Board Thread:Sonic News and Updates/@comment-9994375-20140206200137/@comment-477304-20140213231856

I think Super Emeralds and Hyper Sonic only existed for two reasons:
 * 1) So you couldn't cheese the 'Knuckles portion of Sonic 3 & Knuckles with Super Sonic as there are plenty of Special Stages in Sonic 3 and it's entirely possible someone 100%'d Sonic 3 before adding Sonic & Knuckles.
 * 2) So they could use the Special Stage maps from Sonic & Knuckles

I believe that if Sonic 3 & Knuckles was released as one game as they intended, chances are we wouldn't have seen the Super Emeralds or Hyper Sonic.