Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Genesis/Mega Drive)

Developer:

Sega Technical Institute

|

Release Date:

1994

|

Systems:

Mega Drive/Genesis, Saturn, PC

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm wondering why Sonic 3 & Knuckles has you selecting menu options with a shoe. That's not normal.

You might be wondering why this beautiful looping GIF is missing the horrifying slowdown when the 3D Sonic swoops in. The answer is: it bothered me and I wanted it gone. I did my best to make it true to what the designers intended it to look like though. The game's later releases on more powerful consoles tend to come with authentic emulated slowdown, but the Saturn version included with with Sonic Jam is a proper port, so I used that as a reference to fix the timing. Now the only thing wrong with my GIF is that it's not a video, so I can't hear it say "SEGA!"

Anyway, I'm playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the fourth (and fifth) of the 16-bit Mega Drive/Genesis Sonic platformers! I already covered the first Sonic the Hedgehog back in 2011, but I decided to skip Sonic 2 because it's too similar, and Sonic CD frightens and confuses me. Also, it's Sonic 3's 30th birthday today... in the EU (it came out a few weeks earlier in the US).

Sonic 3 & Knuckles came in two parts released 8 months apart, with Sonic the Hedgehog 3 featuring the first set of levels and the save RAM, and Sonic & Knuckles featuring the second half of the levels and a connector to (optionally) join the two cartridges together. It's like plugging in a Game Genie, except instead of getting cheats you get an expansion pack. It's not the first time two standalone games could be combined like this, DOS game Might and Magic: World of Xeen got there first, but this did it with hardware. And then basically nothing copied it. It remains pretty much unique as far as I'm aware.

The reason it was released in such a weird way is because they had a Happy Meal promotion and TV ad campaign deadline and they were only going to get half the game finished in time. They still charged full price for it though! Personally, I think the lock-on feature was a genius move, as it gave the game some novelty, especially when people learned that it could be combined with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as well! Plus it turned out to be a crucial part of any serious collector's Tower of Power, along with the 32X... another piece of add-on hardware that didn't catch on.

Right, I'm going to give the game an hour or so and write about it. I have played it before, but honestly I think an hour is going to take me well further than anything I've seen before.

---

I edited this GIF as well, because the red border was flickering like crazy and it annoyed me.

Right away the game's showing off what sets it apart from earlier Sonic games: save slots and different playable characters. I can pick between the standard Sonic and Tails team, solo Sonic, solo Tails, or new character Purple Sonic.

If you play Sonic 3 on its own you don't get the character Knuckles as an option and if you play Sonic & Knuckles separately you don't get Tails... or save games. You can still play a 'No Save' game if you want the traditional Sonic experience, so you're definitely better off playing it as a combined game.

There aren't many other options for me here, but the Sonic Jam version introduced difficulty modes. And the Windows 95 version introduced the option to listen to a MIDI version of the soundtrack, if that's what you're into.

The character you pick determines the unskippable intro you see at the start. If you pick Sonic it basically picks up where Sonic the Hedgehog 2 left off, with Tails in his biplane and Sonic all Super Saiyan'd up by the power of the Chaos Emeralds he collected... again. (In the prototype version he surfed in, but it's important for the plot that he shows off his superpowers here so they changed it.)

If you pick Tails or Knuckles as your character you get something a little different: nothing. No cutscene. So it's probably best to play as Sonic for your first playthrough if you want any kind of story.

Sonic CD featured a properly animated intro that was far more elaborate than this, but it came on a CD with like 350-times the storage capacity, so it was cheating and no one was expecting that from S3&K. Sonic 3 did get an animated intro eventually though, in the remastered Sonic Origins. This new intro shows Dr Robotnik crash his robot from Sonic 2 in front of a giant gem. He meets Knuckles there and tells him a story about the two monsters coming to invade his island:

Sonic Origins (Switch)

It's Evil Sonic the Hedgehog and Evil Tails the nine-tailed fox! In the game it pans across to show the villains one at a time, but I stitched the whole shot together as I figured you'd want to see them both.

