Unapologetic - Sonic 3 & Knuckles

sonic the hedghog it means so much me means so much to everybody I mean he was created by a group of people to try to appeal to the biggest audience possible to take on the mighty Mario and yeah he completely smashed it Sonic the Hedgehog is in my opinion the most important videogame mascot character of all time I remember as a kid seeing this amazing cool hit attitude character of that original free Sonic the Hedgehog games and every single one I remember the very very first time I ever played them no games have ever had a greater impact on me than that original trilogy depending on your age and what you grew up with Sonic may mean something different to you whether you know you're part of the sonic adventure generation or the the free D generations colors esque heroes generation but for me the you know Sega are really going back to the roots and bringing Sega back to the classic fans and I just couldn't be happier he's such an important character in the whole of gaming landscape we need to find a generation we all have our favorite video game and that could be for any number of reasons you can cycle through your favorites especially as you grow and expand your knowledge and your standards or maybe it just depends what you feel like that day but at some point for everyone who identifies as a gamer they have made this choice for the first time in their lives maybe you came to that conclusion long after the controller's been put down and you gave yourself some time to think it over maybe you just love this thing from the instant you would start you anticipated this new game in a series you love in it somehow not only met your expectations but blasted right past them whatever the case I would say at some point yet at the start or at the end or somewhere in between there is a moment during your time with this game where it hit you that point where expectations were surpassed standards were set up to this point you have never played anything else quite as good as what you are playing right now in this moment you are for the time playing your favorite video game ever but that moment was the furthest thing from my mind when I realized I wanted to make a show called game apologist I'm recording this video on the 3rd anniversary of the upload of my first episode I had been sitting on the channel name for quite a while I knew what I wanted from the show I wanted to challenge popular perspectives on games I felt deserved a deeper dive a second chance all too often I would hear gaming pundits dismiss something truly wonderful for some silly reason or the other and for whoever was willing to give me the time of day I wanted to offer a different opinion ask you to look at this from a different point of view we all play games for different reasons after all and you could be missing something truly special to you because someone had to hit a deadline for an article or a video and at the same time I wanted to challenge myself find out how and why people found enjoyment from titles that I and many others utterly despise I wanted to bring experiences to light them might have gone unnoticed for one reason or the other and again I wanted to challenge my own perspectives and even the name of the show game apologist is a challenge within itself apologist is a dirty term and it's thrown around a lot in gaming circles and yeah I also kind of wanted to tell some jokes because I don't think my jokes make sense outside in the real world so I outlined a few scripts and really could have started the show with any of them but I knew I had to kick things off by talking about one of the most notorious infamous series in all of gaming and one of my favorites Sonic the Hedgehog but even with the series chosen I felt aimless do I generalize the franchise and try to figure out where it all went wrong like so many others tell you what I do to fix things and what my perfect Sonic game is what combination of gameplay styles are how to tweak this or that or what would work or do i instead talk about an individual game where does the series actually go bad everyone seems to have a different idea of what that is and how do I come out of the gates asking people to listen to the stranger and give some random sonic game a chance how do I do that when I know there are some absolutely stellar games in the series they could start off with instead again game apologist is a tricky title and that was sort of the point but do I kick things off without showing people a baseline for what I personally consider a good game I don't make this show without also sounding like someone with a terrible taste in video games and what I even believe in the game I was talking about so I just sat on that channel name for you writing a script every now and then but never feeling confident on what sauna game I would cover in the first episode that is until one day audience game scoop would answer that question for me I think we're okay I think we need to admit that this was never really a great franchise and we keep trying and trying and trying to find this thing that was never really actually there sonic was never good yes I'm gonna stress this like I did back then these are just guys with opinions poking fun at a fan base that's easy to rile up but you know what I was kind of riled up this was fresh off the announcements of two brand new Sonic games and yeah the sonic cycle was a thing and I'd certainly tumble around on it a couple times and ultimately despite the potential of both of these games one of them would prove disappointing but the other was a return to form for his fans of the Genesis games and we were excited finally we were seen Sega understood the long-lost classic gameplay the cherished simple style that for some reason could not be properly emulated by Sonic Team finally it was okay to have two different Sonic games at the same time and regardless what happened with the 3d one with mania Sega had hired a competent team that had proven themselves within the fan community the fans were