Sorry I still haven't touched the NES game is a while, but I found something cool while messing around on the Genesis version for a minute.
Go to the very first level to the right (to the wilderness) and jump left from the higher fourth little island block from the left:
You'll land on an invisible platform! Keep jumping straight up onto more invisible platforms, and you'll end up on a very long one that allows you to walk to the right--all the way to the end of the stage!
There are probably several more invisible platforms in the 16-bit versions that haven't been found yet. Can anyone think of a way to find them other than jumping around blindly? Like, just in case some of those platforms turn out to be really, really short, so you need pixel precision to find them? And I found this secret today when I was just fiddling with the graphics layers and considering what would be a good way to construct maps of the game. How do you think invisible floors should be mapped? Would I just draw a black line under where Cosmic's feet can be planted? Copy-paste some tiles from the level? Turn them transparent?
EDIT: Yup, they're in more levels. I played a little longer and discovered another set of secret platforms to bypass half the level in the "downward" path to passport control, besides the one for crossing the big gap. The path left to Cape Carnival and the path left to Formica City both have
two secret sets of steps that bypass smaller portions, and then there's the one we already know about toward that lake with the bathtub. I just didn't find any going to the cool pool or down the tunnel to Linograd, and I doubt that tunnel needs any secret platforms with how cramped it is anyway.
I don't know, but maybe it would be nice to have a speedrun of the 16-bit version, simply to show off some of those secret walkways. It just depends on whether the time spent jumping upwards or backwards to reach them might be outweighed by the time you're forced to jump upwards or wait for enemies in the part of the level they skip.
EDIT: I didn't find more for a while, but then there was a set of steps late in the stage going right to Linoville, which take you a little ways forward but also even further backward for some reason. I doubt there are any in space, again because of cramped conditions, but I keep wondering about a couple of candies that I can never reach. The strangest thing I found recently in the Amiga version was a few invisible platforms in the
surfing section which have a tendency to get away from me, though I have a feeling I've encountered them before. Also the Amiga version doesn't let you fall off the cliff in Dodgey City, has almost no candies in No Man's Causeway despite that I got there from a new game, and it makes the Ts on the teleport keys flash. (The Genesis version actually lets you climb back up the cliff if you haven't stepped very far away from it after falling down!)
When I got to the space station on Genesis, I played with some minor glitches with the objects you can drop. It's funny how that version still has some exploits like avoiding certain stages altogether, dying your way to victory, and blowing the blowpipe while standing on or underneath it. One new thing I did was place an object some distance away from where it was meant to be used, take Cosmic to where it should have been, and then Use the object, which sometimes has the effect of teleporting the object to where it's supposed to be and allowing Cosmic to use it--even in situations where he shouldn't have been able to reach the object again. The first time I did this with the anti-gravity slide to reach the teleporter, the music suddenly got faster, and all the music came out faster for the rest of the game. It sounded just like when I start the game in PAL mode and switch to NTSC, only the gameplay didn't feel any faster. Did I somehow trip a switch for PAL music speed somewhere?
EDIT: There was one more glitch from the NES version that found its way into the Genesis version that I remembered. In No. 1, the room with the 10 spacebucks, if you take Linus to the very leftmost pixel, sometimes that will cause him to fall down onto the row of blocks underneath that you normally can't reach. This isn't a problem, as you can just walk out to the right, but it's funny that it happens on Genesis where those blocks aren't there, yet Cosmic just stands on air where they should be. (Want more evidence that they kept the original collision maps even as they changed the graphics? Enter room No. 3, where the flooring just under the door was extended a bit to the left, yet you can stand inside it as if it isn't there.) The other funny thing is that you can only move to the right there, not to the left. If you drop an object and then walk to the right, attempting to pick up the object again will make Cosmic magically grab it from where he's standing. Was this where the major glitch of the original version came from? An attempt to ensure that you couldn't lose items inside walls, or just a way to start the height check early if Linus hit a wall before reaching the object, and it went too far?
Another observation I had about the 16-bit space station is that the change in perspective messes up the directions of the levels: No. 3 is toward the right yet goes left, while No. 6 is furthest left yet goes right.
