Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Sonic and Tails exploring the underwater portion of Hydrocity, the game's second zone

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a 2D side-scrolling platformer. As with Sonic the Hedgehog 2, players can control Sonic, Tails, or both simultaneously. In the former choice, players control Sonic while Tails runs along beside him; a second player can join at any time and control Tails separately.[1] Sonic 3 adds the ability for Tails to fly for a short time by spinning his twin tails like a helicopter rotor.[1] Unlike Sonic, Tails can also swim underwater.[2]

Sonic 3 takes place over six zones,[3] each divided into two acts. Levels are populated with "badniks", robots created by the villain, Dr. Robotnik; Sonic and Tails can defeat them by jumping on them or using the "spin dash" attack, which also gives the character a speed boost.[2] The levels include obstacles and other features such as vertical loops, corkscrews, breakable walls, spikes, water that the player can drown in, and bottomless pits.[4] There is a miniboss fight with one of Robotnik's large, powerful robots at the end of the first act of each level and a boss fight with Robotnik at the end of the second.[5] Reaching a new level saves the game to one of six save slots.[6]

As with previous Sonic games, Sonic 3 uses rings, scattered throughout the levels, as a health system; when the player is attacked without rings, is crushed, falls off-screen, drowns, or exceeds the act's ten-minute limit, they lose a life and return to the most recently passed checkpoint. Dying with zero lives gives the player a game over. The levels also include power-ups in television monitors that, when hit, grant the character an extra life, temporary invincibility to most hazards, a number of rings,[7] a shield that allows them to breathe underwater, a shield that allows them to withstand fire from enemy projectiles, or a shield that attracts nearby rings.[8]

Sonic 3 contains two types of "special stages". When the player collects at least 50 rings and passes a checkpoint, they can warp to the first type,[9] which involves bouncing up a gumball machine-like corridor to earn power-ups by hitting a switch. Both sides of the corridor are lined with flippers, which disappear when the character bounces on them, and the switch drops when both flippers supporting it are removed. The corridor's floor contains a bounce pad, which also disappears after one use; falling afterwards causes the player to leave the stage with the most recent power-up collected.[10]

Tails in one of the special stages, in which the player can earn Chaos Emeralds

The second type, triggered by entering giant rings found in secret passages, involves running around a 3D map and passing through all of a number of blue spheres arranged in patterns. Passing through a blue sphere turns it red, and touching a red sphere causes the player to leave the stage, unless the player has just completed a cycle around an arrangement of blue spheres, in which case all of these spheres turn to harmless rings. Removing all of the blue spheres gives the player a Chaos Emerald; if Sonic (not Tails) collects all seven, he unlocks the ability to become Super Sonic, which makes him invincible to most obstacles.[8][11] Failing to collect the seven Chaos Emeralds triggers a post-credits scene in which Robotnik and Knuckles taunt the player.[12]

Sonic 3 includes a competitive mode: two players, controlling Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles, race through one or all of five stages that do not appear in the main game. In these same stages, a single player can compete against the clock in time attacks.[13]

After Sonic and Tails defeat Dr. Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Robotnik's space station, the Death Egg, crash-lands on the floating Angel Island. The impact from the Death Egg's crash causes the island to fall into the ocean. There, Robotnik meets Knuckles the Echidna, the last member of an ancient echidna civilization that once inhabited the island. Knuckles is the guardian of the Master Emerald, which grants the island its levitation power and has an equal power level of the 7 Chaos Emeralds.[17] Robotnik dupes Knuckles into believing Sonic is trying to steal the Master Emerald, turning the two against each other while he repairs the Death Egg.[18]

Sonic and Tails approach Angel Island in their biplane, the Tornado. Sonic uses the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Sonic, but Knuckles ambushes him and steals the emeralds.[17] Sonic and Tails travel the island hindered by Knuckles and Robotnik.[18] At the Launch Base, where the Death Egg is under repair, Sonic and Tails fight Knuckles, but the Death Egg relaunches. On a platform attached to the Death Egg, they defeat Robotnik, causing the Death Egg to crash-land on Angel Island again. The story resumes in Sonic & Knuckles.[18][19][20]