making a classic Sonic game what a daring yet ridiculously obvious choice and even with that first trailer we could tell that this was going to be something special but game scoop the podcast that brought in IG and staffers to discuss and share their opinions about the news that week well they had to bring some shade to the table as well and I when I saw Sonic mania I thought to myself we might finally have the second good Sonic game yes so there was a goods they were first yeah was the first Sonic CD like funny food and look like again I should have clarified three years ago now that people are actually watching the show I really need to stress this Brian if you are for some reason watching the Sonic fan talk about the silly ancient clip once again just want you to know want everyone watching this to know I genuinely enjoy your work and your sense of humor a lot from what you put out into the world you seem like a genuine and sweet human being you are professionally hilarious and you have all of my respect except for this particular opinion then oh man this was some pretentious mean-spirited uninformed trolling you guys basically called us idiots liking this thing and Damon here is acting like he's reminding us of the frustrations of the weaker titles so people seemed excited about this Sonic mania announcement but I don't know people seem to have forgotten that not too long ago they were sung the Hedgehog for yeah it was really steppe asada Klee had two episodes yeah and I think was pretty ocher no we haven't forgotten have you and I'm still gonna make fun of your friend and co-worker because he looks like a Keebler Elf Justin you get back in that tree and you make me some bud stripes now look this is just one tiny clip from like three years ago when I'm recording this we can't linger on this forever there's a lot more to these guys than just this silly clip talking about a game series they don't like but this is what kicked things off er me and it still remains a perfect example of how the broader gaming audience views Sonic games and the fanbase that follows him like I said in that first episode I did indeed get irritated listening to these guys just trash this series and everyone who loves these games but I was fully aware that some of the early three games had not aged super well as cherished as any maybe still amazing in their day in a perfectly fun time and a great deal other Sonic games were well I mean they were okay but just okay and others were yeah just outright broken and then there's all that weird stuff nobody actually talks about but I mean who's gonna go to the mat for wakuwaku sonic patrol car so yeah I understood where the distaste for the franchise came from but Sonic was never good the original Genesis games bad does they all want to have some despite my immediate defensive reaction to the Hedgehog ad it was hard to argue the reputation of one of my favorite game characters I knew Sonic fans were mad with them but I remained fixated on the Genesis titles I needed validation I had to be sure I wasn't crazy but more and more people were just saying all of this was not good and as I was discovering as I dive deeper into the fandom itself those guys didn't even seem to agree on what makes Sonic good or bad learning that many would call me a classic fanboy or an elitist this or that and it was dumfounded guiness offensive as you want about your we're hogs and green eyes athletic tape which sonic has a fellow runner I'm a little armed with your application of the stuff but the genesis came through the foundation to all of this these are the games that held up Sega while they made stupid decision after stupid decision there was no mistaking what a Sonic game was to me because well I had known that answer for what was 25 years up to that point I thought certainly here in the sonic community is where I would find validation and reverence for these cherished games only to discover way more criticism than anything IGN was flinging it felt like regardless of the source all anyone ever wanted to talk about was what made sonic bad the gaming community as ostracized as it remains the general public hated the series and the fans hated each other for liking different parts of the series and I was somehow labeled a pretentious elitist because I thought that classic games were well classics I didn't understand so I had to ask myself was Sonic ever good to begin with was i letting nostalgia blind me was I too biased could I objectively say these were good games if I look deep enough could I even say that subjectively and what's that even matter coming from my mouth I have zero professional experience in game design or game journalism I'm just a nobody regardless this nobody had that question linger in his mind for a long time so I went back and played the original Sonic games and I did have to accept that yes I am biased nostalgia did play a part of it for me and I certainly recalled frustrations that others had pointed out and while not the greatest gamer in the world I had played these games since I was a kid I was quite familiar with the gameplay and level layouts what challenge I had as a kid I had long since surpassed but at the same time I'm not a damn idiot I have grown as a person and a gamer I have obsessively read into how these things were made I have expanded my views on what makes a game good and enjoy a wide variety of play styles and genres I have watched this industry grow up and continue to be eager for new experiences just around the corner and I can look back on games I enjoyed as a kid and say yeah these things kind of sucked and that's funny I do like some bad games it's the whole point of the show but with all that said when it comes to the classic Sonic titles yes of course these are good games are their flaws sure labyrinth zones a pain in the ass what a revelation I will happily and openly admit I am biased towards these game but why there had to be more to this than I was just a dumb kid who didn't know any better what was it about these games