Cy-Fox's Sonic 3 Review

[Admiral Prower]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles

Review by Cy-Fox

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 of course is the third game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series made for the SEGA Genesis/SEGA Mega Drive (although as a whole Sonic CD technically came first). Released in North America on February 2nd, 1994, Sonic 3 and its later released companion, Sonic & Knuckles, was originally intended to be one game on one cartridge, but the costs for manufacturing the memory necessary to hold the entire game would have been too costly. Instead, Sonic & Knuckles was released as a special cartridge that could be interfaced with the Sonic 3 cartridge, along with Sonic 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog, giving each game additional functions. In the case of Sonic 3, the Sonic & Knuckles addition allowed the player to play as Knuckles in Sonic 3, who was introduced in Sonic 3 as an NPC, and also allowed the player to be Tails in Sonic & Knuckles.

Sonic 3 starts out with Sonic and Tails pursuing Dr. Ivo Robotnik, Sonic's main antagonist for the majority of the Sonic series, with Sonic transforming into Super Sonic with the power of the Chaos Emeralds. He leaves Tails behind and ends up getting blindsided by Knuckles, an echinda who is in charge of guarding the Master Emerald on Angel Island. Knuckles takes the seven Chaos Emeralds from a stunned Sonic and runs off, prompting a chase through several levels which follows the usual formula of the player character jumping on enemies in order to vanquish them, and collecting rings for protection (and of course a bigger score). But there's some twists for each character. First is the shields powerup. Remember the computer monitors that you can break open that gives you a shield that lasts as long as you don't take any damage? It makes a comeback in Sonic 3 in a new way. There are three types of shields: Water, Fire and Electric. The Water shield allows the player character to survive underwater without having to surface or inhaling bubbles. In Sonic's case, it allows him to bounce around like a ball. Fire gives the player character protection from fire, and allows Sonic to become a damaging fireball. Finally the electric shield gives protection from electrical attacks, and also collects nearby rings, and in Sonic's case, creates little electric balls when he double jumps with it. If Sonic has no shield at all, he can double jump to make a temporary shield, which is very tricky to do. Tails has also been given a long-needed ability, the ability to fly by "double jumping" as you would with Sonic. Though after awhile, Tails will get tired out and sink back to the ground. If you're playing a two player game, the player playing Tails can pick up the player playing as Sonic in order to carry him around to hard to reach places. Knuckles when double jumping, can glide across the level. Besides the standard game, there are also special stages, like the popular "Get Blue Spheres" stages, which can be found by going inside a giant ring that appears when you're near it. The object of GBS is to snatch up all blue spheres without hitting a red sphere which will teleport you back to the main game. If you obtain a square outline of the first set of spheres within a square, all blue spheres within are obtained and they turn into rings. When all blue spheres are obtained, you gain a Chaos Emerald (much like the special stages of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic 2). After all 7 special stages are completed successfully, the player character can turn into their super form by grabbing 50 rings and double jumping. If the player character has grabbed 50 rings when touching a save post, they may jump into a group of stars to access a special "gumball machine" stage where you can try to obtain rings, shields and extra lives. As far as gameplay goes, Sonic 3 meets and exceeds my expectations when I tried it after playing Sonic 2 with these new elements.

The sound doesn't disappoint either, despite some sound effects being understandably recycled. The music of Sonic 3 during development has been a popular point of controversey as it was revealed that SEGA had wanted the recently departed pop sensation Michael Jackson (8/29/1958-6/25/2009) to compose the music for Sonic 3 until scandals popped up and Jackson's work unfortunately had to be removed, although the new composition team retained some of Jackson's styles in the games. It should also be of note that Sonic 3 is the first game that Jun Senoue produced music for. The music of Sonic 3 still remains popular within the Sonic community, prompting several revisions and remixes.

All in all, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the pinnacle of the classic Sonic series. Soon afterwards, the SEGA Saturn (a major flop) came about with Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R, and the unfinished Sonic X-Treme, ushering in the Dreamcast and a whole new generation of 3D Sonic games. With superior gameplay mechanics that built on its predecessors, keeping the familiar control configuration from the last two games, and excellent sound, it is my pleasure to give Sonic 3 the following scores:

Gameplay/Presentation: 5/5
Controls: 5/5
Sound/Music: 5/5
Overall: 10/10 (or 15/15 if you want to get technical =P)

William "Cy-Fox" Wagner is the system administrator of Emerald Guardian, helping Icee and the rest of the staff in maintaining the Emerald Basin Message Boards. He has been a part of the Emerald Guardian staff since late 2005. He is also the owner of Sonic Source and its SourceNet Message Boards, and is an administrator with Sonic Blast, the Sonic Music Archive (SonMA), Black Hero and Arkives, a global moderator at Green Groove Zone and Tails World RPG. He is also a consultant for FastFeet Media and is also a well-known writer in the Sonic community, currently penning his alternate history/sci-fi series "Cy-Fox" as well as two podcast dramatizations, "Casualty @ Station Square" and "S+a+ion Square"