Thing type 208, Metal Sonic (Battle), is the sixth boss encountered in SRB2; it is used in Black Core Zone Act 2 for the boss fight against Metal Sonic, following a race against him in the previous level.
Behavior
When not performing an attack, Metal Sonic will hover around the closest player if one is present. Metal Sonic will attempt to dodge any player jumping towards him, but if a player manages to get close enough via thokking towards him or trapping him in a corner, he will briefly spin out before the player can hurt him (displaying purple-outlined after-images as he does so). Following this, Metal Sonic will temporarily be vulnerable to being hit by the player while spinning in place, but will then return to hovering around the player. The time during which he is vulnerable depends on his current health points.
After hovering around for a certain amount of time, Metal Sonic will rise high into the air and gather energy balls to attack the player with. This is followed by one of five different attacks, all involving firing energy balls at the player. Which attack is used also depends on Metal Sonic's current health points. The order is as follows: singular large energy ball if he has 8+ health points, column of 5 small energy balls at 7HP, 3 consecutive large energy balls at 6HP, row of 5 small energy balls at 5HP, 5 columns of 5 small energy balls at 4HP. After any of these attacks, Metal Sonic will immediately return to hovering around again.
After five hits, Metal Sonic will start creating mini-explosions around himself as he hovers around the player. In this phase, Metal Sonic will start using his "pinball" attack after gathering the energy balls to do so, instead of firing energy balls at the player. This attack involves Metal Sonic dashing into the player constantly in a semi-random fashion – whenever Metal Sonic hits a wall, he will either rebound off the wall like a pinball, or decide to adjust his position so as to dash at the player directly. This will continue for some time until Metal Sonic returns to hovering around once more. After each subsequent hit in pinch phase, Metal Sonic's dashes will increase in speed and in number.
Adding the Special flag will cause the level to end when Metal Sonic is defeated, rather than by destroying an Egg Capsule.
Note that for Metal Sonic to appear to gather energy balls for his attacks, gather points need to be placed around the arena Metal Sonic is battling in, to determine where the energy balls are gathered from. If no gather points are placed in a map with Metal Sonic, he will not be able to use his energy ball attacks. His other attacks will still work.
