Sonic the Hedgehog 3 | Half of a Masterpiece - Scott The Woz

hey y'all scott here you know one of the top 10 names for children this year happens to be sonic the hedgehog 3 because when everybody wants to be unique nobody's unique stop naming your children unique names just name your kid [ __ ] earl sonic the hedgehog 3 the perfect numbers teaching tool you only need to know the first three letters anyways one two cd three education's a scam this is an interesting one after sonic cd we got three this never happened while cd is a mainline sonic game it's often pushed to the side when the classic sonic era is represented in various media it's probably because it's the most obscure as it was released for a cd add-on that barely sold over 2 million units but i'm gonna say it's not represented as much because god's doing us all a favor let's hear it for not sonic cd only a mere 3 months after sonic cd's north american release sonic the hedgehog 3 released which released 3 months after sonic spinball that released you know how businesses work after sonic spinball allegedly releases it all goes downhill this isn't commenting on the quality of sonic 3 not at all but i feel at this time the sonic franchise peaked on the genesis in terms of popularity sure fans of sonic just oozed themselves over sonic 3 but talk to any average liver of the 1990s and if they played sonic or even just remember sonic at all i'm pretty sure they'd only be talking about sonic 1 and sonic 2. this one wasn't nearly as iconic to 90s pop culture as the first two and now to sonic fans i love when it does that this is easily one of the most beloved titles in the series i just think it came out right when we were experiencing sonic overload i mean it came out three months after dr robotnik's mean bean there were four sonic titles in the span of three months sure there were i still believe sonic spinball was a lucid dream i had once and nothing more and it gets harder and harder to believe that sonic the hedgehog 3 was meant to be the magnum opus of the series at that point the ultimate sonic adventure starting development after sonic 2. really see sonic 2 was developed by stei we learned about them when talking about sonic 2 and sex ed that development branch of sega based out of california was comprised of half japanese and half american developers and while both contributed to sonic 2 being as good as it was communication was a bit difficult when the next major sonic game was proposed producer yuji naka said i'm gonna work with the japanese developers but don't worry the american developers at sti were tasked with creating a game that doesn't exist initially sonic 3 was planned to be a much different title from its predecessors maybe incorporating 3d graphics or having an isometric view the problem was that would take time and sonic 3 needed to come out a week ago a 2d platformer just like regular sonic games it was but sticking with the tried and true formula wasn't stopping the developers from wanting to push boundaries this game was going to take place in a large connected world each zone led to the next seamlessly and there would be so many new zones power-ups characters abilities a more fleshed out story a kiss good night this was said to be one of the biggest genesis games ever sonic the hedgehog 3 was released in north america on february 2nd 1994. it was groundhog day but sega considered it hedgehog day marketing was thick with this one music was released events took place i was beyond excited and i wasn't even born yet that's the power of sonic 3. in terms of my history with the title while i own sonic 1 and sonic 2 for my actual sega genesis i didn't own an actual copy of sonic 3 or any other sonic title because i was too busy owning miss pac-man for genesis this was my full childhood genesis collection i must be fun at parties can't wait until the next sonic game i take a look at miss pac-man see it took until i owned a gamecube for me to count to three i got sonic mega collection and that's how i discovered the rest of the genesis sonic lineage what the [ __ ] is that sonic 3 was playable here and just like sonic 1 and 2 before it i never got far in this one i really enjoyed playing it honest to god but an ongoing theme with 2d sonic games i played as a kid was i could only get about two levels in before giving up i never got past marble zone in sonic 1 as a kid chemical plan zone in sonic 2. i don't even remember getting past angel island zone in sonic 3 at all it's the first level again i can talk about miss pac-man if you want i don't know why i couldn't get past anything in this game but regardless i played that first level again and again and again i would play this and all the sonic games that exist consistently even if i didn't make really any progress in them well i do own sonic 3 for the actual genesis now the box are so much more detailed and colorful showing a lush island setting but that didn't stop them from using the exact same post for sonic again after using it in every piece of artwork in north america previously sure in japan all the sonic boxes follow the same formats but it's all unique art and europe is just happy to be here new attitude new enemies it was a yearbook quote contender i'll give them that i should finally beat this game there really are no excuses anymore i'm beating devil's third my prerequisites out of the way if i can't be happy with myself then i sure as hell can beat sonic 3. you ever spray painted tomato blue [Music] you've seen the sonic 3 title screen they may have scrapped the idea of sonic 3 having 3d graphics but at least they somewhat utilize that idea within the title screen he winks so much it's just blinking at this point it's weird he almost looks like he's made out of clay with how his pupils cast a shadow and the official title is sonic 3 sonic the hedgehog it's good they clarified let's press start and jump immediately into a game it wouldn't be me playing a sonic game on the genesis without an immediate jump into gameplay who am i this isn't right a genesis sonic game you can save your progress in have the past three years been a lie i don't know where