Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles
An adventure so big, one cartridge wasn't enough.
Protagonist(s): Sonic the Hedgehog Miles "Tails" Prower Knuckles the Echidna Genre(s): Platform Platform(s): Sega Genesis Microsoft Windows Release Date: Sonic 3 NA: February 2, 1994 EU: February 24, 1994 AU: March 1994 JP: May 27, 1994 Sonic & Knuckles WW: October 18, 1994 PC JP: February 14, 1997 WW: 1997 Developer(s): Sega Technical Institute Publisher(s): Sega Country: United States Series: Sonic the Hedgehog Predecessor: Sonic CD (by release date) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Successor: Sonic Adventure (by release date) Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I

""Sonic races through the green fields. The sun races through a blue sky filled with white clouds. The ways of his heart are much like the sun. Sonic runs and rests, the sun raises and sets. Don't give up on the sun. Don't make the sun laugh at you.""

— Sonic & Knuckles' tagline

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles is a 1994 video game developed by Sega Technical Institute and published by Sega for the Genesis. It is the third installment in the Sonic franchise. Both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were planned as a single game until time constraints, cartridge costs and a promo for the McDonald's tie-in forced the developers to split it. Despite this, it is possible to combine them by attaching the Sonic 3 cartridge to an adapter on the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge.

Plot

The game takes place after the events of Sonic 2. The Death Egg crashes on the floating Angel Island, causing it to fall onto the ocean. Dr. Robotnik eventually meets Knuckles the Echidna, the last member of an ancient echidna civilization that once inhabited the island, who is the guarding of the Master Emerald. Robotnik dupes Knuckles into believing that Sonic is attempting to steal the Master Emerald, and that the launch base is Sonic's base, causing Knuckles to turn against Sonic and help Robotnik while the latter repairs the Death Egg.

Sonic and Tails approach Angel Island on the Tornado, before Sonic using the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Sonic to approach the island faster. However, Knuckles ambushes him and steals the emeralds, forcing Sonic to retrieve them. At the Launch Base, Sonic and Tails fight Knuckles, but the Death Egg relaunches. Despite this, Sonic and Tails are able to defeat Robotnik, causing the Death Egg to crash-land on Angel Island again.

Once the Death Egg crash-lands on Angel Island, Sonic travels to Angel Island to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds to defeat Robotnik, causing Knuckles to believe that Sonic is trying to steal the Emeralds for himself. Eventually, Sonic defeats Knuckles in the Hidden Palace Zone (not to be confused with the scrapped level from Sonic 2), and both discover that Robotnik is stealing the Master Emerald. Knuckles tries to attack Robotnik, but is shocked with electricity. After that, Knuckles shows Sonic a portal that takes them to Sky Sanctuary, where Sonic infiltrates the Death Egg and defeats Robotnik as Super Sonic, retrieving the Master Emerald and returning it to Angel Island as it rises back into the sky.