that grabbed me that grabbed the hearts of an entire generation you think sonic was big once he hit Nintendo platforms guys if you weren't there you don't understand like he took over everything in the early 90s as I made the videos about these games I became more intimately aware of their flaws but also their brilliance the first Sonic game is very experimental very bold the ball physic mechanics and speed were unlike anything we had seen before the Rings acting as both collectibles and health meshed well with the trial and error gameplay they did mention a lot more traditional platforming because these were the building blocks of what they had to work off of and some new and interesting ways to play with water and platformers and while that was clever that definitely outstayed its welcome but all in all a very commendable first outing and I can promise you back in 1991 it was incredible then came Sonic 2 and what a brilliant little sequel that turned out to be it distills the great ideas from 1 and makes what many would consider the definitive classic sonic experience obviously if I was fine with the first game I would be fine with this one even Sonic CD as messy and labyrinthian as it could be still got quite creative with its implementation of speed and time travel not as polished as Sonic 2 and in compared to some areas in Sonic 1 but the creativity shines through they made a memorable rival to great soundtracks and an unforgettable experience it's a very weird Sonic game and I think that's why we love it so much so as I kept making the show I would dip in and out of the sonic franchise coming to terms with the fact that yes there were certainly flaws here and there but that wasn't really a revelation just a reminder of some gameplay frustrations I can clearly remember as a child but none of those choices were truly awful or unplayable and this was still a groundbreaking set of games with far more good than bad so much so I found myself not even wanting to use the term game apologist when it comes to these games because these are not bad games and no not even Sonic 1 you've got to show some respect for the starting point of all of this in the three years since I started this channel I had slowly but surely made my way through all of these games but then we got to this point the great black double stack monstrosity of a game Sonic 3 & Knuckles and this this was the game my mind kept coming back to you while I was listening to these dudes bash on the Sun you want to take some easy potshots at Shadow the Hedgehog or Sonic o6 fine beat that dead horse all you want Sonic 4 wasn't that great again the fans figured that out long before your review team but you dragged sonic 3 into this asana is never good if you disagree [Music] whack and whack you [ __ ] look I've been patient I have kept an open mind I spent so many hours playing experimenting putting together videos doing my best to explain why these games are great despite the problems myself and others have found in them but if you are a professional game critic someone who is getting paid well enough to make a living sharing their opinions on gaming making a career on recommending titles to others a student of this interactive wonder of a hobby and you are telling others that this is a bad game stop please just stop if you are biased against us angry liberal Psychopaths fine I completely get that but get over it if you are telling me this is a bad game you are telling me you don't know what a good game is and you have zero business being in the business of game reviews I don't care if it's not your favorite I don't care if it's not your cup of tea I'm not saying you have to like it but if you are trying to tell me or anybody that Sonic 3 is a bad game you're wrong you're just wrong and don't think for a second I have forgotten about you other Sonic fans almost everybody who has stopped by the channel has been amazing the outpour of support has been overwhelming but I'm not yelling at you guys it's about the rest of you making us look bad before you go toot toot sonic boom ER and peace out I love every era of Sonic games and there are some damn fine content down the line these are to those Sonic fans we're just disrespecting the classics just because it's not your song if you are coming at me with classic elitist this or a nostalgic fanboy that it's overrated afraid of change or whatever weak nonsense you want to spit out sit your ass down because grandpa's gonna tell you about the good old days I have spent an extensive amount of time on this game we have an entire playlist just on this title and goodness knows I could keep going we've broken down the carts individually we've talked about the storytelling potential of our three main characters and when I started this marathon I never intended to put in that much work honestly was just gonna slap the two reviews together and edit in another 10 minutes for an epilogue but I started and Knuckles November because I wanted to tell the world why this game is so good this is the baseline for what I consider a good game and there is more to talk about than just this game because this is the point where I knew I would love this series forever and I know I'm not alone there yeah this is the obvious favor and everyone loves it but I am tired of people telling me it's overrated I am tired of the disrespect this game gets from other fans I am tired of people acting like it's not brilliant I know what the thumbnail says the sonic franchise is way bigger than this one game and again we have a lot to talk about I'm not done talking about Sonic in this video and again I love all types of Sonic games adventure style boost style racing handhelds but if I had to run back into the burning building that is this franchise and rescue one of the letter I'm coming out with the two headed to Forman there is a lot to love in this series but we need to accept that there are bad games and yes you can enjoy it regardless but that doesn't make it okay to release broken garbage because when it