Like Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was developed in California by Sega Technical Institute (STI).[21] After the completion of Sonic 2, STI split into two teams: one comprised Japanese developers, who worked on Sonic 3, and the other Americans, who worked on Sonic Spinball.[22][23][24] Yuji Naka and Hirokazu Yasuhara were the primary creators of the Sonic 3 design document and project schedule.[25] Naka selected the majority of the team, while STI director Roger Hector oversaw development, and Pamela Kelly led the marketing for Sega. [22]

Development began in January 1993, initially based upon the Sega Virtua Processor chip, allowing for 3D graphics. The team created a prototype with isometric graphics with the working title Sonic 3D; the original special stage featured a polygonal Sonic in a figure eight-shaped stage. When it became apparent that the chip would not be finished by 1994, Sonic 3 was restarted as a more conventional 2D platform game.[26] The isometric concept was eventually used for Sonic 3D Blast in 1996.[22][27]

According to Naka, the team felt that they needed a deeper story to expand the world of Sonic, which "made the project huge"; the levels are triple the size of those in Sonic 2.[28] Many elements were conceived during the development of Sonic 2 but deferred to Sonic 3.[22] Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were originally planned as a single game. However, the manufacturing costs of a 34-megabit cartridge[29] with NVRAM would have been prohibitively expensive.[30] Due to the game's scope and Sega of America's commitment to launch a major McDonald's Happy Meal promotion in February 1994,[26][31] the team reluctantly split it in half,[22][14] allowing more time to develop the second part and splitting the cost between two cartridges.[30] The Sonic & Knuckles cartridge's lock-on technology was created, named and implemented so Sonic 3 could be experienced as intended.[14]

Sonic 3 features the debut of Sonic's rival, Knuckles the Echidna. Many designs for the character were considered;[32] for the final design, Takashi Yuda chose the kind of animal, and Pamela Kelly chose the name.[33] Yuda envisioned him as a supporting character for Sonic, and felt he would make a good playable character.[34] Whereas Sonic symbolizes speed, Knuckles symbolizes power,[28] and the emphasis of the character was to break walls.[35] His shoe coloration was inspired by Jamaica's flag.[28] The original name for the character was "Dreds", referring to his dreadlocks.[36] The design was tested with focus groups of American children.[26]

Hector said Sonic 3 had a troubled development. He recalled having to prevent the rest of Sega from bothering the team while simultaneously making sure the game would be finished in time. Additionally, Hector struggled to balance resources between Sonic 3 and other projects, Naka was sometimes seen as a harsh leader, and American STI staff not on the Sonic 3 team became jealous of the priority given to the game.[22]

Michael Jackson's involvement

See also: Michael Jackson in video games

According to some involved in development, Michael Jackson composed portions of the Sonic 3 soundtrack but went uncredited. His involvement was denied by senior Sega staff.

In 2005, Hector said that Sega had hired the American pop musician Michael Jackson to compose music for Sonic 3.[37] Jackson was a Sonic fan[38]^: 292 and had collaborated with Sega on the 1990 arcade game Moonwalker.[39] Jackson's tour director at the time, Brad Buxer, assembled a team and worked on the project for four weeks at Record One in Los Angeles in 1993.[40][41] They developed fully fledged tracks, with extensive samples of Jackson beatboxing, to be adapted for the Genesis.[40] Hector said the work had a recognizable Jackson sound.[40] According to Buxer, Jackson only worked on one of the 41 tracks that the team composed.[41]

Around this time, allegations of child sexual abuse against Jackson emerged. Buxer said the team received no instruction to halt work, and that the finished soundtrack was sent to Sega in mid-1993.[40] According to Hector, Jackson's involvement was terminated following the allegations;[40] his music had already been implemented and had to be quickly reworked by Howard Drossin.[22] Drossin had joined the project expecting to work with Jackson.[40] Naoto Ohshima, the co-creator of Sonic, said Jackson recorded an a cappella demo tape for the game, but that Sega could not use the compositions due to the allegations.[38]^: 301[42]