Why It Rocks & Knuckles

1. Colourful and awesome graphics for 1994 standards; each sprite is very well detailed, with fluid and smooth animations, the backgrounds ahve really great design and the badniks' designs are really great too.
2. Incredible soundtrack as usual. Despite not retaining Masato Nakamura (the composer of the previous Sonic Genesis games) as the game's composer, the soundtrack once again failed to be bad and follows the Sonic series' rule of constantly having great soundtracks.
   • Many themes are very catchy and can make you want to play the stage for longer just to listen to it, notably the music for Hydrocity, IceCap, Lava Reef or Flying Battery Zone.
   • Some themes know well how to sound serious, and they even have a combination of sounding serious and awesome at the same time, including the music for Death Egg and the Doomsday Zone.
   • Interestingly, it was discovered that the Genesis version of Sonic 3 used a different soundtrack composed by Michael Jackson and Brad Buxer of all people, as the original soundtrack actually exists on the PC re-release, with the themes being the ones for Carnival Night, IceCap, Launch Base, the credits and Knuckles'.
     • What makes it even more interesting that IceCap Zone in the Genesis version uses a remixed instrumental version of "Hard Times", a song by the Jetzons made in 1982 that was never released at the time of Sonic 3's release. The song would eventually be released in 2008 by the independent label Fervor Records after reissuing "Made in America" as "The Complete Jetzons", but Sonic 3 was 14 years old when this song was finally released.
3. Once again, the gameplay is amazing and fast-paced, with responsive controls; it's especially fun to run on water, especially in Hydrocity Zone, IceCap features a snowboarding intro in act 1 and later transforms into the awesome, standard platforming gameplay and the Spin Dash is once again fun to use.
4. An excellent storyline that uses transitions and in-game cutscenes, as well as hints in the backgrounds of levels, to tell the story.
   • In Sonic's story, Knuckles is an enemy at first but after he realizes that Robotnik teamed up with him only to steal the Master Emerald, he helps Sonic and Tails by leading them in to the Sky Sanctuary, a relaxing, beautiful zone that leads to the Death Egg.
   • Knuckles also has a unique storyline that takes place after Sonic's events, where he mostly fights Eggrobo and also fights Mecha Sonic in Sky Sanctuary as the final boss.
5. The game introduced several shield variants; rather than having the regular shield that firstly appeared in the first Sonic game, there are elemental that not only give Sonic a new move, but make him immune to fire or water (depending on which shield he has). These are the Flame, Aqua and the Thunder shields. The Flame Shield allows Sonic to perform the Fireball Spin Dash and makes Sonic immune to fire-based enemies and hazards, the Aqua Shield allows Sonic to perform the Bound Jump and allows him to move in water without requiring the Air Bubble, while the Electric Shield causes rings to fly into Sonic and allows him to perform a Double Jump.
6. The game in general introduced a new character that would soon become one of the main characters in the series - Knuckles the Echidna, who is independent, headstrong, and serious, yet gullible and short-tempered to a fault, protecting the Master Emerald on Angel Island. Knuckles would later become one of Sonic's best friends and would make apperances in future games.
7. Both Sonic and Knuckles have their own abilities to perform while airbone; Sonic can perform an Insta-Shield that can slash enemies and items within their range without the player having to touch them, while Knuckles can glide and climb walls up or down.
   • Tails also has an ability to finally fly when controlled by the player, something which was not possible in Sonic 2 and was only possible by the A.I.
8. The Bonus Stages are introduced inside checkpoints, being accessed in a similar fashion to the Special Stages from Sonic 2, except requiring at least 20 rings instead of 50. There are three types of Bonus Stages:
   1. The Gumball Bonus Stage, where the player can collect powerups in a gumball machine.
   2. The Glowing Sphere Bonus Stage, where the player has to rise to the top as quickly as possible using glowing spheres while collecting powerups along the way.
   3. The Slot Machine Bonus Stage, where the player can gamble away their rings with the possibility of earning a continue. This Bonus Stage plays like a cross between the Casino Night Zone slot machines from Sonic 2 and the Special Stages from the first Sonic game.
9. It is possible to combine both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles via the adapter boundled with Sonic & Knuckles, allowing both games to become one game, being bigger and longer than Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 as the developers intended before time constrains, cartridge costs and a promo for the McDonald's tie-in forced the developers to split them.
   • What makes it extra cool is that you can even insert the Sonic 2 cartridge, which turns the game into Knuckles in Sonic 2, where Knuckles possesses the same moveset and attributes from Sonic & Knuckles. Inserting other Genesis games results in a lock-on game called Blue Sphere.
10. Unlike the previous two Sonic Genesis games, Sonic 3 introduces a save feature, allowing you to resume your progress from which zone you left. For example, did you have to turn off the game while you were in Marble Garden Zone because you had to go somewhere? No problem, the save feature allows you to resume from Marble Garden instead of starting all over from Angel Island Zone.
11. The Special Stages are accessed from Giant Rings scattered in hidden areas of the levels. They involve the player collecting blue spheres and avoiding the red spheres in a pseudo 3D view, and collecting a blue sphere automatically turns them red. Collecting every single blue sphere rewards a Chaos or Super Emerald. Additionally, if the player collects every single ring in a Special Stage, they earn a "Perfect" bonus, adding extra points to their score. While these Special Stages may sound easy, some of them can get quite challenging, especially as the movement speed increases and the music starts going faster.
    • The Special Stages can be accessed as a mini-game if the player connects any other Sega Genesis game to Sonic & Knuckles. Locking on the first Sonic game results in over 1 million different Special Stages.
12. The boss fights against Eggman/Robotnik are once again fun and each zone has its own boss fight with him. Interestingly, act 1 has a miniboss, being one of the machines Robotnik/Eggman built, while act 2 is a full boss fight with him.
    • The Doomsday Zone has one of the most famous final battles with Robotnik/Eggman, where Sonic turns into his Super/Hyper form in order to defeat him. The battle has three phases, where defeating the third phase defeats the boss and finishes the game, regardless which ending you get.
13. The Special Stages are once again a different thing, this time looking like 3D, where pressing any of the arrows on the D-pad turns Sonic to the side you press, and you have to collect all blue spheres to get a Chaos/Super Emerald.
14. While each game has the typical optional Chaos Emerald sidequest, both games combined unlock the Super Emeralds, making 14 Emeralds to collect. Getting them all unlock the Hyper form for your character (except Tails who gets a Super form, since he can't obtain a super form with the Chaos Emeralds alone)
15. The Doomsday Zone is one of the coolest zones in the entire Sonic franchise. You control Super/Hyper Sonic in space, collecting rings while avoiding missiles and meteorites while trying to defeat Robotnik's Getaway Craft and Egg Bomber. You can even boost with Hyper Sonic to go faster, and as said before, it is one of the most famous final boss of the entire franchise.
16. In 2022, it was re-released for the first time since 2011 as part of the Sonic Origins compilations for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, as well as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S via backwards compatibility.

