All the S@nics - the end

[thatguyif]

No, Grounder, just...no

Anyone up for discussing the great unsolved mystery of the time throughout this run? I.E. Was Michael Jackson actually a composer to Sonic 3?

I mean, it's interesting that you chose to do S3&K, at least on a musical level. Vanilla Sonic 3 had several tracks that would be replaced when it became Sonic 3 and Knuckles. This includes the Title Theme, the Invincibility Theme (which was based on the Title Theme), the Mid-Boss Theme, Knuckles' Theme, and the very-relevant-to-the-aforementioned-question End Credits Theme. Some of these are relevant to the mystery.

There are also minor changes here and there that are subtle. One of them was that a couple of the Blue Sphere stages in Sonic 3 never accelerated. Also, you may have noticed the Act 2 theme being played after the Blue Sphere stage post-Lavos, which is new.

Anyway, I think it's interesting you call Sonic 3 a case of Sega giving Sega Technical Institute (which was the actual developer for the early Sonic games...Sonic Team did not surface as a developer until the Sega Saturn era) time and resources, when that wasn't entirely the case. For one thing, the developer was given a slightly bigger deadline in that they didn't have to deliver by the 1993 holiday season, but they were still expected to deliver by February 1994. Secondly, the development overcame budget issues by having one project consume another. So, Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles were supposed to be two separate games by two different teams. However, one problem came about: The team behind decided to take advantage of the budget to make much bigger levels (and it really shows: The multi-layered leveling that was explored in 2 really picked up in this game), which took up a lot of space. In fact, it would take up far more space than was possible to place on a single Genesis/Mega Drive cartridge. Sega would not give them resources necessary to overcome this issue by providing a larger flash memory chip. However, they resolved this issue with the lock-on cart, which was developed and mothballed between Sonic 1 and 2. At this point, the decision was (reluctantly) made to split the game into two, with the latter half of the game becoming Sonic and Knuckles. There are vestiges of Sonic and Knuckles' original development which remain in the vanilla game, including Knuckles' intro and plot.

Interesting Fact: The initial development of Sonic 3 included prototypes of a 3D Sonic on the Genesis. Sega, having been blindsided by Star Fox, decided to create their own version of the SuperFX chip, called the Sega Virtua Processor, and thought to make Sonic the launch project for it. These prototypes used the SVP, with a 3D Sonic running around in isometric view. When it became apparent that the chip would not be ready by February 1994, they shelved the idea and returned to a 2D-based project. The SVP would be used later that year for the Genesis port of Virtua Racing, Sega's first serious polygonal 3D game.

[TehRealSalt]

I'm super glad that you're going to do a Knuckles playthrough! Was one of my biggest concerns about AtS, most people play Sonic & Tails then stop 'cuz they beat the game

I'm curious how the comparison will happen for Knuckles, because I think it's really understated how different his playthrough is. I see everyone chalk the differences up to his abilities, but he actually kinda doesn't play all that different, it's more a case of the level designers going crazy with him -- 19 out of 22 levels have Knuckles-only paths, some (I'd even say most) spanning literally the entire level and don't even touch Sonic's path. Plus his bosses get extra attacks & harder patterns

[Awoo]

There are also minor changes here and there that are subtle. One of them was that a couple of the Blue Sphere stages in Sonic 3 never accelerated. Also, you may have noticed the Act 2 theme being played after the Blue Sphere stage post-Lavos, which is new.

Not to mention the level select/sound test is notoriously difficult to get to in Vanilla Sonic 3. It's so insanely precise, my guess is that it was done that way to make the un-included levels listed in it that were in S&K more a surprise but I could be wrong.

