That’s right, I’m not going to give up on my insane idea of playing/writing about every single Sonic the Hedgehog game after all. Sonic’s 19th birthday is here and I felt like doing something to commemorate it, like talk about Sonic again. Appropriately, the game I was on in my Sonic Retrospective happened to be my favorite Sonic game, so I don’t have to write about how bad Sonic 2006 is again.

I am writing about Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles together simply because they were originally going to be one game. Due to budget reasons, the game was split into two and the lock-on features were added to Sonic and Knuckles. When locked together, you got the full game of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. This greatly improved both games as you could not save in vanilla Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3‘s levels are not as good as Sonic & Knuckles‘.

What makes Sonic 3 & Knuckles so good is the amazing level design. Sonic 3‘s is less impressive than Sonic and Knuckles‘, but both are good. Sonic 3 has good levels up until the Carnival Night Zone, which I mostly hate due to horrible childhood memories.

Yes, the barrel. In Carnival Night Zone there are these barrels that move around, some of which you can control. You control them by pressing up and down to make them move. The problem is the game never tells you this. So when I got to a room that locks behind you, the only way out underneath that barrel, I never could figure it out. I spent hours as a kid trying to beat that level. I did it accidentally by jumping a lot, but I could never replicate it. This meant I would always play the game with Knuckles because he bypassed that part of the level.

Aside from that, Carnival Night Zone is fun and Ice Cap zone is really good. The only problem is the conclusion: Launch Base Zone. This zone isn’t bad, but it certainly isn’t good. The music is bad, the design is annoying, forcing you to go through the same sections over and over again, and it just isn’t any fun. Still, running around Hydrocity and Marble Garden is fun enough to make up for this. Sonic & Knuckles is good until the end though, with Flying Battery Zone being especially memorable for me.

What made the Sonic 3 & Knuckles levels so good was the sheer size of most of the levels. Many of the zones were enormous and allowed so many different pathways. You could spend Hyrdrocity mostly in the water or barely even see the water depending on how you went about the level. It also had a good mix of the fast set-pieces–like the loops and tunnels–and actual platforming. Add in that the bosses were fairly different from each other and the game just comes together really well.

Also the addition of Knuckles was a good one. He is the last Sonic character to actually add a new element to the gameplay to justify his presence. The gliding and climbing worked differently enough from Tails’ flying to make him worthwhile. Also his paths through the game were different from Sonic and Tails’, making playing as him worth it for more than just differences in technique.

The last aspect of the game I want to talk about is the music: it’s very, very good. Here are some quick samples:

Hydrocity Zone Act 2:

Ice Cap Zone Act 1:

Flying Battery Zone Act 2:

Most of the tracks are very catchy and match the zones very well, the aforementioned Launch Base zone is the only zone whose music I dislike.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favorite Sonic game, I have a lot of fond childhood memories of it and I can still enjoy it to this day. It’s the pinnacle of the Sonic series, and at the rate they’re going at, I doubt any game will surpass it.

Tagged with: Knuckles • Sonic • Sonic 3 • Sonic 3 & Knuckles • Sonic and Knuckles • Sonic Retrospective • Sonic the Hedgehog • Sonic the Hedgehog 3 • Tails