Spike damage behavior
From Sonic Retro
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In Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive, spikes was initially presented to be as lethal to Sonic as falling down a pit or being crushed to death. When Sonic is injured by anything, including a set of spikes, he will become invulnerable, indicated by his sprite flashing when he touches the ground. However, if he lands on spikes, he will be harmed, regardless of whether he is flashing or not. This behaviour is most often referred to as the " spike bug".
The "spike bug" is most frequently encountered when several spikes are placed together horizontally, and Sonic lands on one of the spikes, recoils, and lands on another. There is debate as to whether this is indeed a "bug" or an intended feature, considering that the behaviour was changed in Sonic 2 and later. However, many factors (including the actual coding for the spike object) conclude that the "spike bug" is ultimately the intended behaviour removed by the Sonic 2 developers. Another factor is how the spike object can harm Sonic while having invincibility in the prototype of the original game causing many people to believe that the behaviour has initially been a bug.
The reason the spike object changed the behaviour in later unofficial Sonic 1 revisions is likely due to the developers acting under the assumption that the alternate behaviour was unintended, and they changed it as a result. Another possibility is that it was changed because it made the game "too hard" or maintained consistency between Sonic 1 and other games in the series. However, it is worth noting that the only official revision of the game that ever changed the spikes' behaviour, in Sonic Mega Collection, was released more than a decade later. It was also changed in Sonic Jam, another compilation that was released much earlier. However, toggling the spin dash on will revert the behaviour.
The "spike bug" is caused by spikes calling a particular routine to hurt Sonic, different from the routine used by every other object in the game that damages him.
The first chronological evidence of removing this behaviour was in Sonic 2 Beta 5.
Removal
- drx created his own ROM hack before releasing Sonic Mega Collection with the behaviour removed. He later released instructions for removing the behaviour in a disassembly.
- A tutorial written by FraGag details how to change this behaviour using a disassembly.