We don't get to hear any voices in the cutscene, but it's clear that Knuckles falls for Robotnik's ruse and decides to team up with him.

It turns out that Super Sonic's invincibility doesn't work against magenta echidnas that surprise him by leaping out of the ground, and the Chaos Emeralds fly out of him like rings. Knuckles doesn't waste a moment, grabbing them all and zipping off with them.

It's my own fault really for playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles instead of regular Sonic the Hedgehog 3. If I hadn't added Knuckles things would've all been fine! Actually the only difference between this and the original Sonic 3 cutscene is that the music has changed. Sonic 3's Knuckles theme is just drums and it works much better in my opinion.

These graphics are kind of weird for an opening Sonic level I reckon. Not bad, just unusual.

Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone and Sonic 2's Emerald Hill Zone have strange checkerboard scenery and a pretty parallax view of the ocean in the background. Angel Island Zone feels a lot more claustrophobic.

The music's pretty different as well. I liked the Green Hill Zone and Emerald Hill Zone themes instantly, they're amazing (even though I can never remember which is which), but the Angel Island Zone theme took a while to grow on me. It got there in the end though.

Sonic's had a bit of a makeover himself. He got a little bit shinier in Sonic 2, but now he's much glossier. I thought he looked great to begin with but his new sprite is even better. And even though they made a 3D model for the title screen, he's still pixel art. They haven't pulled a Donkey Kong Country with him.

Okay, I'm going to go chase that echidna and get my jewels back. I think he went to the right.

ANGEL ISLAND ZONE - ACT 1

I jumped on a rock and broke it, revealing a secret spring. Now the game's feeling a lot more like the Sonic I remember, especially as this spring is used to get up to that other spring hidden in the palm tree. 9 seconds in and I'm already getting lured off track.

The Sonic games are all about momentum though, so I'll need a bit of a run-up to get enough distance once I'm up there. Probably. I mean, I can't actually see where it leads, I'm just guessing.

Now I'm wondering if Tails or Knuckles could've done this any differently. I need to record some footage of them and edit it together for science.

Sonic and Tails seem to have the same jumping ability, but K-T-E (that's what the HUD calls him) can't quite leap as high as the hero team. It's pretty close though.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 also gives you a choice between Sonic and Tails, but you're basically just picking your sprite; the two characters are 98% identical. They're all still pretty similar in this, to be honest. All three of them seem to run at the same speed, and they all turn into a deadly spinning ball when I jump or roll. But this time they have different abilities that change how they play. Tails can actually fly this time, Knuckles can glide and climb, and Sonic can... do an energy thing in the air. I'm not actually sure what that's about.

Okay, I've looked it up, and it's called the insta-shield. It gives him a moment of mid-air invulnerability, for when being a spinning spiky ball of hurt isn't quite enough. So Knuckles and Tails' mid-air skills give you the potential to explore more of the level, while Sonic's less likely to die when he's jumping around.

Hey, the tree spring got me up here to a secret stash of boxes. Shoes and rings, classic.

Sonic's pretty fast already, that's kind of his thing (I need to get out of the habit of holding down the run button as the game doesn't even have one). But with the speed boots power-up he can really race into off-screen dangers. That's where this box of rings comes in handy...

And there they all go. They were nice while they lasted.

I've always been impressed with how clever Sonic's ring system is. If you get hit your whole ring collection spills out, but you don't die, and as long as you can pick one of them up again you're protected. Well, unless you're trapped underwater and drown. Or you fall down a hole. Or you get crushed. Anyway, this recyclable defence is essential, because this isn't Donkey Kong Country and Tails doesn't count as a hit-point.

The enemies don't die if I hit them either, because the Sonic games are clever there as well. Destroying a Badnik robot actually releases a captive animal. So it's actually incredibly good and moral to smash every enemy you see. I'm sure the ones I race past and ignore get saved when I press the button at the end of the zone. At least, that's what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.

