Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Drowning in Midair & Why This Can Happen
550Drowning is always a rather shocking way to go in a Genesis Sonic game (or the Adventure games, or the Advance games, or the Rush games, or Colors, or Generations, etc.)
This is mainly because of the theme that accompanies this specific death for your character. Ironically, that's not completely what this video is about.
In a Genesis 2D Sonic game, when your character, be he Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles, is submerged, their physics change: They can't move as fast, they jump & drop more slowly, and of course, unless you're in a Hyper form or you have a Water Shield, your character starts to drown within 30 seconds.
When your character is attacked underwater, he flinches backwards while still being affected by his reduced physics.
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If somehow, the character is knocked out of the water, even if it's only for a split second, he will still be rendered with the underwater physics even when it looks like he obviously shouldn't be. The reverse is true when he gets hurt on land and flinches backwards to drop like a rock even when he's gone underwater. When that happens, the game won't actually think he's underwater until he hits some kind of sea floor, there.
In this video, through the help of a bomb from Hydrocity's Eggman boss, it goes to show that this oversight can still very well cause you to drown even when you're way up in the air! I'm pretty sure this can also happen in Sonic 1, 2, & CD, but this situation can't get anymore obvious than what I do in this game.
The real action starts at 0:24!
This also shows that most of the animation that goes on in the screen freezes before your character's death sprite falls off the bottom of it when he drowns.
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This is actually an outtake of the recording of this video I did over a year ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmw5e3_t7Hs
You can tell that it is by looking at the HUD at the corner by the time I reach the Egg Robo in that video.