[Awoo]

I'm super glad that you're going to do a Knuckles playthrough! Was one of my biggest concerns about AtS, most people play Sonic & Tails then stop 'cuz they beat the game

I'm curious how the comparison will happen for Knuckles, because I think it's really understated how different his playthrough is. I see everyone chalk the differences up to his abilities, but he actually kinda doesn't play all that different, it's more a case of the level designers going crazy with him -- 19 out of 22 levels have Knuckles-only paths, some (I'd even say most) spanning literally the entire level and don't even touch Sonic's path. Plus his bosses get extra attacks & harder patterns

He also doesn't fight Robotnik! Egg-Robo is a serious dark horse of the Sonic franchise. Outside of this and Sonic R I don't think he's ever been included in another Sonic game. Yeah he's just literally a re-sprited Robotnik, but I always thought his design was neat and it's a shame they haven't used him since

[Crow]

i honestly can't watch this specific act without getting slammed hard with nostalgia because specifically this game was my childhood

[Blivsey]

And now for raocow to spend ten minutes trying to explain on video what he just explained in the thread but he gets distracted because hes playing a video game

[Super Llama]

Hey it's the perfect excuse to shill this travesty

[Matt is me]

In the video you said you thought you don't need to collect the rings in the special stages to get a perfect, just make them appear.

This is incorrect. Gotta grab all of 'em. Every single stage very intentionally has at least one set of spheres not in a square (or in a 2x2 square, as seen in the first stage--those don't ringify). If you're going for perfects, you gotta save one of these sets for last, otherwise the level will end when you collect your last sphere but before you can collect the rings.

Some levels even have rings just chilling there that aren't made from squares. Gotta get those for a perfect too.

[Katazuki]

I actually never played the &K variant of Sonic 3 personally, but have seen many playthroughs of it. Played it on Mega Collection Plus and couldn't get past the barrel at the time obviously.

Anyways, I can't wait for the bazillion episodes that'll come out of playing both the Sonic and Knuckles playthroughs. I can only imagine this is how Sonic Mania will go as well.

[Leet]

i'm not really sure why "this is what the developers intended" counts for this game but not others? surely most director's cuts and rereleases by the original devs count as their intention too. will we use fanmade bugfix patches for later games since developers don't intend to have bugs in their games? (of course not)

at the very least i kinda thought we would be playing S3+K up to where it switches over to +K, and then pause that LP to play the games released in-between. what we're doing now is, like, FINE, but it seems at odds with the rules of the rest of the megalp, so it's a curious choice

[Blivsey]

Anyway... Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favorite game of all time! It was also the first non-edutainment game I ever played, which might have contributed. Every year my birthday present to myself is to do a run through S3K because I know I'll enjoy it (and also because I don't have money to buy myself actual presents). Everything about this game just feels right to me. I can't properly explain it.

The version I had as a kid was Sonic & Knuckles Collection, which was a straight-up Windows 95 port of S3K plus both standalones. Despite what you're probably thinking, it's a one-to-one port job with the only real difference being the music, which is presented in your choice of either glorious MIDI or the FM synthesizer. Here's Angel Island Act 1 from both styles.




Honestly, for what they are, they're pretty good midis. They did their best. There are also a few completely new tracks that I'll make sure to post when their time comes.

[kurt91]

I got the PC collection originally when I was a kid. "Jack-in-the-Box" was doing some sort of promotional thing with SEGA, and had a choice of four different discs that you could buy. I got the Sonic 3 & Knuckles collection because I figured that getting four games in one instead of a single game was a much better deal. (Again, I was insanely young, something like 4 or 5 at the time, maybe? I forget what year the PC release was, I was born in 1991.) Turns out that by "four games", they counted Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles as separate games. Including a standalone Blue Sphere game hidden in the File menu brought the total up to four.

Anyways, it came in a cheap paper envelope, and both the envelope and disc itself was covered in Jack in the Box branding and logos. Considering the price and the packaging, I'm still convinced to this day that it was meant to be one of those time-restricted demo discs to get you to buy the full game, but the restriction was screwed up, so you were allowed to play the full game whenever you wanted. My favorite was always Sonic & Knuckles standalone, because I could never get past the infamous Sonic 3 Barrel-o'-Doom. At least with S&K, my first wall was Marble Garden Zone, but I eventually got through it and could get to the final boss (without Chaos Emeralds). Never beat it on that disc. Eventually beat it when I got Sonic Mega Collection on GameCube. I haven't been able to find that disc in years, though. Whenever I get the urge to play the game, I'll play it via Sonic 3 Complete, or more recently, Sonic 3 A.I.R.

Honestly, play that version if you're going to. Feed the program a S3+K ROM, and it will convert it into a game running entirely off native PC code, with a TON of extra features and bug-fixes. It's done this way so that the program itself has no question of legality or copyright, since the user provides the S3&K ROM. Additionally, it was designed to work with the ROM provided by buying the game on Steam, for additional legality safety, but as an "undocumented feature" is fully compatible with the usual ROM used for emulators. (Considering there is no difference between the two, the Steam release is literally a ROM and emulator package.)

