Carnival Night Zone

This is a sub-page of Proto:Sonic the Hedgehog 3/Sonic 3 Zones.

Carnival Night Zone is the first zone in this prototype with something completely different that's not a background or the level design.

General#

• Both acts use a completely different music track. MIDI renditions of these songs would go on to be used for the same zone in Sonic & Knuckles Collection (although Act 1 is in a different key).
• The Act 1 boss arena has no walls.
• Once the Act 1 boss is beaten, there's no way to progress further without using the level select.
• The underwater palette is very different, identical to the one seen in early screenshots.
• Knuckles doesn't appear in Act 2 at all, though an early version of his first cutscene exists. This means the blackout and subsequent flood never happen, as well as Sonic not being able to leave Knuckles' ending area of Act 2 outside of Tails and debug mode.
• The capsule at the end of Act 2 is not present.
• Touching one of the spinning cylinders as Tails will crash the game, possibly due to the game trying to load incorrect/missing graphics.

Carnival Night Zone Act 1 Map

Proto
Final

Carnival Night Zone Act 2 Map

Proto
Final

Unfinished Cutscene#

Watch on YouTubeMuch like Angel Island, a preliminary version of Knuckles' Act 2 "blackout" cutscene exists. It can be enabled using the PAR codes 1FC022:1DE0 1FC024:032C 1FC026:C70C 1FC028:1E00 1FC02A:0338 1FC02C:C904, though nothing happens after Knuckles lands on the switch and runs away. The level just continues on as normal, though Knuckles' theme will continue to play until another song is loaded.