Before you get any ideas on what I'm talking about, here's the scenario. You hit a Chaos Emerald box and enter the special stage. After you complete it, you emerge from the special stage under these conditions:
-All of your rings have been removed. (You have 000 rings.)
-All objects in the zone have been refreshed. (It's like a brand new zone!)
-The Chaos Emerald box has been replaced with a ring box that gives you an extra 10 rings.
The question here is this: Is it a valid strategy to finish a special stage in order to gain 10 extra rings to add to a ring record? It's a pain in the ass, however this only affects 6 zones and it isn't quite the same as starting off with all the rings you entered the special stage with ala Sonic 2 & Knuckles.
Edit: Also worthy to note is that this would allow more flexibility when it comes to manipulating spinners, so I guess this would affect more than just six zones.