Bad Qualities

1. The infamous Spinning Barrel in Carnival Night Zone Act 2. Words cannot describe how infamous it is. There's no instruction on how to even get through it until you figure it out by yourself that you have to move up and down repeatedly to lower it. Its infamy caused it to receive the nickname of "The Barrel of Doom". Unsurprisingly, Yuji Naka and Takashi Iizuka later apologized for this part.
2. Big Arms, Launch Base's final boss, can't be fought in the & Knuckles version, unless you're Knuckles. This was fixed in the Origins re-release, where not only does Big Arms get fought in Sonic, Tails and Amy's stories, but a new cutscene introducing the & Knuckles portion of the game is also created.
3. Sonic 3 is normally shorter than Sonic 1 and 2 by default, only having 6 zones, a rather far cry from the first game's 7 zones and the second one's 11. Fortunately, attaching the Sonic 3 cartridge to an adapter on the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge makes the game longer, having 14 zones in total, more than Sonic 1 and 2.
4. Unlike Sonic 2, combining the Sonic 1 cartridge with Sonic & Knuckles does not turn Sonic 1 into a game where Knuckles replaces Sonic as a playable character in Sonic 1. This is because of possible palette issues, bugs involving the gliding mechanic in Scrap Brain Zone and Knuckles' gameplay not being considered enjoyable enough to fit Sonic 1's more cramped level design. Fortunately, inserting the Sonic 1 cartridge with Sonic & Knuckles results in Blue Sphere lock-on game, so at least that's better than nothing.
5. Getting a game over in Act 2 of a Zone requires retrying from Act 1, unless you have a continue.
6. Sandopolis Act 2 as Knuckles is one of the hardest stages in the game, including the Hyudoros (Ghosts) already being at their final phase at the start of the level (due to Sonic having already freed them, canonically) and ambushing Knuckles immediately, which is dangerous since you start with 0 rings. The level also takes a very long time to complete.
7. The Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 port by Backbone Entertainment does not have the original Save menu, which removes the ability to select levels after completion of the game and instead you have to use save states for saving.
8. Competition mode has problems too. The only way to make it a fair game is for both players to be Sonic and Knuckles and for Tails to not be played by anyone. He can fly, giving him an advantage over Sonic and Knuckles, who have useless abilities in the competition mode.
9. The music has changed in Sonic Origins, like Carnival Night Zone, Ice Cap Zone and Launch Base Zone, which are the prototype music intended from the start before Michael Jackson entered the project. This was likely due to copyright issues with the music, hence why the mobile remake got cancelled. What makes this worse was that the prototype music that sounded good in the protoype got butchered in 2022, mostly Carnival Night's.
10. The standalone version of Sonic & Knuckles lacks Tails and a save feature.

Reception

Reception for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles was extremely positive, with many fans still regarding it as the best Sonic the Hedgehog game of the franchise.

Trivia

• While the regular shield from the first Sonic game does not appear in the final version of Sonic 3, it did appear in a prototype build from November 3, 1993. It is unknown why it was removed from the final game in favour of the elemenal shields.
• Interestingly, in the cutscenes, Knuckles wears yellow socks, while in the bad ending in Sonic 3 and in his playable apperance, his socks are green. The reason why his socks are yellow in the cutscenes is because he and the HUD share the same palette due to the Genesis' limitations, meaning if Knuckles had green socks, the HUD would be glitched and would appear green. This was fixed in the Sonic Origins remaster of Sonic 3.
• In a similar case of how Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 received ports for mobile in 2013, Sonic 3 was also meant to receive a mobile port, but this did not happen because of legal issues involving the soundtrack. When Sonic 3 was remastered for Sonic Origins, most soundtrack was replaced by the one used in the PC re-release of the game, which in turn used the original soundtrack that could be heard in the Sonic 3 prototype from November 3, 1993 before being replaced with a new soundtrack.
• The game spawned the "& Knuckles" meme.
• The Drop Dash originated from the prototype build of this game. Years later, it would return in Sonic Mania.
• This was the first Sonic game to have Takashi Iizuka's involvement.

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