This serves a few purposes any rings collected by your partner are added to your total, and they can also attack and damage enemies. Of course Sonic is still the default way to play, but you can also opt to have Tails follow you around via A.I. Tails can finally fly, and this ability proves frequently useful especially during the more difficult platforming sections. What’s nice is the fact that you can play as either Sonic or Tails again, but the two have varying abilities this time around. The focus may be on Sonic’s trademark speed and dashing abilities but the game still requires some intricate platforming, and it’s still a little sloppy to be honest. This release doesn’t make any radical departures from the established Sonic formula you move from one end of a stage defeating enemies and gather rings all the while running as fast as possible.

It’s pretty typical fare for this series, but this installment deserves props for introducing a new antagonist to the universe. Knuckles steals the chaos emeralds from Sonic, and it’s up to he and Tails to recover them and defeat Dr. Unfortunately Robotnik has also crashed here, and has recruited the help of Knuckles the Echidna who has lived here and protected the master emerald for years. Our two protagonists Sonic and Tails, wind up on a mysterious island. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 takes place just after the finale of the previous game. I finally gave in and found this to be the best game in the entire franchise, and considering its reputation that’s saying a lot. I honestly didn’t have much hope for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 to transcend the issues from the previous release and I sat on playing it for a long while. It simply was never as deep or rewarding as Super Mario World in my opinion, and to add insult to injury they were both released within the same general time frame. While the second title is generally considered to be the fan favorite I’ve always had some issues with the level design. That’s not to say that I’m not a fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy, but I was very late to the party. I remember arguments raging on the school yard over which cartoon character was better, and I’ve personally always been on the Mario side. Sonic the Hedgehog was seen as Sega’s answer to Mario, and from what I recall it seemed that each side had a comparable number of fans.

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