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Storyline
In the Sonic chronology, Sonic 3's storyline commences shortly after the end of Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Dr. Robotnik's[3] space station, the Death Egg, has fallen out of orbit after his mech suit exploded in his final showdown with Sonic, causing critical damage to the ship.
However, instead of impacting the planet, the Death Egg crash-landed on Angel Island,[4][5] a mystical floating landmass that had previously been reputed only by legend to exist. As Dr. Robotnik repairs the
ship he meets up with the Island’s sole inhabitant, Knuckles the Echidna. Knuckles is the last surviving member of an ancient civilization, whose ruins and relics are scattered throughout the island.
He is also the guardian of a set of Chaos Emeralds, jewels that grant the island its levitation powers.[6][7]
Knowing Sonic and Tails will try to track him down, and realizing he can use the Chaos Emeralds to power the ship, Robotnik tricks Knuckles into
believing Sonic is trying to steal his Emeralds, and he's come to help him. Shortly after, Super Sonic and Tails land on Angel Island in their bi-plane, the Tornado, in search of Robotnik. No sooner than they have arrived, Knuckles ambushes Sonic from underground with such force, he knocks
the Chaos Emeralds from him, returning him to normal. Stunned, Sonic can only watch as Knuckles steals the Emeralds and disappears
inland. Once recovered, Sonic and Tails set off in a race against time to stop Knuckles, Dr. Robotnik and the re-launch of
the Death Egg.
Gameplay
Changes
Based on a faster, more flexible game engine that was modified and adapted from the Sonic 2 game-engine [1], Sonic 3 included more scope than any other game in the series to date: The play fields were three times larger than
previous games, with multiple paths for different characters (each character would play the same level, but their particular
abilities, e.g. flying/gliding/wall-climbing, would allow them to access certain paths, or preclude and restrict paths if
they lacked the abilities). Also, there were more environmental elements with which to interact, faster maximum speeds, more
end-of-level bosses, and more set pieces, all without any of the framerate issues that plagued certain parts of Sonic 2.
The game introduced many staples to the series, such as an increasingly story-driven game, multiple shield types, several
musical idents and themes used in most subsequent games, and introduced Jun Senoue to the series, who would later become sound director of the 3D Sonic games, lending them their signature rock-inspired
soundtracks.
Each stage connects to the next, via continuation or a cutscene, to convey spatial relation between the levels. The game conveys a sense of existing in an interconnected geographical location,
as opposed to separate, disconnected zones. With these transitions between the levels, the game developer expanded the idea
initiated in the 8-bit version of Sonic 1. Knuckles has also become a firm fan favorite, alternating roles between rival, antagonist, and partner.
Overview of play
In single player mode, the player can choose to play solo, as either Sonic or Tails, or as a team, controlling Sonic, with
the AI or a second player controlling Tails, which is the default configuration (a second player may take control of Tails
by simply using a controller plugged into port 2). The object of the game is to progress through six zones, each comprised
of two acts, an act 1 robotic mid-boss, and an act 2 main boss, piloted by Robotnik. In order to completely finish the game,
seven Chaos Emeralds must also be collected from the special stages.
The gameplay builds on the formula laid down in Sonic 2. Sonic and Tails are now equipped with special moves that
are activated by pressing the jump button a second time while in mid air. Tails will fly if he’s out of water, or swim
if he’s in water, both for a limited amount of time. In a team game, a second player can use Tails to "airlift" Sonic
for a short amount of time. If Sonic has no shield equipped, he will generate an Insta-shield by tapping any controller button
twice, giving him a split second burst of protection from projectiles and increasing Sonic's attack radius. Tails retains
his ability to fly regardless of whether or not he has a shield.
Power Ups
Instead of a single shield power-up, there are now three elemental shields, each with special abilities that can be used
only by Sonic:
- Lightning Shield: Absorbs electric attacks for any character, and will draw in any rings near to the player (a
predecessor to Sonic Adventure's Magnet Shield). Sonic can generate a Boost Blast; a double jump, which acts like a mid-air normal jump. This shield
shorts out upon contact with water, or any damage taken.
- Flame Shield: Absorbs all fire-based attacks, and allows any character to walk on lava or fire without taking damage.
Sonic can generate a Fireball Spin Dash: a fast, near horizontal dive across the screen as a fireball. This shield extinguishes
upon contact with water, or any damage taken. The blast jump is a lot like Sonic's Jump Dash move from the Sonic Advance series and the Homing Attack used in all 3D Sonic titles from Sonic Adventure onwards (though it
does not home in on enemies, and can't link attacks together consecutively like the Homing Attack can).
- Water Shield: Being the only shield that sustains itself underwater, it allows any character to breathe freely
underwater (i.e. it eliminates the imposed time limit before drowning). Sonic can use it to generate a Bubble Bounce jump,
similar to the one Sonic gains from the Bounce Bracelet from Sonic Adventure 2; the closer Sonic is to the ground when he makes the second jump, the higher he bounces. This shield pops with any damage
taken.