i am but i have the sudden urge to not have sex we jump into a cutscene two mammals a plane it must be sonic 3. so after sonic 2 dr robotnik's death egg falls out of space onto angel island an island that floats that's stupid because of the power of the master emerald never mind it's guarded by one that knuckles the echidna a red thing i thought he was a girl as a kid he's pretty stupid so rebounding tricks him into thinking sonic's a bad guy so when they all go to check out angel island zone knuckles is always one step ahead of them he steals all of sonic's chaos emeralds he collected from sonic 2 sets up traps always makes things difficult so not only are we up against robotnik we're up against friendship so now we're off to play an actual video game and sonic 3 well it is building upon exactly what sonic 2 was visually though it does look quite distinct i mean this is sonic no doubt about it but they tweaked his in-game design a bit smaller pupils bigger hands i don't know why but sonic 3 sonic always looked pissy to me like sonic 1 2 and cd sonic look more determined while running sonic 3 sonic is saying you son of a [ __ ] they just added a decent amount of detail to everything especially the levels themselves i mean this is pretty atmospheric for a genesis game if this feels like an actual location it doesn't even matter it's pixelated you know what this place feels like by just looking at a screenshot this is such a lively looking game and illustrates my problem with sonic cd see that game looked neat but i didn't know what i was looking at half the time sonic 3 feels genuine like these are actual places these are worlds with backstories and context i mean what's more interesting a level themed after a levitating island surrounded by shrubbery with vines and secret caves and it catches on fire halfway through or funny green world sure it may be impressive to take such a basic concept and turn it into a full-blown state but no matter what this is way more interesting and fulfilling to explore and these levels give you a reason to explore in past games you'd have all these different paths to take but was there really a reason to take them i would just take the path of whatever i fell on all right we're doing this now sure you could find rings and extra lives maybe a shield and some nooks and crannies in different areas they would reward you for going in certain places but i mean rings are all over the place throughout the level the shield just gave you one extra hit and an extra life is an extra life none of these rewards are cool none of them make you want to call your dad over dad you won't believe it yeah yeah a [ __ ] hedgehog these are little incentives to explore levels but they aren't fun you know sonic 3 absolutely nails exploration we have three new power-ups variations of the shield but this time based off of the elements we have a fire shield that protects us from fire and hitting the jump button twice propels us forward we have a bubble shield that protects us from drowning and hitting the jump button twice bounces us immediately towards the ground and we have an electric shield protects us from electric attacks attracts rings and gives us a double jump these are a blast each one feels important if you find any one of them you want it not just because it gives you an extra hit point but because they're just flat out fun to use and they can be hidden pretty well they aren't all over the place which really makes exploring these levels more worthwhile and not only that the way they set up the special stages this time is ingenious similarly they're hidden throughout levels if you find a fat ring i have news for you blue sphere is the name of the game collect all the blue spheres avoid the red ones you know this is a heavily fun and addictive special stage but it speeds up over time and it's really easy to mess up the checkered floor almost becomes an optical illusion after a while and the controls while great are just delayed enough to make it so one wrong move and you're out of there when these stages are fast they're really fast and can be a bit disorienting i will never recover but these are obviously the most balanced and fun special stages the main series has had so far sonic 1 functionally fine boring makes me fidget in my c sonic 2 way more interesting way too hard and unfair sonic cd sonic cd it's okay sonic three special stages beautiful the way you access them is genius it encourages exploration and when you actually get into the meat of them they're super fun now to access sonic 2 special stages you'd have to collect a certain number of rings and then when passing a checkpoint you'd hop into some stars sonic 3 still retains the whole checkpoint stick but instead of bringing it to special stages we get bonus stages now just fun little mini games that give us chances to win power-ups and extra lives in the sort which is way more fun is a neat little bonus for crossing a checkpoint and having a certain number of rings everything's coming together i'm gonna live this up while i can before we get to the coveted sonic bullsh i am going to treasure this moment this is a sonic game where everything's coming together the level design complements everything they were trying to do here but i know sonic on genesis all right there's always some garbage they threw in here that makes absolutely no sense so i'm gonna be extra diligent and trying to find something they messed up this game this game well there is the insta shield ability if you jump and then hit the jump button again as sonic this little bubble appears quickly and offers a slight boost to your attack and defense range i mean i'm not going to complain about it it's a nice little bonus but what it adds is pretty minimal but tails here is far more beneficial in this game and how he acted in sonic 2 if a second player is controlling him in a typical game he can pick sonic up and fly and if you only want to play his tales you can fly around and swim and in the competitive multiplayer mode you can play as knuckles this game is incredible and not pinnable because that doesn't exist this truly does seem like sonic 