I smashed through another rock and found a big golden ring installed underground!

These are a portal to Sonic 3's brand new special stage. Sonic 1 had a spinning maze for its bonus level, Sonic 2 had Sonic and Tails running down a half-pipe, and Sonic 3 has... Blue Sphere.

I can appreciate how each game has a very different bonus stage... I just don't like this one much. It plays a bit like Snake, or that light cycle game in Tron, as you have to make sharp 90-degree turns to navigate between walls of instant death. Red spheres are no good, only get blue spheres.

One of the things that throws me off is that Sonic only turns at the corners of a tile, so I can press the button as early or as much as I want, and he'll just keep going forward until he's ready. It makes the controls feel unresponsive and leaves me wondering if the game even knows I pressed the button.

Another thing that throws me off is that I'm really bad at it. I got just 10 spheres before slamming into a wall and getting booted back out to the level.

MEANWHILE, IN THE FUTURE

Here's a hypnotic looping GIF from the future, showing off what it looks like when a player has gotten some practice and knows what they're doing... a bit.

If you get all the blue spheres around the outside of a block, they all turn to rings and you don't have to bother collecting the remaining spheres. This caught me by surprise first time around and made me plough straight into a red sphere of death, but it's definitely useful.

It's not the end of a run though, as you've got to keep going around the tiny planet getting all 100+ blue spheres. Tap, wait, tap, wait, tap, wait. Only then will you get your Chaos Emerald. And maybe a continue if you're lucky!

I ducked down, charged up a spin dash, and bounced myself off a spring to get the velocity needed to fly through a loop and around the inside of a giant hollow tree! I only saw it for a couple of seconds, it added nothing to gameplay, but it looked good. This is what you want from a Sonic game: speed and set pieces.

Okay, to be more accurate, racing through the level is what some players want. Others would be happier taking it slow and exploring. But you can do that too! A careful player may find their way to the extra life up there on tree branch, just like how I found a cool aqua shield power-up someone else might have missed.

BACK IN THE FUTURE

I decided to give Tails a go afterwards, and with enough button mashing he's able to just hover up to the top of a level like a helicopter. Which is good, because the top route is where all the best treasure is at and he can reach boxes even clever platforming can't get you to. The only limit to his power is that the poor little fox gets tired and can't stay in the air for too long.

Also while he's hovering with his tails he's not spinning in a fluffy ball of destruction and this makes him vulnerable. So I have to be careful not to enter hover mode when I'm jumping around or else I could find myself watching my rings go bouncing away. I already know this is going to end up tripping me up in a boss fight.

Oh, there's some treasure here on the screen right now: a checkpoint! When I played as Sonic I must have ran right underneath it. In Sonic 2 if you hit a checkpoint with 50 rings in the bank you can open a portal to the special stage, so I'm going to grab another ring and see what happens.

I... did not expect this. It's like a giant gumball machine and I have to use those yellow springboards on the walls to bounce up and hit the handle. Then when something good drops out I have to fall down, grab it, and hope I can spring back up again for more treasure. There's a one-use row of springs at the bottom, so that helps.

It doesn't seem like this is going to lead to any Chaos Emeralds, you need to do Blue Sphere for that, but it's nice to get some treasures. The interesting thing is, this isn't the only bonus stage...

There's also this confusing pinball stage. The first time I tried this I figured I could bounce myself off the glowing orbs, but I fell to the bottom of the screen and instantly lost. Total failure, nothing was learned.

I eventually figured out that the orbs are like little planets that you orbit in 3D. You need to adjust the angle of your orbit and then press the jump button to fling yourself off. While you're doing this an energy barrier is climbing up the screen to get you, so you gotta go fast.

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, Sonic had just rolled around a loop and up the inside of a hollow tree. Then he ran into a dangerous looking Robotnik drone.

