Retro-Review:Sonic 3 and Knuckles(1994)

In 1991 Sega tried to make a mascot to compete with Nintendo"s invincible Mario, the result was the cocky and relaxed hedgehog known as Sonic, Sonic 1 was a sucess and for the first Nintendo actually lost big sales thanks to Sonic the Hedgehog, then a sequel came out and it WRECK EVERYTHING IN SIGHT!, its the best saled Sega genesis game EVER, and what do you with a good sequel?

YOU MAKE ANOTHER ONE!

P.D:To play the real Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles and use lock-on on both of them.

Sonic 3 and Knuckles review!

The story:

SHORYUKEN!

The story of this game begins with Sonic and Tails aproaching the newly discovered Angel Island, Sonic goes Super Sonic and goes in the island and while entering Knuckles the Echidna shoryukens Sonic and takes away the chaos emeralds, Sonic discovers that Knuckles was tricked by Dr.Eggman and thinks that they want to steal the Master Emerald.
As sonic or Tails your objective is to go through 13 zones(2 acts and a boss each) and defeat Dr.Eggman.
As Knuckles the story is a little diferent , after Sonic"s story Eggman sends an Eggrobo to take care of Knuckles as he rebuilds the Death Egg.

The Gameplay:
You can play with 3 diferent characters, Sonic plays like the older sonic games but now has a new technique called the insta-shield that you use if you double jump, it lets you kill more things that the spin attack couldnt and you have an elemental shield you can do diferent moves like a fire dash, a double jump or a bounce.
Tails has all the sonic abilities but instead of the insta-shield and the element attacks you can fly, its actually really fun and slightly broken, and Knuckles has a lower jump than sonic but instead of and insta-shield he can climb walls.
New to this game are the elemental shields that i mentioned earlier, The lighting, fire and bubble shield.
-The fire shield protects you from fire
-The electric shield protects you from electricity and is a magnet that attracts rings.
-The bubble shield protects you from drowning
also all the shields let you take an extra hit and remember this is Sonic so collect rings because if you get hit without any rings you die, there are 2 acts in each level and in the end of act 2 there"s a boss you have to defeat.

-After Knuckles shoryukens the heck outta Sonic you lose the chaos emeralds and have to get them back, to find a special stage you need to find giant rings scattered through each level,the special stages in this game consist of touching a number of blue spheres to complete a stage, if you touch a red sphere you lose and have to find a special ring again, these special stages are my favorite of any sonic game just because of the fun and the music, if you get all 7 chaos emeralds you can transform into Super Sonic or Super Knuckles, Tails... gets nothing.
HOWEVER!
If you manage to get all 7 emeralds before the level Mushroom Hill Zone you can sacrifice your super form in exchange for 7 more special stages and if you complete them...
HYPER SONIC!!!!
Hyper Sonic is the physical form of overpowered, aside from getting all super sonic privileges like being invincible and only dieing from drowning, crushing or falling down a cliff, now sonic is inmortal to drowning and if you press the jump button twice on air you can kill every minor enemy in the screen!, (Like super sonic) you need 50 rings to activate it and if you ran out of rings you will go back to normal sonic.
Hyper Knuckles has the new ability of shaking the screen when you climb on the walls.
And Tails now has a super form, and this is truly overpowered... if you wanna know why, play the game and find out.
Also, to see the real ending of the game you need to get all emeralds, there are 13 zones in this game, im just going to say i like Hydrocity, Mushroom Hill, Flying Battery and Carvinal Night more.



The music:
This sound is just amazing, some of the songs just make you amazed of how good the songs are, special mention to Hydrocity act2, Sky Sanctuary(both acts), Launch Base act1 and Death Egg act1, they are AWESOME!
Fun fact: Hydrocity act2 is actually my ringtone, its that good.
Also, did you know that the music was made by Michael Jackson, but i"ll cover that in a fact of the day later on.

Looks nice, doesnt it?

The graphics:

This game looks absolutely amazing for the Sega Genesis, the backgrounds are colorful and nice, the sprites look detailed and i love the art style overall.

The replay Value:

Considering there are 3 characters that play nice and diferent, 13 diferent levels that never get tiring(Except for Sandopolis), a fun multiplayer that i barely mentioned(sorry), some nice music and overall fun, this game is really replayable and its hard to get bored from it.


The conclusion:

Sonic 3 and Knuckles does everything perfect as a sequel and it improves on what Sonic had done in the past 3 years, fun and memorable levels and music, the multiplayer is a nice distraction and with so much fun, this is a game everyone should try.

                                  9.5/10
                             A 9 means the game excells at every single possible angle and it deserves your money.


See you later for a very special review...
-Peabody

COPYRIGHT SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 1, 2,3 AND SONIC AND KNUCKLES DO NOT BELONG TO ME.