These rings would be easily reached using fippers that are centered just below the rings. These rings have mysteriously been transported from Act 1 to Act 2, this same problem also occurs with the rows of rings that should be from a launcher. Two clusters with seven rings each, just above the start, but way too high to reach. The pillars weren't there in the CENSOR prototype and Beta 4, allowing the rings to be collected. The rightmost can actually be touched without going inside the pillar, but there's no way to reach it. Some levels have rings in places that cannot be reached, making a Perfect Bonus impossible. Whether or not there was a planned fourth segment for each Special Stage, or if they were just to pad out the table for alignment purposes is unknown, although they were strangely updated in Knuckles in Sonic 2.

On a related note, although each Special Stage has three segments each, the table that determines what the next ring requirement should be has an additional entry for each one below are the unused entries. Stage 7 is downright impossible thanks to its third section's random-scatter of a ring pattern.Stage 5 is believed to be impossible due to Sonic and Tails being unable to reach some of the rings in time (in the first section alone, there are simultaneous 4-deep ring triangles on opposite walls).Stages 2 and 4 are believed to be impossible due to strange collision, with the former having issues in its second section (despite it looking trivial) and the latter having a 5-deep triangle of rings at its very end that can't be fully collected.Perfect Bonuses for Stages 1, 3, and 6 have been successfully TASed.While present and fully functional, actually getting a Perfect Bonus can only be described as a herculean task: it requires the 'Sonic and Tails' mode to collect the rings Sonic's hitbox alone can't reach, along with a ludicrous amount of coordination and memorization of the stages by two players thanks to the unusually difficult level design and loose ring placement. Much like in regular stages, Special Stages have a Perfect Bonus programmed to be awarded when you collect all the rings.

Sonic windows zone random hitboxes