Damn! It looked like it was going to be a boss fight, but it actually just came here to burn the whole damn island down!

I cut the flames down a bit for the sake of the GIF, but that robot just incinerated this beautiful island. Sonic doesn't care much, he seems to be going into his idle animation, but I think it's horrible.

Seriously, everything's on fire now. This blew my mind when I first saw it as a kid.

Also, I'm swinging around at the end of a zipline and that's pretty crazy too. The game has a lot of sprites for Sonic and friends interacting with the environment or just getting flipped around.

EVENTUALLY

Gotta be faster than that, Tails.

I caught back up with the incineration bot and this time it's on. It's so weird to fight a boss that isn't Dr Robotnik though, even if the technique's the same: jump onto the not-dangerous point over and over. Or slam into him from the side if you've got the fire shield power up, which lets you dart sideways in mid-air (Tails didn't have it).

The boss music is one of the things that changes if you connect Sonic & Knuckles to Sonic 3 and I think this one's actually a good change. It's more suitably dramatic. I'm not sure why they couldn't have just made use of both boss themes though, as there are plenty of bosses.

I have avenged the burning forest! It didn't un-burn anything, but at least the robot won't be doing it again.

My epic victory got me an exit sign and a free water shield box, which is cool. The water shield lets you slam down on enemies in mid-air and breathe underwater, plus it's an extra hit-point, so it's worth having. Knuckles and Tails can't get the benefit of the elemental shield attacks because the game only uses the one button and it activates their movement abilities, but I'm playing as Sonic so I can slam down all I want.

ANGEL ISLAND ZONE - ACT 2

Oh damn, again? Why is Robotnik so keen to ruin this place? Is this all just to kill Sonic? If so, it's not working! Poor Tails is taking a few hits though. He always comes back, but it's sad to see him getting so singed.

This running sequence happens near the end of act two, but it comes right after a checkpoint, so even if you screw it up you don't have to replay much. That's the good news. The bad news is, there's a boss right afterwards, so if you mess that up and lose a life you have to do this running bit all over again. Every time. It's not even a challenge, it's just disrespecting my time.

Alright, now I'm fighting Robotnik! And he's just burned the bridge I was standing on. Fortunately the level moved over a bit so I didn't have to fight him on this tiny patch of land. It's weird to fight two bosses in one zone, but the technique required hasn't changed: I have to dodge his fireballs and jump up to hit him when I see a chance. Sometimes Tails even manages to join in, which helps.

I defeated him and pressed the button on his animal capsule to release the cute captives, as has been tradition since Sonic 1. It's maybe not the safest place to empty out a bucket of squirrels, on a small patch of land sticking out of waterfall, but another bridge dropped down on the right so they can all get somewhere safer now.

Hey it's just the person I wanted to see! I just didn't want to see him standing next to the button for the bridge. The laughing just makes it worse.

The weird thing is, if you play as Knuckles there's no one up there and the bridge doesn't get opened. Instead he just jumps off the side himself! Nowhere else to go really I guess.

HYDROCITY ZONE - ACT 1

The game's trying so hard to show off its transparent waterfalls, but the effect doesn't really work on a sharp monitor screen. Hey, I'm in the Hydrocity Zone! It's pronounced 'Hydro-city' not 'Hy-drocity', as Hydro means 'water' and city means 'city'.

It's pretty likely that I've never gotten this far into the game before (stage 3), so I don't know what to expect. Except for drowning.

Being underwater is as terrifying as it is in earlier Sonic games, as unlike Mario and Donkey Kong, Sonic needs air to breathe. Also the guy can't swim, at all, he just sinks straight to the bottom of the water.

I need to find spots where water is bubbling up through cracks in the bricks and jump into the largest bubble to take a deep breath or else he's dead in seconds... which makes it more frustrating when he won't jump! I think its this little biting enemy that's latched onto him that's stopping him from jumping, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it!