All three shields have the ability to deflect small projectiles, such as the shots from badniks in Hydrocity Zone and Marble
Garden Zone.
Zones
Sonic 3 features 6 full zones composing of two acts with bosses occurring at the end of each act, one minor boss, and then
Dr. Robotnik himself. The six zones of Sonic 3 are Angel Island, Hydrocity, Marble Garden, Carnival Night, IceCap Zone and
Launch Base which features an added two bosses to complete the game on.
Special Stages
1 of many Blue Sphere Special Stages in Sonic 3.
As in previous Sonic games, star posts are scattered throughout each act to save the player's progress. Furthermore,
if Sonic has collected at least 50 rings (20 in Sonic 3 & Knuckles) and he hits a checkpoint, a bright halo of
stars will float above it, which Sonic can then jump through to access a bonus stage based on a gum-ball machine. Note that
star posts in Sonic 3 are used to enter bonus stages this time instead of Emerald stages, as in Sonic 2. The
Emerald stages are once again entered by jumping through a large golden ring, as they were in Sonic the Hedgehog. Contrary
to the original Sonic the Hedgehog, these rings are hidden in the scenery, and multiple can be found in each act. In
addition, the player is not required to collect any amount of rings to enter the emerald stage.
A diagram of how rings may be generated by walking the perimeter of a group of blue spheres.
Each special stage is based on a 3-dimensional, chequered sphere (topologically a torus, as its surface is a square with the edges wrapping around) of which only a small surface portion is visible at any given
time. The surface of this sphere is covered in smaller spheres and rings which the player can collect. The smaller spheres
are either blue (the objective of each stage is to collect all of these), red (these warp the player out of the special stage,
in a similar fashion to the 'Goal' markers from Sonic 1), yellow (these cause the player to jump forward a large distance),
or white with red stars (if a player walks into these, they will bounce off, like the similarly decorated spheres in Carnival
Night Zone, and start travelling backwards in the opposite direction). As players collect blue spheres, they will turn into
red spheres behind him. However, if the player goes around the outline of a group of spheres with at least one blue sphere
inside, all the spheres in that group, including the inner-centre ones will turn into rings.
The stage ends when all the blue spheres are collected, a feat that results in the player being awarded with a Chaos Emerald.
However, if a red sphere is touched, the player loses their chance to obtain the chaos emerald, and the special-stage is terminated
with the player retaining their existing score. During the levels, continues can be obtained by collecting 50 rings; collecting
all the rings will result in a 50,000 point bonus (and thus a 1-Up). There are seven stages, one for each Emerald. If the
player has all of the emeralds, finding and jumping in a big ring will give him 50 rings, instead of teleporting him to a
special stage. Beating the game with all seven chaos emeralds unlocks Super Sonic. After unlocking Super Sonic, you can replay the same file that you beat the game with and when you collect 50 rings or more,
you can double-tap A,B or C button and become Super Sonic. Super Sonic is invincible and can run faster than before. As Super
Sonic, the player's rings are slowly drained down to zero, and once all rings are lost, Sonic reverts to his normal form.
Multi-player
Sonic 3 retained head-to-head racing introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, although instead of using levels
from the single player game with interlaced graphics, five entirely new tracks, as well as special character sprites, were
created for competitions and Knuckles was added as a selectable character, albeit without his gliding and climbing abilities
which were not unveiled until Sonic & Knuckles (despite the presence of multiplayer sprites). Players can select
to play a Grand Prix of all five tracks, a single track to race on, or race the clock in time trial mode. The available selection
of tracks consist of Azure Lake, Balloon Park being virtually the two player version of Carnival Night Zone, Chrome Gadget,
Desert Palace and Endless Mine.
In Time Attack mode, you can exit out of a level without reseting the game or finishing the level. All the player has to
do is pause and push the B button (A button on the Gamecube version, if the controller settings have not been changed) This
will take the player back to the level select screen of Time Attack.
Technical specifications
The game's title screen featured a pseudo-3D render of Sonic looking like he will jump out of the players screen, a relatively advanced technique for the Mega Drive/Genesis
to pull off. This technique was incrementally improved on in both Sonic & Knuckles, and Sonic 3D.
According to several sources, including the official Japanese strategy guide for Sonic Jam (written by members Sonic Team), Sonic 3 originally began as a top-down, isometric game, similar to what would
eventually become Sonic 3D. This concept was abandoned early into development, after the team did not want to change
the Sonic formula too radically for a sequel.[citation needed]
Sonic 3 was the second Sonic game to save game progress (after Sonic CD), and would be the only cartridge-based
Sonic game to do so until Sonic Pocket Adventure.
The cartridge has a small amount of non-volatile RAM built into it, in the form of a Ramtron FM1208S-200CC CMOS module.[8][9] This allows the player to save game progress. Depending on whether Sonic the Hedgehog 3 or Sonic 3 &
Knuckles was being played, the game-save options will differ. Sonic 3 & Knuckles has 8 save slots instead of
6, and saves the number of lives and continues gained, as well as progress. Regardless of the game being played, all the save
data is stored in the Sonic 3 cartridge.
Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were originally planned to be one game. However, as time constraints and
the manufacturing costs of a 32 megabit cartridge with NVRAM would have pushed the price far too high, the decision was taken
to split the game in half, giving the developers more time to finish the second part, and splitting the high cost between
two cartridges. Recently 2 prototypes of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 were released along with the later builds of Sonic 2 and prototypes
of Sonic and Knuckles. Both prototypes show what Sonic 3 and Knuckles is when combined except for some glitches like Super/Hyper
Sonic not being invincible against Knuckles' attacks, Sonic 3 Knuckles and sub boss themes being played instead of the ones
from Sonic and Knuckles, a blue switch in Mushroom Hill act 2 when Knuckles sends Sonic and Tails or one or the other if played
alone up to the top, and other glitches. [10]
The second half of the game, Sonic & Knuckles, was released worldwide in the second half of 1994. Sonic &
Knuckles is known as a lock-on cartridge: There is a slot built on top, which Sonic 3 can be inserted into,
forming the 32 megabit game, Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Yuji Naka, the game's programmer and co-producer confirmed that this game is what Sonic 3 was originally intended to be.[citation needed]
Because the two games were originally one, and designed in tandem, a lot of extra data from Sonic & Knuckles
is still present on the Sonic 3 cartridge. Several pieces of music and three unplayable levels from Sonic &
Knuckles are listed on the level select and sound test screen, including Mushroom Valley, an early name for Mushroom Hill. In addition, by utilizing a glitch in Hydrocity Zone, the Sonic & Knuckles mini-boss theme can be heard in Sonic
3. Further evidence of the incomplete state of Sonic 3 can be found on the Zone Select screen in the images which represent
each zone - they are the same as those in the Zone Select screen from Sonic 2. In addition, the Sonic 3 game manual included
some Badniks only revealed in Sonic and Knuckles.
When plugged together, the data from Sonic 3 is appended to the data from Sonic & Knuckles, as the latter
was designed to reference the correct data from the former. Knuckles in Sonic 2 works in a similar fashion by firstly
appending the Sonic 2 ROM to the Sonic & Knuckles ROM, and then appending another, extra ROM present in
the game cartridge to the end, containing an updated game engine allowing Knuckles to be played.
Release and Reception
Sonic 3 was released in the US on February 2, 1994, dubbed "Hedgehog Day", a reference to Groundhog Day. Toys "R" Us rewarded preorders with the limited edition CD Sonic Boom, containing music from and inspired by Sonic CD and Sonic Spinball.[11] Although Sonic 3 did not perform as well as Sonic 2 in terms of sales, the game was almost universally
well-received by fans and critics alike.
Re-releases
Sonic 3 has subsequently been re-released several times, first in 1997 for the Sega Saturn as part of the compilation game Sonic Jam. In 2002, it was part of the Sonic Mega Collection for GameCube, in 2004, as part of the Sonic Mega Collection Plus on PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows for PC. An earlier Microsoft Windows running PC port was also released as part of the Sonic and Knuckles Collection. All versions are faithful ports, apart from this specific PC version featuring different music for any songs that simultaneously
use music and voices (MIDI and PCM), like Ice Cap and Launch Base. This was a technical limitation: to play these songs using the proper "drum" sounds, which
were voices and other sound effects, would have required the sound card to simultaneously use MIDI and Wave output, a feature not available on all sound cards at the time. Sonic 3 was released on the Wii Virtual Console in Japan
on August 21, 2007, in Europe on September 7, 2007, and in North America on September 10, 2007.[12][13] Sonic 3 may also be coming to Xbox 360's Live Arcade, as hinted by Sega in a recent press release of the XBLA game
E-Swat.[citation needed]
Music controversy
- Orginally, SEGA hired Michael Jackson to compose the music for Sonic 3. When news broke out of a scandal involving Jackson and allegations of child molestation,
Sega dropped the deal, although his song writing team still composed the soundtrack (and appear in the credits). There are
notable similarities between the music recorded for Sonic 3 and music from Jackson's previous recorded tracks from
the Dangerous album, and a track from the later released HIStory album (which was composed during the time of the game). For example, there is a segment in Carnival Night Zone's music that
sounds like a riff from Michael Jackson's song, "JAM" (It has also been discovered that a sample in the Sonic 3 ROM played in the Carnival Night Zone music is taken directly from the song JAM), and the credits theme parallels Michael Jackson's later song, "Stranger in Moscow" (which was written around the time of the game). The Knuckle's Theme, also has a style similar to the new jack swing (a style used many times in Jackson's Dangerous album), which sounds especially similar to that of In the Closet, and later released Ghosts. In addition, the chord progression of "Ice Cap Zone" is similar to the chord progression of Michael Jackson's "Who Is It," and the earlier "Smooth Criminal." It is possible that more of Jackson's music remained in the game.[14]
- The victory jingle that plays when a level is completed later appears in all the Sonic games in the main series, and most
recently Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
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