You were one of those 7 year olds from horror movies.

I was a good little boy! Explain your callous accusation

I'm thinking a Giant Ring Room, or a red herring for a Giant Ring.

What act is that? EDIT: On further inspection, looks like Act 2, just before one of the big water slides. If that's the case, it's a small (hidden) room that contains an Invicibility monitor a little further into the stage, before yet another big water slide.

EDIT: See for yourself.

I remember spending hours trying to find that darn thing, but eventually just gave up, but I do remember it... that hole was my nemesis!

Hydrocity and Flying Battery can go screw themselves... after over 10 years of obsessive playing, I still haven't unlocked their secrets.

I think I remembered getting only once. But it's so foggy. I think it let to a Gold Ring

yeah man.. there was this one and one in flying battery that I found ONCE.

There are three in Flying Battery, as I recall. Let me play for a while and I'd probably find at least two; one just before the Act 1 mini-boss, and one just before the laser mini-boss. I KNOW a third's in there somewhere, I just can't remember exactly where. That stage is rather confusing in so much as where all the paths cross over and coincide, though not so much in which direction is correct.

Ah the days before finding the debug trainer for my Sonic & Knuckles Collection. I spent many hours trying to find glitches without using the debug code and trying to find how the game worked and levels worked without one of those level map pics like above.

Those glitches are the best kinds, the ones you can make ingame without debug help. (Like using 2P tails to open one way barriers from behind by passing through the object, or finding out for the first time the vertical looping zone trick you can do by crouching and then jumping in order to pass through barriers that way)

Hey, I remember that hole!

Was it really that hard to find?

Well, upon toying around with the layers in an emulator, I can tell you this much: obscured by the left side of that hole are two yellow springs, facing right. Therefore, whatever it's for, you can't get at it from that direction, period.

Well yeah, you enter from the other side after riding a blue half-pipe up which tosses you into the air. If you hug the wall on your left you can enter that alcove. You'll find the monitor I spoke of earlier, and if you run into the left side you'll be bounced out by the hidden springs. There are no other entrances.

Oh.

Well, come to think of it, that's no big mystery; I get that invincibility pretty much every time I play.

That stage is exceedingly linear, you know?

It's an exciting line, though. You spend as much time going left as you do right. =D

Such a long conversation over something so insignificant.

It's like Marble Garden up in here.

Still, one has to marvel at the intricancies of the level designs in Sonic 3. There's a lot of back and forth within single levels, giving the impression of a much larger stage and multiple areas where you can intersect between the routes, some of which aren't apparently blatant.

And some of them are just plain nutty. Take for example, Exhibit A:

Death Egg Act 1, just before the giant gravity machine.

There's a huge pit just below this area. One would not think to stay on this mobile conveyor much longer with safe ground a short hop away, but if you remain on the lift:

Exhibit B. Note the absence of Tails. Self-preserving little...

You'll see one of those one-way doors and beyond it, another route? Most likely one you were never even aware of. But how does one get in there, as this side is most assuredly an exit as well as a death trap?

Let's look over Act 1's map, shall we? You can see the gravity room near the right edge of the level. Trace back and you'll come to the pit as pictured above, as well as the hidden path that empties into it. Follow that back, and you'll see that it leads to a dead-end.

Not so, as you actually drop into that "dead-end" from above, a secret room in the ceiling. And if you follow that towards the left, you'll see the entry point being one of those little pits that you usually avoid falling into in the earliest parts of the act. Entering through the wall, however, requires at the least the Electric Shield for its double-jump property, or the power of flight.

So imagine yourself playing through this stage, finding the opening in the wall and following it to its conclusion at the pit. But then what? There's nothing there you can ride to hoist yourself up onto the normal route. Double-jumping will do you no good. Perhaps Tails can make it up there, I haven't checked and I don't want to play a Tails game from scratch to see if he can. Coincidently, Knuckles can make it no sweat thanks to his wall-climbing abilities, but he can't be used in that stage (by normal means).

It's a very exclusive little route that can dramatically cut down on the time it takes to get to the end of the act, but it looks like the only character that can use this appropriately is Tails. And I'm not even 100% sure of that (it's pretty steep, and Tails' ascending speed is fairly slow). Very peculiar.

And thus ends my little presentation. I don't even remember why I did this. oO

I know about that path, actually... no, Tails can't fly high enough. The whole area's just incredibly pointless, really.

Which only helps to support the notion that Knuckles had a part to play in this stage at one point in development.

It also makes me wonder if the Sonic 3 programers knew about the whole "spindash and jump to go through the Hydrocity Act 2 tubes for a major shortcut" thing. Ya know, everything except for the single underwater "bottomless pit that would scare young kids since they don't know about programing and how the level loops around itself"