Damn, I just lost my first life over that. At least I didn't fall into a bottomless death pit like I usually do when I'm playing the first two games. Wait... was I supposed to roll? Damn, that totally would've gotten the bitey thing off wouldn't it?

Hey, there's an arrow made of rings pointing up! That makes me realise that the game doesn't typically lead the player around with its collectables. A lot of platformers mark safe paths with coins, or deliberately lure the player away from secrets with them, but this is less manipulative... or helpful.

I spent a minute trying to jump up to find a route less travelled until I got all my rings spilled and decided it wasn't worth it. It's cool that the game does have different routes though.

Son of a bitch! The game has a real fondness for surprising the player with enemies they don't have time to react to. Well, I didn't react in time anyway. I just dropped down, saw a turret thing, and next thing I knew I was wondering where all my rings had gone.

At least this gives me an excuse to mention the great parallax effect on the water. You can see the surface in faux-3D, stretching all the way back into the murky darkness. It also does a flickering transparency effect for the edge, which doesn't work so great on a modern screen. It looks even worse in still screenshots so I edited the image to make it properly transparent. This is what the water looks like on the recent Sonic Origins version, so I think I made the right choice.

Okay, I've got no rings left so now I need to be careful.

Oh no, I wasn’t careful!

Hang on, is that actual game over? Proper game over? Is it seriously kicking me back to the title screen without even giving me the option to continue? Wow, this really is just like the other Sonic games!

Wait a moment, I've got save games! That means I can start the zone again with a full set of lives just like if I had a continue. Maybe even switch my character!

No character switching allowed unfortunately. The game does save the number of lives I've collected though, which I didn't expect. This would've been a big help in Donkey Kong Country as you can end up with a real stockpile of 1UPs in that game, but this is a lot more stingy with the lives so I may have preferred a reset.

That other save on the right is the one I used to replay the special stage and get that Chaos Emerald (you can see it above his head). I had to start again with a new slot because the game doesn't let you return to previous stages. Well okay it does, but you have to finish the whole game first to unlock the feature, so the level select will be unavailable to me for the time being forever.

RIP to my score I guess.

This time around I'm going to put more effort into reaching a higher route instead of taking the path of least resistance... and least reward. I keep falling out of the air currents from these fans and crashing back down, but I've got until the timer hits 9:59 to reach the goal, so I can hang around here for a bit longer.

EVENTUALLY

I love how wherever I go in the world, every location seems to have been designed for a hedgehog with superspeed. There are always tracks and springs everywhere. This device takes it to a new level though, as it's literally got a hand that comes down to hold Sonic against a treadmill so he can build up speed and escape up that wall. Don't ask me what the balls in cages are about though.

This GIF has a bit of motion blur to it because I merged adjacent frames to make the transparent water look right. I think it looks pretty good though.

Okay the blur is starting to make my eyes go out of focus now.

This is the Hydrocity act one boss, so I guess act one bosses are going to be a thing in this game. I can't think of many platformers that have a boss fight at the end of every single level, so the developers really went the extra mile with this. They also made an amazing amount of animation frames for Sonic and Tails to make things like this work. And presumably Knuckles as well.

The tricky part of this boss fight is leaping over it when it swoops underwater, otherwise it's pretty simple. When the spinning stopped I just jumped into it a few times and won.

HYDROCITY ZONE - ACT 2

The wall is coming to crush me! I don't like this! I have to stop, duck into a ball and then build up enough speed for my spin dash to make it up the wall to the next bit... which is another bit of floor and another wall.

At the top of all the walls I found an extra life TV! I should've realised this was a bad sign, as next I had to run a zig-zag path of ledges to drop down the other side with the wall still coming in. Could've been worse though: the original Sonic the Hedgehog 3 version of the level puts a spring there instead of the extra life, so you're catapulted back into the oncoming wall.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles patches in a few changes like this, apparently to rebalance the difficulty for a game that's twice as long.

