Desert, they can access an early layout.
- Silver: the player must place a box right next to the door, stand on it, and use Psychokinesis. Famously, this can be used to skip the notorious billiard ball puzzle in Dusty Desert.
- In Sonic's Wave Ocean, it's possible to die when transitioning from water to land if the player catches the terrain at specific points.
- Boss Silver is capable of throwing Sonic out of bounds if he catches the player at a specific angle, allowing them to wander around a broken Soleanna Castle Town. Some objects, such as bridges, are missing but still have collision. If the player is caught by Silver's attack again once out of bounds, he's capable of sending them flying far past the normal boundaries of the level, into a black void. Eventually, as a failsafe, Sonic will die upon reaching an invisible kill plane, though this can take several minutes.
- During the Knuckles and Rouge segments of Sonic and Shadow's Flame Core, by climbing and jumping on the upper right wall, it's possible to bypass the door where the player switches back to Sonic/Shadow. This allows the player to complete the stage as Knuckles or Rouge, allowing Knuckles' otherwise unused victory voice clips to be heard.
- During the Egg Wyvern boss fight, if the player throws the Sky Gem right before Eggman charges and then grabs onto the Wyvern's antenna, they'll clip through the platform and cause the boss to despawn. This can be used to clear the boss in less than a minute and obtain otherwise impossibly high scores.
Flying Boxes#
Due to the odd ways the game's physics work, repeatedly using Sonic's spin-kick on top of a box results in the box getting propelled in the air. This can be done in any area boxes are found.
Homing Attack on Physics Objects#
At some point between the XBLA demo and the final game, the Homing Attack's programming was broken such that it can no longer properly interact with physics objects. Sonic's Homing Attack has no gravity in the final game vs the demo and works fine on physics objects, so the error seems to be tied to the gravity function. Sure enough, Knuckles and Blaze's Homing Attack equivalents, which do operate on gravity, cannot properly hit physics objects.
Homing Attack Lock-On Break#
When playing as Sonic or Blaze, their Homing Attack/Fire Claw's lock on can be broken in specific circumstances. They will continuously gain massive amounts of speed due to this. One example is as Blaze in Wave Ocean, if one positions themselves at the right place near the grind rail on the lighthouse and use the Fire Claw, the player will be sent flying off the map at super high speed. This glitch can be controlled to some extent and used to clear the level with a fast time.
Broken Animations#
Spring Transitions#
The animations for interacting with a spring/jump panel are supposed to follow a consistent pattern: The rising up animation, then the spinning transition, then the falling animation. Due to a programming error, this only works correctly the first time one touches a spring or jump panel in a sequence, then will only show the rising animation every other time until the player lands. This phenomena will be seen every time the player is made to interact with a sequence of springs, but it can also be seen if one bounces continuously on a single non-scripted spring.
Landing Animations#
Character landing animations only play when falling from a height greater than their max jump height. This can be easily seen by doing a double jump as Blaze or Amy at a standstill. Sonic and Shadow will also do their landing animations if they do a jump dash from their max jump height and at a standstill as well.
Sonic Jump Start-up#
When jumping, every character is supposed to do a pre-jump animation where they can be seen transitioning into their curled form, similar to Sonic Adventure 2. Due to an error in his PKG file, Sonic doesn't use this animation, instead immediately going into his curled form.
Sonic's Homing Attack Animations#
Sonic has two animation flaws in relation to his Homing Attack. First, both the Homing Attack itself and the initial Jump Dash are supposed to have a unique faster spinning animation. The slower rolling animation is used for it instead due to a programming error.
Second, Sonic is supposed to have three post-Homing Attack flip animations, as seen in pre-release footage, compared to the single flip animation that is usually seen in-game. The other flips are used, however, when using the White Gem's Homing Smash.
Sonic's Victory Pose#
Sonic's victory animation is misaligned - during the level results, he slightly hovers above the floor. This can be best observed in Flame Core and Kingdom Valley, where the lighting makes it obvious. In other levels, it's harder to notice due to the lighting and score HUD placement; in the case of White Acropolis, there's a layer of snow masking the gap.
Sonic's Super Speed victory animation has an additional quirk where he seems to freeze in place, unlike the usual victory animation. The looping part of the animation does exist in the files, and if re-enabled it can be seen why it was disabled - the animation is very obviously misaligned, causing Sonic to teleport a few meters away.