2 but everything is refined everything is better new additions new abilities new attitude new enemies well let's jump into the levels here just like sonic 2 each zone has 2x but act 1 doesn't just fade out and then we hard cut into act two no when act one ends act two just begins right there where one left off and then when act two ends we get a cut scene showing context to how sonic and tails travel to the next zone each act has its own unique music pieces unlike in sonic 1 and 2 where the music was the same across each act in the zone this is a huge step up not only making levels feel like they're a part of a cohesive world but also giving each act its own feel sure angel island zone act 1 catches on fire at the end so act 2 is a burning hellscape but now senzak2 has unique music compared to act one it not only is a burning house gape it feels like a burning hellscape and that's important and sonic 3 at the very least has something the rest of the games didn't have and that's michael jackson yeah yeah he works on portions of the soundtrack alongside multiple other people but he is uncredited he didn't leave the project at some point and of course the reason for him being accredited could be for this or this or this yeah yeah that could be why well we start things off with angel island zones such a fun stage finds guys vines each act ends with their own unique boss fight too oh my god this game just keeps improving we move on to hydrocity or hydro city or hit a rocky water stage i left the theme of it taking place underground it's a cool feeling level with some neat ass gimmicks oh my god sonic 3 has such cool random set pieces that you can play around with this is the kind of stuff you'd expect from a 2d game nowadays but this was from the genesis this is incredible marble garden zone that's okay they get slightly lost from time to time with this one it was a bit more frustrating than fun for me personally but then carnival night zone yay similar idea to casino night zone from sonic 2 except this time themed around a carnival then ice cap zone starts up and we're snowboarding and then launch base zone happens kind of similar to marble garden zone for me where it was a bit more frustrating than fun not hard by any means just both of those stages were the only ones where i said what i say every morning where am i and then launch base zone ends and then and that's it and six zones they were all good but that was nothing the game just ends and the final bus doesn't even feel like a final boss it just feels like any other boss in the game now i really am not the kind of person to complain about game length too much if anything i prefer shorter games if persona 5 was less than a sentence long i might take a look at it i don't really mind the length of sonic 3 it honestly takes about as much time to clear on your first playthrough of sonic 1 2 or cd the levels themselves are quite expansive and there's tons to do in them and secrets to discover you can beat the special stages collect the seven chaos emeralds and elect super sonic it's just the game ends out of nowhere the assortment of levels just feels odd like this shouldn't be a whole game it's like if super mario world ended after the third castle like yeah that was really good but you go to all the trouble of fleshing out this world just to only do this much well that was sonic 3. and that was a great albeit incredibly short experience now do i prefer to sonic 2 which was my favorite of the past genesis sonic games i don't know see sonic 3 is just a much more well-rounded experience in terms of quality i can't really recall any major sonic [ __ ] moments and that's a huge deal at its worst two stages were just okay sonic 2 still has that patented sonic [ __ ] with questionable design decisions and weirdly harsh criteria to get to certain parts but i think at its height it's really really good like chemical plant zone casino night zone i will always remember these stages they are iconic parts of sonic's history and sonic 3 just isn't as up there in my opinion all the levels are good at the very least but i think the best stages in sonic 1 and 2 will always feel more important to me than the best sonic 3 levels i know people are sick and tired of seeing chemical plant from sonic 2 or green hill from sonic 1 represented in so many modern sonic games but they're there for a reason they're unbelievably iconic and while sonic 3 has great stages i just don't think that it's nearly as recognizable or memorable in that way it might be because sonic 3 doesn't get re-released nearly as much as sonic 1 and 2. definitely because the soundtrack has some legal disputes there are just a lot of fingers in this pudding so while it does get re-released from time to time most of the time if sega has to put out old sonic games in a collection of some sort they usually just do sonic 1 and 2. those are the most iconic after all it's kind of like how miss pac-man is re-released namco definitely can re-release miss pac-man if they want but that game has more contracts and licenses associated with it so if they have to release a pac-man thing they'd rather just re-release the original pac-man i can go from sonic to miss pac-man on a dime my shadow dennis's collection does ring true to this very day sonic 3 sold well but one and two sold really well maybe because sonic 3 just felt like half a game like it has less levels than sonic 2 and it just ends out of nowhere it feels like this is sonic 3 part 1. maybe because that's what it is yes as previously stated sonic the hedgehog 3 was envisioned as a massive project so much so they had to split into two parts to not only release sonic 3 on time but also so then they wouldn't have to deal with unloading the entire game onto one cartridge so we have one more genesis sonic title to look at on top of sonic 3d blast and dr robotnik's mean beam machine and knuckles kx for the sega 32x add-on but not sonic spinball because i have a giveable [ __ ] about reality and this isn't it name one time sonic spinball existed go ahead name one sonic spinball sonic spinball sonic spinball i was a different man back then no you