On the next bit I found another checkpoint and jumped through the portal, hoping to have another chance to get my head around the pinball bonus game. Instead I was thrown into a third kind of bonus level. This one's more like the Sonic 1 bonus stage, with the level rotating around you the whole time. I have to jump up and into this fruit machine at the centre to win rings. Every 100 rings gives me an extra life, so this is a fantastic place to be stuck, aside from all the sensory overload from the background.

The casino is encased within a wall of shiny square blocks, so if I fall past the bumpers it's not the end of the world. Trouble is the bricks can only take a few hits before turning into GOAL tiles, and if this is anything like Sonic 1's special stage, I'll be kicked out of this gambling establishment the moment I touch one of them.

Well the act two boss fight is going exactly as expected. Robotnik kicked things off by knocking all the rings out of me, then I grabbed as many as I could, jumped into him a few times and won.

The tricky part was waiting for him to finish the "flying back and forth dropping bombs" part of his routine and come back down so I could hit him. I tried being clever and leapt into an exploding bomb, letting the water spray catapult me above the screen... but I couldn't see where I was coming down so that didn't help much.

MARBLE GARDEN ZONE - ACT 1

Here's some traditional Sonic gameplay for you. A spring leading to an arrow, leading to an enemy that's immune to my roll attack. There were just 16 frames between the tip of the spike appearing on the screen and the rings spilling out (more like 32 frames on the widescreen Sonic Origins version), so reacting wasn't really an option for me.

The Sonic level designers have been pulling this since game #1! I mean it doesn't happen all the time, but it happens enough to make me wish it happened less. The game needs "DANGER" indicators or something. Or maybe I should just develop a healthier attitude to losing my hoard of rings.

It's nice to see that so many trees escaped the fire at least.

The Sonic Origins version of the game lets you call Tails down to pick Sonic up for a lift, which lets the speedy needlemouse reach some of the places he can't get to alone. I'm not playing Origins here though, so I had to use the player 2 controller to steer Tails instead. Co-op!

Origins is full of extra features like this. Including an intro cutscene for Tails!

Sonic Origins (Switch)

It's like the Sonic intro, except Sonic isn't there and we get to see Tails land the plane on the beach. I don't know if fans were keen on the developers altering the game like this, but this is about as respectful and authentic an edit as you can get.

Okay, I think that's enough Sonic 3 & Knuckles now. I want to see what Sonic & Knuckles is like on its own!

SONIC & KNUCKLES

Man, look at those two. They look like Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloons that have gotten loose. The Sonic balloon was actually brought out to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on Groundhog Day 1994 to celebrate Sonic the Hedgehog 3's launch. That was the first Groundhog Day to occur after the movie Groundhog Day, so the place must have been extra packed that year.

When you connect Sonic & Knuckles to Sonic 3 it rebalances the difficulty so that the Sonic 3 levels become the first half of a game, but playing Sonic & Knuckles on its own is pretty much just like jumping to the second half as far as I'm aware. Except you can't save the game or play as Tails.

Incidentally, each 'half' takes about as long to beat as a full Sonic game, even though they have fewer zones.

Sonic & Knuckles

This time Knuckles gets an intro at least, which shows him hanging in the Mushroom Kingdom with his woodland friends, until a bomb's dropped on them! Fortunately he's just knocked over and the animals aren't even bothered. He's pissed though and storms off to chase the robot Robotnik that deposited the substandard explosive. It's not a very story-driven game.

Still, this is more than you get in Sonic 2.

KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA IN SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2

Connect Sonic & Knuckles to the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 cartridge and the inflatable Knuckles balloon comes over to invade the Sonic 2 title screen instead. It's actually different art, but it still looks really out of place here on this classic logo. Also that text they've added to the top just looks horrible.

To my knowledge, this is the first and only time that anyone ever released a licenced game cartridge that can patch its main character into an earlier game. So this is pretty amazing really.

Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Tails was basically just a Sonic reskin in Sonic 2, but Knuckles brings over all his abilities from Sonic 3. This means he's able to glide, quickly switch directions in the air, and climb up to get extra stuff.

It would've been nice if it had also patched save games into Sonic 2, but the Sonic & Knuckles cart doesn't have any save RAM on it so that was never going to happen.

Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic the Hedgehog 2

They even drew new art to add Knuckles to Sonic 2's special stage. Unfortunately playing as Knuckles means that you don't have Tails tagging along to help pick up rings. Actually, that's probably for the best as it means he doesn't collide with mines and keep dropping them all.

You can also connect Sonic & Knuckles with the original Sonic the Hedgehog cartridge, if you're into disappointment.

The developers didn't have time to add Knuckles to the original game, so this is what you get instead. Now everyone looks like a plastic balloon! Except for Robotnik who looks like a tomato with cheese and a tiny bun on top. Oh, this is probably my only chance to mention that I like how the Sonic & Knuckles emblem has Knuckles looking like the Predator.

Connecting the two carts does let you play the Blue Sphere minigame as its own thing... but I don't want to.

The good news is that Sonic Origins added Knuckles to the original Sonic the Hedgehog, finally giving us the Sonic 1 & Knuckles we missed out on in the '90s. Then Sonic Origins Plus went a step further and gave us a brand new lock-on character...

CARNIVAL NIGHT ZONE - ACT 2

Sonic Origins Plus (Switch)

It's Sonic 3 & Amy Rose!

Amy mostly plays just like the other characters, not a huge shock there. Her gimmick is that she wields a hammer that increases the range of her spin attack.

Incidentally, I wasted a whole minute here trying to get this damn barrel to move. It bobs down when you land on it, which gave me the boost I needed to jump up to some bonus boxes, but I can't get enough height to get out. Assuming that this is even the way I'm supposed to be heading! There are no arrows here.

The thing is, I already knew about the infamous Barrel of Doom that no one could get past (though I assumed it was in Sonic 2). I also knew that you just press up and down to move it. Obvious, right? How could anyone get stumped by that? It's the first thing you'd try. Doesn't bloody work though.

I checked a long play video to confirm I was on the right track, then got back to trying everything to make the barrel move. It turns out that you do press up and down, but you need to alternate between them with the right timing to get the thing moving. Not exactly intuitive! More playtesting needed perhaps.

ICECAP ZONE - ACT 1

Sonic Origins Plus (Switch)

Unfortunately Amy went on to get herself trapped sliding down ramps in an infinitely looping section in the next zone and never figured out how to get out. Even the time limit was no escape, as unlike the original Mega Drive release, Sonic Origins' version doesn't kill you for running out of time.

The game uses a D-pad and a jump button, that's it, so there only a limited number of ways I can interact with this puzzle. I don't even know how it's possible that I'm stuck here! This is insane game design.

Oh, I just have stay on that ledge on the left when it falls and then it bounces me through a wall. Only took me 3 minutes to accidentally do that and get out.

Okay, before I turn the game off I need to talk about Sonic 3's versus game mode for a moment. Competition mode lets you race against another player in split-screen with tiny sprites. Sonic 2 doubled the resolution for its split-screen mode leaving everything looking squished, but this time they redrew the sprites.

It's basically a race with 10-second-long laps around tiny looping levels with obstacles to navigate. You may think you're an awesome Sonic player, but can you consistently make it through a small gap in the floor five times in a row?

This might be fun with two players, I don't know, but it's not much fun for me on my own so I'm turning the game off.


CONCLUSION

---

Sonic 3 & Knuckles is an innovative and unique game. Well, it has an innovative and unique lock-on feature at least. The actual game part of it would've been extremely familiar to anyone who'd played one of the other Sonics already. Every zone does something new, and has its own gimmicks, enemies and bosses, but that's normal for Sonic platformers, they're all like that! Not that it's a bad thing, most 16-bit platformers wish they were on Sonic's level. Though maybe it could've had fewer bosses, because there are a lot.