But I digress, my original point was to talk about the two videos that Blivsey posted. Like I said, my first time playing the game was the PC collection, but I've always played the Genesis ROM in some form or another for the past how-many-years. Hearing the PC compositions of the songs was a sudden crash of nostalgia that I wasn't ready for. Honestly, I had completely forgotten how the PC version sounded until I heard those recordings. I'm really looking forward to the levels that I was never able to reach on that old PC disc, just to be able to catch the PC versions of the music. (Yeah, I could just look it up myself, but the suspense and waiting just feels better, you know?)

[Heavy Sigh]

Fun Sonic Facts!

In the wake of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and its nothing short of stupefying success in the west, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that another sequel was wanted. This time ready to hit another one out of the park, Sega once again looked towards the Sega Technical Institute and the dynamic duo of Yuji Naka and Hirokazu Yasuhara to create a third entry in the main series.

Fresh from the intense creation of the second game, Yuji Naka at first hit the same hesitation that he had when approached with Sonic 2, not wanting to simply work on the same game over and over again. He finally agreed to be a part of the project if he was allowed to work primarily with the Japanese-half of STI, hoping to avoid much of the drama that resulted during the last game because of what he later described as 'the differences between the Japanese and American work cultures'. He also decided to ask for a promotion, since he could, and SEGA, predictably, instantly caved to his demands, knowing their series was a golden goose in his hands. Giving him the title of Producer, Naka was granted the freedom to do practically whatever he wanted, once again a darling among the staff of Sega of Japan.

[Arctangent]

i feel like the s3&k collection ( p. sure the one i had came with sonic 2 too ) is one half of the majority reason why i find midi music so endearing and nostalgic, the other half being doom

speaking of, anyone remember sonic the screensaver. because i don't have the strongest memories of that time in my life, but i'm pretty sure it was heavily responsible for me thinking that sonic was waaaaay deeper and complex than it actually ever was. probably not helped by the fact that i never got far in the games in the collection, and iirc preferred playing the pc port of sonic r which was full of ... interesting things

which i didn't unlock. but, y'know, that just made those mysterious character slots all the more mysterious



also back on midis, midi sonic music also tends to make me think of all those fangames made in clickteam engines. i'm pretty sure i didn't get into looking up sonic stuff on the web until after i played sa2b and sonic advance, but that's certainly another major portion of my life that i barely remember, aside from being absolutely astounded at the concepts of loops, nay, characters that rotated with sloped surfaces period, once i got my hands on a clickteam thing myself and floundered about with it with 0 concepts for basically anything related to programming fundamentals. which i mean, you didn't program traditionally in those things, but you still had to think like you were programming if you wanted to come up with anything decent with those things

i really can't remember much about my sonic phase on the internet. sonic cult was one site but i think i was terrified of really poking my nose through it because it was all adult-y and stuff, pretty sure there was another old site with a focus on archiving unused content that i'm not sure is still around anymore, aaaand i think the fangame-orientated site i hung around on was the one that spawned when tails gets bored? i feel like there was more than that but like hell can i remember much of the details nor can i really cleanly separate it from stuff i'm pretty sure was later in life ( like mystic forest zone ( rip ), something i think i vaguely remember as being an analysis on genesis sonic level design, and some site that might've been called project: mobius which had like, two theories on how sonic and tails actually biologically work with their speed and flight and stuff, and i think that was the general idea of it but i don't know if it ever did anything more before dying )



man if you were to ask me what video games have influenced me the most, i don't think i would think of sonic that much but i'm pretty sure it might've been one of the lowest-key major things in my childhood. then again i spent an incredible amount of time with gba roms grabbed from emuparadise( ? ) ( rip ), some pretty typical while most ... not so, and yet i only have the faintest memories of some of the games that stuck to me the most, so who truly knows

EDIT: i don't know how i ranted this much about childhood sonic internet stuff without mentioning that one newgrounds sonicsona generator thing

if you think you know which one i'm talking about, you almost certainly do

[Blivsey]