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,087,409

Rating: 4.9671612 out of 5

Keywords: Sonic, Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic and Knuckles, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Classic Sonic, Sonic Sega Genesis, Genesis, Sega, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic Spinball, Sonic Mania, Nintendo, Mario, Nintendo Switch, Sonic Review, Sonic Retrospective

Id: Wgn4X44YogM

Length: 16min 13sec (973 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/TheDoctorWumbology]

I'm excited for "Sonic & Knuckles | The Other Half of a Masterpiece - Scott The Woz".

[u/AGMarasco]

Why does he keep complaining about a sonic spinball game? They never made one

[u/[deleted]]

I liked this episode and that ending was really funny to me

[u/TheePurpleToaster]

In my book, Sonic Spinball is a Sonic WIN-ball.

[u/jawsome274]

Lmao I fucked up my date and time so I thought today was Saturday and when I saw a Scott video I nearly shit my pants

[u/TheAngelPeterGabriel]

scott is very sun-kissed in this episode.

[u/porcubot]

One half of the best Sonic game that Sega likes to pretend doesn't exist.

By the way, who called it? I saw someone call Sonic as an upcoming topic because they noticed a trend, every September or something

[u/Lithak]

Can't wait to tell my dad about this episode, he'll never believe it!

[u/Ethlandiaify]

Scott calling his dad to tell him about the bonus stage was so wholesome