Special Stage (Sonic Heroes)


 * For Special Stages in general, see here.

Like many variations, Special Stages in Sonic Heroes are similar to the ones from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 to a small extent. After Sonic Heroes, these variants of Special Stages have later appeared in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games and Nintendo 3DS version of Sonic Generations. They are circular light tubes instead of typical, half-pipe cylinder constructions. Here, the player can collect multicolored spheres and have to avoid bombs.

Sonic Heroes
In Sonic Heroes, the way to entering them require players to find the Special Stage Key from small cages at the normal zone and hold onto them until the level was completed. Special care must be taken in that if the player is hit, the key is lost. If the player collects the Special Stage Ring from the first act (Seaside Hill, for example), the player will enter the Special Stage with "Bonus Challenge", while getting key at the second act of the zone (Ocean Palace, for example) transports the player to Special Stage with "Emerald Challenge", where the Chaos Emerald can be collected. There are seven Special Stages for each of two challenges, making a total of 14.

Bonus Challenge
The Bonus Challenges will begin and upon completion will award the player extra lives, making them completely optional. Here, the player's team are running automatically and collect different types of spheres on the glass pipe route, which are most of the time set on large rows. The player has to collect them to gain the Power Dash Meter on the right cornet and reach the goal within the time limit. The Power Dash Meter has three sections: yellow, orange and red. The player is able to push down to make team run faster. When pushing down the button, the Power Dash Meter starts to counting down and the player has to collect more Power Spheres while running.

There are three variants of spheres: two or four multicolored sphares on each group, blue Power Spheres (increase the power on dash meter) and red Score Spheres (gives lots of points). If the player keeps running on sphere rows, the player will earn extra time and increases the score, as much as he/she keep creating linking combo. There player has to be careful with bombs, that are able to slow the player down quickly after touching it and take some of power from Dash Meter. Bombs are heavily placed on large fences and some of them also spin around the pipe. There are also multicolored spring balls, which start bouncing the player all around the glass pipe route. Suddenly on the certain sections, the large orange and white balloon starts flying at the front where neutral Chao and Dark Chao are riding it. They start throwing either Blue Spheres, Red Spheres, or Bombs. There are formation change gates placed around Special Stage to change character for collecting spheres on different formations. Some of later challenges feature pulley, that can be used to swing and collect Power Spheres by pushing left and right.

Emerald Challenge
When the player access to the Special Stages with an Emerald Challenge, the major goal is to chase down the floating Chaos Emerald by boosting and try to catch it before the Special Stage route ends. These challenges are much harder, while the features from the Bonus Challenge are the same. However, none of the Chao balloons, change gates or pulleys aren't seen in these ones. Team Rose is recommended to use to collect Chaos Emeralds from Emerald Challenges, due to the team having much shorter regular stages of all four teams in the game. Getting all Chaos Emeralds and clearing all four stories unlocks the game's last story.

2P Battle
"This is Special Stage Race! First to get the Chaos Emerald wins!"

- Omochao, Sonic Heroes

Special Stages are also playable in 2P Battle mode of Sonic Heroes. The player must have obtained 60 Emblems from single player mode to unlock it. In this mode, two players each control a team as they compete to race through the stage for an Emerald trailing to the other side of the stage. The gameplay is pretty much like the Emerald Challenge Special Stages; just that two players are competing for the Emerald. The winner of this mode is the player whose team catches up to the trailing Emerald first. However, if the Emerald reaches to the end of the stage and neither player has reached the stage, the winner in this case would be the player whose team was the closest to the end of the stage when the Emerald reached the end. There are three different stages of the minigame, simply titled "Special Stage 1", "Special Stage 2" and "Special Stage 3".

When the player selects "ALL", the game will go through all three of the stages mentioned. The player who wins at least two out of three stages wins the entire minigame.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games
These variants of Special Stages have made appearance as major part Dream Bobsleigh event in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. It is seen that the event starts at Nocturne Gate (that is only featured Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood) and after entering to the gate, it transports to the Special Stage, which has most of the same features from Sonic Heroes, although the stage also uses elements of Koopa Cape from Mario Kart Wii.

Sonic Generations
The Special Stages based on Sonic Heroes made a returning appearance in Nintendo 3DS version of Sonic Generations. When the player has completed one of the 7 zones in the game, the player is able to access automatically to the Special Stage without any other general requirements. Collecting Chaos Emeralds opens the change to face with Time Eater at end of the game. Only modern Sonic is able to access them.

These Special Stages are based on ones from Emerald Challenges. The goal is very much the same and mechanics from Sonic Heroes are identical. The player has to collect different Power Spheres to gain the boost meter while pressing boost button down. At the same time, the player has to avoid bombs, that slow down Sonic. However the player only controls Sonic as playable character as change gates are nowhere to seen and one major difference is also that the controls are much smoother when compared to Sonic Heroes.

Trivia

 * Special Stages in Sonic Heroes are notorious for being quite glitchy and having control issues. In many sections, the player's high speed may radically decrease after getting stuck above a corner.
 * Sonic Heroes is known to be the first three dimensional Sonic game to feature Special Stages, as previously Chaos Emeralds can be found either the end of Action Stages or are just part of the game's storyline in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.
 * In Sonic Heroes, the 3rd Emerald Challenge is known to be the hardest of the seven, However a lot players have completed this challenge and said to be really easy, the easiest is the 7th Emerald.
 * For the 2P mode of the Special Stage if one player uses Team Chaotix and the other player is any other team, then one player doesn't control Team Chaotix while the other player does, Team Chaotix will always win no matter what due to Espio being fast in Special Stages.