Buxer and two other members of Jackson's team, Doug Grigsby III and Cirocco Jones, said the music remained in the game. They said Jackson went uncredited because he was unhappy with how the Genesis, which was incapable of playing back high-quality audio, replicated his music.[40] Jones credited himself along with Jackson and Buxer for musical cues for "levels 2 & 3" of "Sonic the Hedgehog" on his website.[43] An anonymous source involved in development also told GameTrailers that Jackson's contributions, such as the Carnival Night Zone theme, remained and that he had chosen to remain uncredited.[43] Buxer said that the Sonic 3 credits music became the basis for Jackson's 1996 single "Stranger in Moscow".[40][44] In 2013, it was discovered that the music for IceCap Zone was derived from a previously unreleased 1982 song, "Hard Times", by Buxer's band the Jetzons.[45] In 2019, GameRevolution noted that Sonic 3 had been rereleased less frequently since Jackson's death in 2009 and speculated that this was due to legal problems with his estate.[46][47]

Senior Sega staff, including the Sega of America president Tom Kalinske, said that any involvement of Jackson was arranged without their knowledge, and that no contracts nor formal agreements were made.[39][40] In 2013, Hector said that any similarities to Jackson's music in Sonic 3 were unintentional.[43] The journalist Ken Horowitz raised questions about Jackson's alleged involvement, such as how an agreement between Sega and Jackson could have been kept secret from the media, why Sega's marketing never mentioned Jackson's involvement and why Jackson would reuse music originally composed for a video game.[39]

Other tracks were composed by Sega sound team members such as Jun Senoue, who became a regular composer for the series.[48] Some tracks were replaced in the 1997 Windows port Sonic & Knuckles Collection,[49] as well as the remaster included in the 2022 compilation Sonic Origins.[50] These tracks also appear in a Sonic 3 prototype discovered in 2019, suggesting that they were originally written for the Genesis before being replaced by Jackson's music.[51] In 2022, Naka said that the development team had visited Jackson's home at Neverland Ranch during the development of Sonic 3, and expressed surprise that Sega had altered the music for Sonic Origins.[52]

Sonic 3 was released in North America on February 2, 1994 (Groundhog Day),[53] in Europe on February 24,[54] and in Japan on May 27.[55] Sega spent $20 million marketing it in the United States.[56] To promote the European release, the British band Right Said Fred adapted their song "Wonderman" to include references to Sonic.[57] The song was used in Sonic 3 advertisements and released as a single, which charted in the UK at number 55.[58] A single-cartridge version of Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Limited Edition, was canceled.[59] A ROM image of this version was leaked online in 2008.[60]

In the United States, Sonic 3 was the top-selling Sega Genesis game in February 1994.[91] It became one of the best-selling Genesis games,[92] selling at least 1.02 million copies in the United States,[93] with Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles selling a combined 4 million cartridges worldwide.[94]

Like its predecessors, Sonic 3 received critical acclaim. Critics generally felt Sonic 3 was the best game in the series so far. Andrew Humphreys of Hyper, who declared himself not a Sonic fan, said it was "undoubtedly" the best of the series, including the acclaimed but obscure Sonic CD, though he said he preferred Sonic 2's special stages by a small margin.[85] Sega Magazine, however, stated that Sonic 3 has better special stages and was not only superior to Sonic 2 as a whole but would be "a serious contender for the Best Platform Game Ever award".[89] Sega Power wrote that despite their skepticism, they found it "excellent" and easily "the most explorable and playable" in the series.[90] Electronic Gaming Monthly also compared Sonic 3 favorably to Sonic 1, 2, and CD and awarded it their "Game of the Month" award.[82] They later ranked it number 1 in The EGM Hot 50, indicating that it received the highest average score of any game they had reviewed in the past year.[95] Lionel Vilner of Génération 4 believed Sonic 3 offered more challenge than its predecessors.[84] The Unknown Gamer of GamePro proclaimed that it "proves that you can teach an old hedgehog new and exciting tricks. Take that old Sonic magic, add fun new variations, and you have another spectacular game."[83]

