Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Sonic the Hedgehog 3
European cover of Sonic 3
Developer(s)	Sega Technical Institute Sonic Team
Publisher(s)	Sega
Designer(s)	Takashi Thomas Yuda (character design), Hirokazu Yasuhara (lead designer), Yuji Naka (programming)
Composer(s)	Michael Jackson
Platform(s)	Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Virtual Console
Release	NA: February 2 1994 EU: February 24 1994 JP: May 27 1994
Genre(s)	Platform game
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

Sonic the Hedgehog 3, often abbreviated and literally known in Europe as Sonic 3, is a platform game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. It was developed by American studio Sega Technical Institute in collaboration with Sonic Team, and was published by Sega. The game debuted worldwide in the first half of 1994.

The game is closely tied to its direct sequel Sonic & Knuckles, as the two games were originally one until time constraints and cartridge costs forced the game to be split into two interlocking parts. Combined, both games have sold over 4 million copies.

Storyline

File:Sonic3.png

Sonic 3 title screen.

In the Sonic chronology, Sonic 3's storyline commences shortly after the end of Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Dr. Robotnik's 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, 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 the Master Emerald, a large jewel that grant the island its levitation powers.

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

Hydrocity Zone.

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, the forested overworld of the floating island, Hydrocity, a subterrainian water-filled world, Marble Garden, an area with old ruins somewhat similar to Marble Zone from the first game in the franchise, Carnival Night, a lit-up carnival under the night sky, IceCap Zone, a frozen area with icey caves, and Launch Base, the area where Doctor Robotnik's Death Egg crashed, 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.

File:S3 special stage mechanics.png

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, checkered 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). The player moves foreward automatically, only allowed to turn left or right, and jump. 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. As time continues on, the player will move faster and faster along the course, making it easier to make a wrong move and run into a red sphere.

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.

File:Sonic3 SaveScreen.png

Sonic 3 save options.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

Music controversy

• Originally, 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.

Trivia

On the box design for Sonic 3 for the SEGA genesis it has a pair of eyes looking out. This has been assumed to be Knuckles but the eyes are connected and Knuckles' are not. Due to this realization some fans believe that Ashura, an unused character can be hacked and made playable in original game cartridges.

Credits

• Producer / Lead Programmer: Yuji Naka
• Director / Lead Game Designer:' Hirokazu Yasuhara
• Senior Game Designers: Hisayoshi Yoshida, Takashi Iizuka
• Senior Programmers: Hiroshi Nikaidoh, Masanobu Yamamoto
• Character Designer / Scene Artist: Takashi Thomas Yuda
• Enemy Artist: Satoshi Yokokawa
• Scene Artists: Kunitake Aoki, Chie Yoshida, Tsuneko Aoki, Shigeru Okada, Satoshi Yokokawa
• Music Composers: Brad Buxer, Bobby Brooks, Darryl Ross, Geoff Grace, Doug Grigsby III, Scirocco.
• Sega Sound Team: Tokuhiko "Bo" Uwabo, Sachio Ogawa, Milpo, Masaru Setsumaru, Tatsuyuki Maeda, Tomonori Sawada, Masayuki Nagao, Jun Senoue, Howard Drossin

External links

• Promotional VHS video
• Sonic the Hedgehog 3 at MobyGames
• Sonic the Hedgehog 3 page at The GHZ
• Sonic 3 at IMDb
• WikiKnowledge - Wiki based guide to the game
• Critical reception of Sonic 3