Flying Battery Zone



The Flying Battery Zone is a stage from Sonic & Knuckles (as well as Sonic 3 & Knuckles). It is the second level of Sonic & Knuckles, taking place after Mushroom Hill Zone and before the Sandopolis Zone.

This zone takes place on Eggman's gigantic metal blimp. The blimp is powered by rotating drills and machines that send out worm like bridges. The mini-boss is a machine that looks like on of the animal capsules. It has two huge ball-and-chain arms. Stand on the switch on top of its head and for it to rear back and swing. Get off the machine and go out on the side with the attacking arm. The second act is basically the same thing but with better music. There's an area where you need to survive by dodging a beam for a set amount of time until it magically blows itself up (a similar machine is used in Sonic 2 ' s Wing Fortress Zone, except you needed to attack the laser, and the walls don't close in). After that, you need to race to the top of the blimp without getting crushed by the moving floor. The boss isn't all that hard. Avoid it until it starts to swing over and over. After that it should be pretty easy. When you defeat it, release the animals and watch the scene with Sonic or Knuckles escaping into Sandopolis Zone. According to fans this flying fortress of metal is used to carry animal capture capsules.

Trivia

 * Apparently, according to Sonic 3 ' s (alone) stage select, this was supposed to be the fifth level in the game. Sonic (or Knuckles) was supposed to see the blimp in the carnival and be shot through the cannon (or in Knuckles's case, be transported) to the blimp. At the end of the zone, Sonic was supposed to break the door of the battery blimp and use it as a snowboard in the Ice Cap. (Knuckles wouldn't get this scene because he doesn't normally doesn't snowboard.) However, at that point of development, a proper transition from Mushroom Hill to Sandopolis probably wasn't thought of, so the developers decided to place Flying Battery between the two.


 * Doctor Eggman appears in the boss battle for both Sonic and Knuckles, despite Knuckles' boss battles usually being against EggRobo. The sprites for the pilot character were different for this boss battle than for any of the others, being face-on to the screen instead of side-on. No sprites were provided for EggRobo in this new position (for unknown reasons), so Eggman's were used instead.

Appears in

 * Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (unplayable; only seen through level select)
 * Sonic & Knuckles