What is a way to drown Tails on Sonic 3 & Knuckles?

1. Background

The most fun part about the Sonic games, the classics in particular, is drowning Tails the two-tailed fox in blue water. I love this game's mechanics for Tails. I've learned every tactic on how Tails works in the game Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I thought I'd share one area that I created and let you experience what I do a lot. Although I have other versions, this is the third version of this particular concept. This requires the debug mode cheat code.

2. Sonic 3 & Knuckles debug

In order to use this, you need to enable debug mode. Entering debug is simple, however. Here's how:

Enter 1 player mode and choose zone 1, Angelisland Zone (or use the no save item (the characters you use makes no difference)).
Find a swinging vine. A shortcut to one is to just follow the lower path avoiding the catapults (springs) and jumping over the spikes.
While hanging on the vine, press left, left, left, right, right, right, up, up, up. You'll hear the same sound when you collect a ring.
Press start to pause the game then press B (or A if using the Genesis).
On the main menu, choose the option below the 2 player game, sound test.
Again, with any character (press X (or C if using the Genesis) to change characters. 00 is Sonic and Tails (easy), 01 is Sonic alone (easy), 02 is Tails alone (easy), and 03 is KTE alone. (longer path unless you know how to glide-hop)), choose mushroom hill zone act 1.
Find a pulley (there's one near the speed up shoes where the mushroom thrower thing is) and get on it. While on it, press left, left, left, right, right, right, up, up, up. You'll hear the same sound when you collect a ring.
Press start to pause then press B (or A if using the Genesis).
Choose the sound test option then choose any level. To enable debug, press and hold B (A if using the Genesis) then press start and hold until you see your character(s).

The debug code has some new controls. Here are the controls:

Normal mode
- B (A for Genesis) - reverse gravity - character falls upwards instead of downwards.
- A (B for Genesis) - enter debug mode.
- X (C for Genesis) - jump.
Debug mode
- B (A for Genesis) - change item.
- A (B for Genesis) - exit debug and return to normal mode.
- X (C for Genesis) - place current selected item in the current position.
- Directional buttons - change position - hold to move faster to up to 16 pixels per frame.

While the game is paused

B (A for Genesis) - return to menu screen.
A (B for Genesis) - play at 30 fps (slow motion).
X (C for Genesis) - advance one game frame (1/60 of a second).

When in debug mode, the score becomes your position. The position is broken up like this (without the spaces):

CHRX CHRY - character position - CHRX = x coordinate Y = y coordinate. This is the most important set of coordinates when you build this.
SCRX SCRY - screen position - same as above (my favorite one).

The positions are in hexadecimal numbers. The order of the digits is this: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, then F.

If you make a mistake at any time, you can simply enter debug, scroll far to the left or right then return to where you were. This erases everything, unfortunately.

3. Building the fox drowner

Now that you know the debug mode, it's time to start with the fun part of this document: creating the fox drowner. To build the fox drowner, this is what you need to do:

Begin by choosing Carnival Night Zone act 2, the one with the blue water in it.
Enter debug right away and move down to the area below.
Change objects to the catapult facing down. Place one at 02700A90 and another at 02900A90.

Change items until you find the bumpers which should be right after the enemies. Do not use the bumpers after this as these move. There are a LOT of these to place so I've organized it for you. The order makes no difference, but I set it up so you position objects from top to bottom, left to right.

02E00A20
02E00A40
02B00A50*
02200A60	02E00A60
02B00A70
02F00A80
02C00A90
02000AA0	02200AA0	02400AA0	02700AA0*	02900AA0*	02B00AA0	02D00AA0	02F00AA0
02000AC0	02F00AC0
02200AE0	02600AE0	02A00AE0	02E00AE0
02000B00	02F00B00
02000B20	02200B20	02600B20	02A00B20	02E00B20
02000B40	02F00B40
02000B60	02200B60	02400B60	02600B60	02800B60	02A00B60	02C00B60	02E00B60

Table footnotes:
* This object is optional. You don't neccessarily need it.

That's all there is to this. To launch Tails into the blue water, just jump up and go back and forth very short distances repeatedly and Tails will move the left easily sometimes jumping into the blue water. Occasionally, Tails manages to get out of the blue water for some time and occasionally you'll have to relaunch Tails. It's only 30 seconds in the blue water and Tails will drown. Any time Tails get out of the blue water, the timer resets. I have tested this many times and this is the final version of it. I can usually last for about the scoring of 250,000 points (five extra lives). I also advise that you turn your TV down as the dinging sounds will get rather annoying. I have my volume set to 4 which makes it barely audible. I advise that you do so as well. You may, as Sonic, continually walk to the right and bump into the bumper to repeatedly make a chain of puffs. If you want, you can put Sonic to the area to the right inside that area, but be alert if you do. If Sonic goes out of bounds and Tails isn't shown on screen for 8 seconds, Tails will just magically reappear above and won't drown. I advise that you only jump in there when you just drown Tails. Each time Tails dies in any way, he'll be revived and magically appear 192 pixels above Sonic (which, normally, is off screen).

Footnotes:
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