Silver's Grind Trick#
Due to a typo in his PKG file (it's written as sv_grindtrick00.xnm.xnm rather than sv_grindtrick00.xnm), Silver never uses his grind trick animation; if the player does a rail trick, Silver only makes a sound and a small jerk of motion before he returns to his standard grinding animation.
Omega's Hover#
Omega is supposed to have a unique animation for hovering. Due to a programming error, he instead uses his normal falling animation.
Amy T-Posing#
The game features a state (ottootto) for stumbling on a ledge, only enabled for Sonic, Shadow, Blaze, and Amy. While the first three have an animation assigned to the state, Amy doesn't, so she T-poses if she gets too close to a ledge.
Broken Mechanics#
Broken Pushing State#
The game was supposed to have a mechanic where one could push certain objects around. While this was largely scrapped with no suitable objects to push in the game, the mechanic was erroneously not fully disabled. All characters except for Tails and Sonic with Elise are able to activate this state when walking directly into a wall, causing them to get stuck sliding along it while in their idle pose.
Sonic's Action Gauge#
Unlike Shadow or Silver, Sonic's Action Gauge never decreases, allowing him to use his Gem powers infinitely. This is caused by a simple naming mistake - the Gems are attempting to decrease the wrong variable. The string c_gauge_(gem) is used, but the correct one is c_(gem). Once this incorrect string in player.arc is fixed, the Action Gauge for all the Gems will drain as intended.
Broken Point Lights#
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This game is decorated with a lot of light sources, prominently in Kingdom Valley with all of the torches around the stage. However, due to issues with rendering them, the point lights often aren't drawn and are absent. They tend to flicker on and off depending on the camera angle, and have partially been fixed with some modifications.
Shadow Chaos Snap Grind Rail Clip#
The characters with access to the Homing Attack are supposed to be able to lock-on to rails. This is also generally true for Shadow's Homing Attack, but his special variant of it, the Chaos Snap, has unique homing properties when enabled that, due to a programming error, fail to lock on to rails correctly. Attempting to do so will usually either result in Shadow freezing in place or clipping through the floor.
Climbing#
Knuckles and Rouge are supposed to push backwards off a wall when jumping off it, but the implementation is bugged. If the player attempts to jump to latch off a wall, they will not jump backwards, but rather jump upwards like they're on the ground. This causes them to stick to the wall, because the climbing state can be activated by jumping; no check or unique state was made for jumping out of climbing to prevent this.
As evidenced by the XBLA demo, the original intention was for climbing to only be possible when gliding into a wall, similar to Sonic & Knuckles. Sometime before the final build, the developers changed their mind and decided to make it work like the Sonic Adventure games instead, where you can simply jump into a wall to climb on it, but they evidently did not have the time to alter the climbing mechanics to account for the change. The backwards push can be restored with a patch, as can disabling climbing from a jump.
Additionally, Knuckles does not call the climbing sound effect that Rouge uses.
Omega Grind Trick Speed#
If one does a grind trick as Omega, the animation will play but you will not actually get the speed boost from it. Omega is the only character in the game with this quirk.
Infinite Tails and Omega Airtime#
Tails and Omega's flight and hovering abilities are both tracked by an internal timer that's supposed to limit how long the player can use them. However, due to a programming oversight, releasing the jump button quickly prevents the timer from actually counting down, which can be abused to stay airborne indefinitely. This can be used in Sonic's White Acropolis to finish the stage as Tails and Shadow's Wave Ocean to finish the stage as Omega.
It's possible that this is the reason the Action Gauge does not appear when playing as Tails and Omega, despite the manual saying it's supposed to.
Softlocks#
Wave Ocean#
In Sonic's Wave Ocean, using the Purple Gem to bypass the whale chase and complete Tails' section as Sonic breaks the transition cutscene to progress to the Super Speed section - Sonic will not be on the whale, which is needed to activate the transition. As a result, the game will simply become stuck on the jumping whale in front of the gate, making completing the level impossible and requiring the player to restart or exit the stage.
Vs. Silver#
Boss Silver's AI is rather sloppy; if he grabs and throws the player at a wall with his Psychokinesis, he typically reuses the attack as soon as the player character is no longer stunned. Due to the way the game handles ring physics, it's common to immediately re-collect a fallen ring during the attack, making it easy to get stuck in a loop of being grabbed by Silver endlessly without the possibility of escaping or dying.