[This post is part of a collaborative Sonic retrospective based around the games on Sonic Mega Collection Plus. To read more, please head over to the central post!
This one is written by Edward Okulicz, who previously wrote about Monty on the Run and Renegade]
Although I’m a music writer, my formative critical influences weren’t music magazines. They were video game magazines from the 8-bit and 16-bit era, where the criticism is very populist, very utilitarian, and pitched strongly at the masses. I always felt music criticism I absorbed early on had ideals that I didn’t share, and was obsessed with things that didn’t matter to the casual listener, and as a result they would get things wrong a lot, or at least in a way that meant I couldn’t trust them. One particular thing in music criticism I’ve never subscribed to is the idea that a song you don’t like can have value on an album because it has context, or is necessary to make the story complete. I mean, sure this could be a thing, but I like pleasure, and for me the threshold of the artist’s intent and execution has to be really high for me to give a damn about listening to a [5] when it’s surrounded by a sea of songs that are worth [9] or [10]. So yeah, to give you an example, when I play Taylor Swift’s 1989, do you think I listen to “Welcome to New York” to set the scene? The hell I do, that song’s terrible – get me to the good stuff.
Somewhat hypocritically then, I began writing this with the thought that maybe Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles, which when combined form Sonic 3 & Knuckles, may be two great but flawed games that when linked, make complete sense as a whole, compensating for each others’ shortcomings: individually the games have fewer different levels, only 2/3 of the core characters are playable in either game, layouts are slightly different, Sonic 3 lacks big gameplay and storyline setpieces, and Sonic & Knuckles has lots of those but the stages and overall presentation are both blander. It’s known now that this two-cartridge two-part game was meant to be one originally, but time constraints was the mother of the ingenious method of splitting it, but at the time, this was speculated at most, rather than being known.
While combining the games is transformative, I don’t think it’s always for the best. If anything, it’s a double-edged sword. Indeed, combining the games as happened when you had both cartridges does improve the game in lots of ways, but when you play the combined game there are some things you notice that are a bit puzzling, and most of those are clearer in hindsight, whereas just playing one game means you might not notice. Here’s five things I notice:
1. Because playing the combined game means playing the two games together, there’s a difficulty increase leading up to the last zone of Sonic 3 proper, Launch Base, and then a drop to the first zone of Sonic & Knuckles, Mushroom Hill. The combined game changes some object placements slightly and dispenses with the epic final boss of Sonic 3, but the former’s barely noticeable and the latter, if anything, is a downgrade. Launch Base by itself is an awesome level, and then going down to a much easier level is the very definition of anti-climactic. The difficulty doesn’t ramp up again properly until Sandopolis two zones later.
2. The zone order is really weird. And it’s now known that Flying Battery, from Sonic & Knuckles, was supposed to be in the first half of the game. It’s also bizarre that the Sonic & Knuckles half of the game is awash with water shields that help you breathe underwater, but you won’t encounter a drop of water in that half. Whereas Sonic 3 can’t go a minute without throwing water at you – only Marble Garden from the first six zones doesn’t have any.
3. The quality of the zones dips a bit in the second half, and it’s easier to notice when you play through the game. Mushroom Hill, Sandopolis, and Death Egg are not bad zones per se, but Mushroom Hill is probably the most boring zone 1 from any of the 90s games, and all of these zones’ palettes lack the variety and vibrancy of the Sonic 3 stages. Flying Battery and Lava Reef are exceptions, but the former was, as above, meant to be in the first half originally. Death Egg in particular has a really dismal brown/grey colour scape, and other Sonic final levels have managed to be colourful (check out Sonic Mania‘s Titanic Monarch Zone or Sonic CD‘s Metallic Madness). Music-wise, these zones are significantly worse too – the tropical zest of Angel Island, the melodic twists of Hydrocity, the jerky funfair refrain of Carnival Night and especially the pure pop of Ice Cap Zone are fabulous, and only Sky Sanctuary from the second half could muscle into that line-up of chiptune wonder. Yes, Marble Garden from the first half is a bit of a drag in most ways, but it’s not as taxing as Sandopolis from the second half.
4. What’s the deal with the Super Emeralds? Because you can easily get 7 Chaos Emeralds in either half of the game, there’s a clumsy attempt to double that to 14 for the combined game, in the form of the additional 7 Super Emeralds, which is an idea that was quietly dropped from later games. Getting those unlocks a slightly more powerful form for Sonic and Knuckles, and an actual Super form for Tails, but only the latter is actually meaningful gameplay wise.