Some critics felt that Sonic 3 had innovated too little from previous Sonic games. Humphreys of Hyper saw only "a few new features"[85] while Sega Power thought it was "not all that different"[90] and Nintendo Life writer Damien McFerran said that "there's not a lot of new elements here to be brutally frank".[96] While Deniz Ahmet of Computer and Video Games agreed that the game was "more of the same", he was placated by the new and imaginative ideas.[80] However, Electronic Gaming Monthly enjoyed the new power-ups.[82] Many aspects of the level design were praised; Electronic Gaming Monthly and Sega Power enjoyed the expansive stages, secret areas, much less linear level design, and difficulty.[82][90] Mean Machines agreed, describing the game as "a rollercoaster ride from start to finish" and listing Carnival Night as their favorite level, which they described as "probably the most slickly programmed portion of game in Megadrive history".[86] Humphreys and Mean Machines felt that the game was too short, but they and Sega Magazine felt that its two-player mode and the Emerald collecting would significantly extend the replay value.[85][86][89] Sega Magazine enjoyed having the ability to play as Knuckles in the two-player mode.[89] The Unknown Gamer felt that while the two-player mode was less fun than the main game, it was much improved over Sonic 2 due to the change of format from split-screen to full-screen.[83]

The visuals were very well received. Humphreys described Sonic 3 as "one of the most beautiful games around" and full of "flashy new visual tricks", highlighting Sonic's ascension up pipes and spiraling pathways as particularly inventive.[85] Sega Magazine exclaimed that its graphics were "brilliant" even for a Sonic game,[89] while Provo praised the "elaborate" backgrounds.[97] Mean Machines thought similarly, giving special praise to the camera's quick scrolling, the diversity of the level themes, and the "chunkier, more detailed" overall aesthetic.[86] Rik Skews of Computer and Video Games stated that "the graphics were stunning, attention to detail is breathtaking". Ahmet of the same publication also noted that the graphics were more detailed than those of previous installments.[80] The Unknown Gamer described the settings as having "gorgeous background detail and lots of visual treats" and was impressed by the new obstacles that Sonic can traverse at top speeds.[83]

The sound effects and music were also well received, though somewhat less so than the visuals. Sega Magazine described them as "brilliant" and "far superior" to Sonic 2's.[89] Mean Machines stated that every level had "great tunes" and sound effects and particularly praised the ending music.[86] However, Humphreys described the sound as "Sonicky ... with the emphasis on the 'icky'"; he also found it strikingly similar to the first two Sonic games' soundtracks.[85] The Unknown Gamer also saw musical similarity to previous installments, and described the individual tracks as "catchy... until you've heard it a hundred times."[83]

Following the release of Sonic & Knuckles, the Sonic 3 & Knuckles version of the game was critically acclaimed. Computer and Video Games rated this version of the game 97% and said, while "you need to buy both Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles to fully enjoy" it, Sonic 3 & Knuckles "is the best platform experience ever" and "what video games were invented for."[81]

Sonic 3 was the first appearance of Knuckles the Echidna, who featured prominently in later Sonic games. Sonic the Comic (UK) and the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic (US) published adaptations of the game.[105]

For Sonic's 20th anniversary, Sega released Sonic Generations, a game that remade aspects of various past games from the franchise.[106] The Nintendo 3DS version features a remake of the final boss, "Big Arms", and re-arranged version of the "Game Over" theme.[107] The Angel Island and Hydrocity levels were included in remixed form in Sonic Mania (2017).

• Official Virtual Console website
• Sonic the Hedgehog 3 at MobyGames