One major way in which Sonic 3 differs to its predecessors is that it actually lets you save! This means you don't have to finish the game in one sitting or master the earlier levels in order to have enough lives and continues stockpiled to survive the mistakes you'll make learning the later ones. Saving is entirely optional, automatic and appreciated, by me at least. Sonic 3 is a game all about momentum and nothing kills a player's momentum more than losing a whole chunk of progress and having to go through it all again.

Actually, that's not true, running straight into an enemy you had no way of seeing in time also kills your momentum, as it knocks you and your rings flying. These little moments of bullshit wouldn't be so bad, except the game encourages you to go fast, and even has sections where it takes over for a bit as you hurtle around a rollercoaster ride of pipes. It's a game that completely understands the joy of speed, just as it enjoys inflicting the pain of losing it. It kind of gets away with it however, due the genius ring system that means you always survive your first mistake and can recover your hit-point afterwards. Unless you get crushed or fall down a pit you didn't see, which is unusual to be fair. Still, the game could really use a "DANGER" warning when you're a second away from definitely colliding with something, letting you know it's time to hit the brakes or jump.

The other big difference from the earlier Sonics is that you get characters that actually play differently, opening up new ways of navigating the level. They've got just enough awkwardness to their abilities to discourage you from using them too much, though to be honest navigation can be awkward enough without them. The game has huge levels, winding paths, and repetitive tile-based graphics, meaning it's easy to get into situations where you don't know whether to go left, right, up or down. The rings let you know you're somewhere new, but they don't lead you around. On the plus side, the game isn't one of those collectathons that make you visit every corner collecting all the loot before you can leave, so exploration is optional. Even the hidden secret stage rings aren't too hard to stumble across. Some of them anyway.

It doesn't rock the boat graphically either. There are no 3D polygon effects, it keeps the pre-rendered art to a minimum, and art style looks a bit primitive when you stick it next to Earthworm Jim. But this has some fantastic old-school pixel art combined with some beautiful parallax backgrounds, and the heroes have a ton of animations. They're always spinning around various things in different ways. The art in the first zone threw me off a bit, but overall this looks like a Sonic game, except better.

Then there's the soundtrack... which is complicated. All the versions of the game look and play basically the same, whether it's emulated like on the GameCube or ported like on the Saturn, but the PC version and Sonic Origins had several tracks replaced by other songs for reasons and it's not an improvement. It really sucks that they delisted the older games when Origins came out, so that's all you can buy now.

Though I hate to admit it, but Sonic Origins... is actually pretty good. It connects the games together with new animations, it lets you play the older games with all the characters and saves, it lets you replay levels to beat your times, and it has challenges to beat. It also (optionally) gives you infinite lives, like in modern games. You can even spend a coin to just replay a special stage when you fail it. Not that I ever want to see another special stage again in my life. I started deliberately avoiding the giant rings after a while. Origins isn't the only enhanced version of the game however, as there are also hacks! Sonic 3 Complete is apparently what people like, as it restores Sonic 3's music and difficulty, fixes bugs, and has other assorted tweaks.

But even if you're playing the classic version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it's still a less punishing experience than the earlier games. You can get through Sonic and Sonic 2 with practice, but you can get through Sonic 3 with perseverance, because you only have to get good at the section you're stuck on (or the entire zone, if you run out of continues). So if I ever actually finish any of these classic Sonic games, it's going to be this one.

...unless I play the Sonic Origins versions, then I might finish them all and do challenges and stuff.

---

Alright, I covered a SNES game last month and now I've written about a Mega Drive game as well, so I'm doing a way better job of giving the 16-bit era its due this year. I have no idea how I managed to go two years without showing off anything from either system, it wasn't deliberate.

I can't just live in 1994 forever though, so next time I'm jumping to another era. There's a comment box below if you want to guess what the next game is, or share your own thoughts about Sonic 3.