5. The presentation is overall a lot better in Sonic 3, and the combined game leans on the blander Sonic & Knuckles presentation. Little themes and jingles are better in the first game – though I may be the only person who vastly prefers Sonic 3‘s 1-up sting. The cut-scenes between rounds and mini-boss music are better in the first game, particularly. Sonic & Knuckles feels a little bare-boned by itself, which you definitely feel if you boot up the games one after the other, and the combined game leans more on that.
But does that matter? No, it does not. Because the game is a blast, possibly the best platform game ever made. I could probably make the argument that it’s the best video game of the 90s period. Together or apart, these games do so much that’s right. Iain, in his review of Sonic 3, perceptively points out that if Sonic 3 isn’t the best Sonic, it’s the most Sonic. And adding even more onto that is a great thing.
The zones are enormous, there’s now tonnes of them, and the level design is absolutely outstanding. There are hidden rooms, hidden paths, obscure secrets, heaps of bonus stages to find, different paths for Knuckles across most zones (though these vary in the extent to which they’re separate from the Sonic/Tails paths and constitute perhaps the game’s only missed opportunity because they’re not all as good as each other). Being able to go through the previously inaccessible Sonic 3 stages with Knuckles, or the Sonic & Knuckles stages with Tails, gives the game even more playthrough potential. The layouts reward both speed and exploration, and you can rack up some very fast speeds and very high scores and life counts across the full game.
The storyline feels a bit more satisfying when you go all the way through, and there’s even a distinct plotline for Knuckles that makes more sense – instead of fighting Eggman/Dr Robotnik, his playthrough starts at a later time after Sonic and Knuckles have made peace, with a surviving robot as your ultimate boss in each round. That attention to detail is really nice, although blink and you’ll miss it. It makes the overall conclusion of the game, when you complete The Doomsday Zone after a long playthrough that much more satisfying, because despite gameplay-wise the drop in difficulty from the end of part one to the start of part two being weird, as a piece of storytelling, it’s way more interesting and filmic to build up to one climax, and then another, and then another.
And for all that, this game remains frustrating uncollected to many. It’s represented on the Sonic Mega Collection, sure, but I don’t know how many people are still playing on their GameCubes, PlayStation 2s or original Xboxes. Sonic 2 sold more copies and has been repackaged so many times that, like Doom, you could probably play it on anything, though finding platforms it hasn’t been ported to might be a challenge now. Sonic 1, 2 and CD have all been given proper enhanced ports to newer systems with remastering and widescreen, the latter being a great thing for a fast-paced platformer that mostly goes left to right. Sonic 3, though? Infuriatingly un-updated. There are reasons, and now isn’t the place to go into them.
If you want, you can find an unofficial widescreen port, Sonic 3 Angel Island Revisited, which itself has a series of mods that enable new art and new levels, and there are even some great new levels available. You can even get the game in a version modded that enables you to take Flying Battery and move it so instead of being the eighth level of the combined game, it’s the fourth. Indeed, this is the best way to get the transcendent more than the sum of its parts thing I never get from an album of varying quality. But people had to do this unofficially; this game seems sadly absent from the official record in a lot of ways, sandwiched between the titanic Sonic 2, and a period of mostly dismal games from after the Mega Drive era. It’s the franchise’s giddy, stuffed peak, the most Sonic now becoming too much Sonic, and to Sega, it might as well not have happened – it took until 2017 for Sonic Mania to represent a real continuation of the playstyle. Compare with Nintendo: even today Super Mario World remains a phenomenally good platformer, and you can see its DNA in so many of its sequels and followers.
Back to the more recent past for a second, both Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania open (boringly) with zones from Sonic 1 (Green Hill) and 2 (Chemical Plant). That’s what someone thinks is iconic Sonic. I think it would do any gamer who wasn’t around in 1993-1994 to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles to challenge the notion that the series peaked before or after these games. I love this game, and I fire up an emulator or Angel Island Revisited every few months for a playthrough. Even if my memory of where the hidden special stage rings has faded, I can still pull off some fast times, and have enormous fun, just like it’s 1994 and I’m playing the game for the first time. And yes, I can still beat the game senseless. For all its invisibility and minor faults in the form it appeared in Mega Collection, it’s still timeless to me.