Gate
Gates are obstacles that open when the player presses a button (unless the gate is an Exit Gate, which will only open when all Rainbow Coins or Key Coins are collected).
Classic Trilogy
In the Classic Trilogy, laser gates are made up of three spinning lasers. The laser gates can only be opened by square, round, or timer buttons. Square buttons permanently open the gate (unless a round or timer button is pressed afterwards), but round ones keep the gate open only if there's something standing on them, and when said object leaves said round button, the gate closes again. Timer buttons, once pressed, keep the gate open for a few seconds.
Glitches:
- If a round button is pressed while a timer button of the same colour has not ended its timer, then by the time the timer button has ended then the gate will have acted like a square button has been pressed.
- If a movable object or a Stinker lands on an open (laser or key) gate by bouncing on a trampoline then the object will automatically break or the stinker will automatically die.
Wonderland Adventures Trilogy
In the Wonderland Adventures Trilogy, gates are just differently-textured blocks that can disappear in a variety of ways, such as moving down, fading out, shrinking, etc. They can only be opened by square, round, timer, toggle, or toggle-once buttons. Square buttons permanently open the gate, but round ones keep the gate open only if there's something standing on them, and when said object leaves said round button, the gate closes again. Timer buttons, once pressed, keep the gate open for a few seconds. Toggle buttons are reusable buttons toggle the state of the gate (i.e. if the gate was closed, it opens, if the gate was open, it closes). Toggle-once buttons are toggle buttons that can be used only once. In the Retro World in Mysteries of Fire Island, gates work as they do in the Classic Trilogy.
Multicoloured Buttons
Buttons in Wonderland Adventures can be assigned up to four different colours at the same time. For example, if a toggle button is assigned orange, blue, and green, and all gates are open except for the green one, the button closes the orange gate and the blue gate and opens the green gate.
Colour Changers
Gates' colours can be changed while the adventure is playing. Colour-changing buttons exist of all five kinds (square, round, timer, toggle, and toggle-once) and work the same way: square buttons change the colour forever, round buttons change the colour only while something is pressing it, timer buttons change the colour for a few seconds, and toggle and toggle-once buttons alternate between the two colours.
SubColours
In Wonderland Adventures, gates' colours and buttons' colours can have one of five different SubColours (0-4). This allows placing two gates of the same colour without them being related in any way.
Priorities
Buttons have different priorities. When creating Custom Levels or Custom Adventures, one should avoid placing buttons of two types for the same gate in the same level. A timer button for a gate, when deactivated, will close the corresponding gate even if a square button for said gate was already pressed.