Hey, I used to hang around MFZ! I also used to hang around Sonic Retro, but it's too moody and whiny for my tastes these days.

also yea raocow when are you gonna lp sonic the screensaver

--

At least with S&K, my first wall was Marble Garden Zone,

which is impressive considering that's a Sonic 3 level

But it's super cool to see I'm not the only person who grew up with the PC collection, and also not the only person who has a soft spot for MIDI thanks to it.

oh and to pre-empt: i prefer literally all of the PC-exclusive tracks to their Genesis counterparts (except maybe Knuckles's theme) and I'll explain myself when we get there

[SAJewers]

also yea raocow when are you gonna lp sonic the screensaver

hopefully when he gets to sonic and knuckles collection

[Grounder]

Forgot to post this

[Bean]

Interesting to see them already both games already locked on, but that was how the game was meant to be played and it avoids the whole music issue that may that's been an issue for Sega with porting this game for years now.

[raocow]

I checked and Sonic Screensaver isn't until mid 1996 NERDS

[raocow]

FUN SONIC FACT
yesterday two of the thumbnail choices where sphere game pics. for tonight's video, I get to chose from three sphere game pics. the youtube algorithm sure likes sphere game.

[raekuul]

Sonic 3 may be a genuinely amazing game, but I grew up on Sonic 2 so that's where all my nostalgia sits.

But hell yeah so much of my teenage years got sunk into this game!

[KobaBeach]

Virtua Racing

that game has the best fucking aesthetics, also Virt McPolygon.

32-bit Sega is my love.

But it's super cool to see I'm not the only person who grew up with the PC collection

Add me to the list. Although I also played it, Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 Simon Wai on DGen and Gens too.
Didn't have access to the actual 2 until a little while later.

My wall was always Carnival Night btw. I could only beat the game as Knux.

I lowkey prefer Sonic 2 & 1 due to how breezier 2 is and how Sonic 1 was my first game ever, but I respect Sonic 3&K.
I still have to beat it as Knuckles in the run I did this year. You just have to invest a bit of time into it orz

I remembered this the other day and had a goddamn ratatouille moment

[BobisOnlyBob]

My wall was always Carnival Night btw.

Doombarrel?

[MonkeyShrapnel]

http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_3_Complete

If anyone's interested, this is an excellent mod of Sonic 3 & Knuckles that basically acts as a
combination of all three separate games, and comes with a massive options list to freely customize the game experience.

There's way too many changes and options to list them all, and if you feel like replaying Sonic 3, I'd really recommend it.

[AlchemistHohenheim]

If we're posting alternative ways to play S3&K, Sonic 3: Angel Island Revisited also exists.

Main features
Because it was built on the original ROM, Sonic 3 A.I.R. features physics that are 100% accurate to Sonic 3 & Knuckles. However, a large number of changes were implemented to provide players with a more refined and modern experience.

Graphics
The most noticeable change from S3&K is that the game now runs in widescreen (400x224 pixels, to be exact). A number of optional graphical changes can be toggled in the options menu. These include screen filters (sharp, soft, or xBRZ), a background blur effect, 360° character rotations, and an afterimages effect for Speed Shoes.

The Special Stages have been completely overhauled. The slowdown has been all but eliminated, now running at a constant 60 fps. The stages now feature a smooth horizon line and anisotropic filtering inside the checkerboard. Additionally, the player can choose whether they want the ring counter to count up or down in the options menu.

Music
A remastered soundtrack by DJ Spindash can be downloaded separately. Also, much like in Sonic 3 Complete, the player can choose between the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles soundtracks in the options menu.

Gameplay
A new, experimental time attack mode has been implemented; this mode includes the ability to race against "ghosts" of previous best times. New movement abilities such as Tails Assist and Flight Cancel are included. Also like in Sonic 3 Complete, the player can choose between the Sonic 3 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles level layouts in the options menu. The Big Arm boss fight at the end of Launch Base Zone Act 2 has been restored as well.

An achievement system has also been implemented; unlocking certain numbers of achievements will in turn unlock new modes and abilities (similar to in Sonic Mania). These include a new Knuckles & Tails mode, the Drop Dash, and Debug mode.

It's programmed with the Steam release in mind, in theory, but as long as you have some way to provide the original game data it should work fine, I would imagine.