Sonic Mania - Part 36 - Knuckles & Knuckles

Do you have 3 hours to spare? I say that because this is how long this video is. This is easily the longest video I've put up, and at 18.76 gigabytes, by far the largest in filesize. This is going to be a pain to archive, but there really was no other way to do this, because Knuckles & Knuckles is available (currently) only through No Save Mode, and there is a special Knuckles & Knuckles ending, meaning I had to play through the entire game without saving to reach that. Boy, that was a real test of my patience. Essentially, the No Save Mode allows for a few other options. Sonic can be toggled between the Super Peel-Out, the Insta-Shield, or the Drop Dash, whereas he's limited to the Drop Dash in the save files. (The Super Peel-Out is a move originating in Sonic CD. Think of it like a standing Spin Dash where he's vulnerable to enemy attacks but will not rapidly decelerate when going uphill. The Insta-Shield is found in Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, in which Sonic generates a short-range flash of lightning that damages enemies, the idea being that he can attack them before they make physical contact with Sonic. The Insta-Shield is a very hard move to use but is very useful once mastered.) You can also turn Debug Mode on or off, and activating it was how I was able to find all those Giant Gold Rings. But lastly, and this is the one featured in this video, you can toggle on or off "& Knuckles," which will spawn Knuckles the Echidna as your assist character, regardless of if you pick Sonic, Tails, or even Knuckles (picking Sonic & Tails will replace Tails with Knuckles), allowing you to play as Knuckles while a duplicate Knuckles tags along, with absolutely no in-story explanation as to why. Prepping for this consisted mainly of watching my footage of Sonic Mania to look for Giant Gold Ring locations to remember where they are, at least enough to get all seven Chaos Emeralds. I overlooked the fact that I still had to remember what to do to clear these Special Stages though, which meant I got pretty tripped up on the 4th, 5th, and to a lesser extent the 6th ones. I started getting impatient, fatigued, and sleepy around Stardust Speedway Zone, which is why you see me rushing through these stage and making mistakes I otherwise wouldn't have. It's a good thing I focused all my Chaos Emerald collecting at the beginning (as any sane player should) and got them before that point in the game. Not that I didn't have some embarrassing bits in Flying Battery or even Green Hill. The Egg Spider is still just as big a pain as ever. Knuckles has a lower jump than Tails or Sonic, limiting his ability to fight some of these bosses, like the Death Egg Robot, Mega Octus, and Crimson Eye, which are built with Sonic's jumping height in mind but are made so it's not impossible for Knuckles, just harder. During these boss battles, also, I got confused as to which Knuckles was the one I was controlling and which was the assist one, as they look exactly the same, which is why I got caught in some boss attacks I normally wouldn't fall to. What really threw me for a loop, however, was that Knuckles would play in Egg Reverie Zone, fighting the Phantom King and Dr. Eggman in his Klepto Egg. In a normal Knuckles solo game, his story ends at Titanic Monarch Zone, but Knuckles & Knuckles is special for some reason. Super Knuckles controls way differently than Super Sonic, namely that he flies when gliding rather than just leaping up into the air the way Super Sonic would do it. Incidentally, this means only in Knuckles & Knuckles mode do you fight the Heavy King twice (once at the end of Lava Reef Act 2 and again in Egg Reverie), though the battle against the Phantom Egg went on for long enough that Knuckles actually meets Heavy Rider. Knuckles & Knuckles has a special ending, which means this game busts out one more reference: Knuckles' Chaotix - During the ending, a reggae remix of "New Horizon" plays. Well, that concludes the Sonic Mania videos for now! Well, at least until Sonic Mania Plus comes out with additional content, though I honestly don't know how much there will be and how much will be feasible to record. For now, I'll also put up whatever is left of Sonic Forces too. After this, I will finally not have a single-player playthrough (at least one that isn't on a long-term hiatus, like Game & Wario or Mighty No. 9), so I'll give you a couple of hints as to what will come up next: This is a game both for the Wii and the Wii U, and like Sonic the Hedgehog, Yuji Naka had a hand in making this one. I'll tell you the answer at the end of the last Sonic Forces video, but you're free to take guesses. (I don't think it's going too get many views, but I don't care.)