Alter the Ring Requirements in the Special Stages

(Original guide by Mercury)

NOTE: Thanks to MarkeyJester for pointing out to me how to do this.

When Sonic & Knuckles is locked on to Sonic 2, the amount of rings needed to obtain the Chaos Emerald in the Special Stages is reduced. This simple guide will explain how to do the same thing in Sonic 2 alone.

(This guide refers to the Xenowhirl 2007 disassembly)

You'll find the array of ring requirements for a Sonic and Tails game at Misc_7756: <asm> Misc_7756: dc.b 30, 70,130,120 ; 4 dc.b 50,100,140,150 ; 8 dc.b 50,100,150,170 ; 12 dc.b 40,100,140,160 ; 16 dc.b 40, 80,150,200 ; 20 dc.b 70,130,200,220 ; 24 dc.b 90,140,180,210 ; 28 </asm> and the array of ring requirements for a Sonic or Tails game Misc_7772: <asm> Misc_7772: dc.b 30, 70,130,120 ; 4 dc.b 50,100,140,150 ; 8 dc.b 50,100,150,170 ; 12 dc.b 40,100,140,160 ; 16 dc.b 40, 80,150,200 ; 20 dc.b 70,130,200,220 ; 24 dc.b 90,140,180,210 ; 28 </asm> (If you wish to edit these arrays in raw hex instead of using a disassembly, their offsets are $7756 and $7772, respectively)

Each Special Stage uses 4 bytes, with each byte representing the ring requirement for each section of the Special Stage. This means that the fourth byte is unused, because all the special stages are only 3 sections long.

The Special Stages are stored in the array - as you'd expect - in order from the first to the seventh.