gets bad it gets really really bad and to me I find that unacceptable because as broken as the worst can be it does not come close to the brilliance of the series when it's at its best if you had to pick one game out of all of these years to hold up above the rest right at the tippy top of that Tower of power to show the critics to show everyone who says this series is no longer relevant that it was never good one game to speak for the rest of the series I am going to this black monolith of a double cartridge this is the Green Hill I'm dying on because now it's time to get biased it's time to get nostalgic it's time to gush go over fun little factoids and everything else we didn't go over in the other videos it's time to stop apologizing I'm Nick and this is unapologetic where we talk about the good in one of the greatest games ever made [Music] [Applause] [Music] so growing up I was mostly a Super Nintendo kid and when I looked at Sega and Sonic I always thought they were cooler than some of the things on the Super Nintendo I had a lot of friends who were super into Sonic and my next-door neighbors invited me over one day to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles from that moment on I was obsessed with Sonic and I have almost completed every single Sonic game since and at this point of my life I don't think a Sonic game is either good or bad truth be told I think there's so much fun in almost every Sonic game out there and it makes me happy to know there are so many people out there who enjoy Sonic who he is to understand why this game turned out as delightful as it did is to understand the mindset of Yuji naka the lead programmer for the original trilogy of games yum yum Yugi set out to create something in his own words unforgettable but Yugi bean Yugi the ideas got a little bit wide they first start off attempting to make a 3d adventure and they tried for a good long while eventually they have to drop the idea altogether as the genesis just could not pull off what they were trying to attempt and we're back to the more traditional 2d format that didn't mean that coast on what worked before the teams still expanded and experimenting Lydian imaginations run wild it and get creative and solving unique gimmicks you find from level to level must have been a real proud of that barrel they also had account for the new play styles brought on by ting yuckles who is designed in contrast to Sonic in a number of ways from color to his hairstyle having more tentacles in your browser history you know exactly what I'm talking about oh don't even like you don't like you don't know ya dirty diddler I'm gonna spend a great deal of time talking about the pre-production of the game if you want to know more about that I highly recommend strife Fox's video extensively covering that topic and like seriously the video production of that thing is oh so good my point is Sonic 3 knuckles is what you get when you let talented creatives be talented and creative the developers were very familiar with the series mechanics at this point and we're still excited to bring more to the table Yuji naka was in the best position with the best people to create the best possible game they knew how to make but even with the planets aligned problems still reared their redheads you want to know why this titles to games instead of one cuz of this guy yep here in the US Sega had a promotional deal going on with McDonald's but there was a time limit there's just no way to get this great big gang ready in time to promote said giant game with cheap plastic garbage in paper bags next to chicken dogs so sonic team had a problem but thankfully they found a very creative solution they chopped the game in half and released what was ready to go they could have very easily just made to regular old Genesis cartridges made Sonic 3 the name the next one Sonic 4 with no extra bells and whistles and nobody would have baton a knife but these crazy kids took that extra time to not only make the second half of the full adventure they went out of their way to figure out how to fuse two into one enter lock-on technology creating a kart unlike any other Sonic and Knuckles would feature a port on the top that would allow another Sonic game to ride that big black cartridge to create a magical merger now really this only worked for two games and the potential for mixing and matching games seemed real cool but uh well most of the time you just get a blue balls so when I was little the first consoles I had were always hand-me-downs my uncle's had the ColecoVision and Atari 2600 so those were the first consoles I spent a lot of time with at the time the NES was being phased out so a lot of them started popping up at garage sales and I ended up getting one so that was the first console I really had all to myself the Sega Genesis though was the first current gen console that I got brand-new and that was solely my own with it came a copy of Sonic 2 and I quickly became obsessed and turned into a lifelong Sonic fan I remember at one point I met a kid who wrote down a bunch of sound test codes on a piece of paper for me to access debug mode and unlock super sonic and at the time I didn't even know about Super Sonic so once I took the notes home and tried them out I swear my brain exploded I can honestly say when I was little I spent more time with that game than I did with other kids and I can't tell you how many hours I have poured into just that one game not to say I didn't also enjoy 1 or 3 & Knuckles though to be fair I think I tried really hard to convince myself I liked Sonic 1 but to this day it's still my favorite game of all time and because of it I still care about this series after all these years and after all the strides and MS unfortunately sonic one was left out of the party but you could now play knuckles in Sonic 2 and yes mods exist everywhere these days letting you play just about anybody in an anything but this was mind boggling to us as kids I don't know anyone who was a fan of this game when it first released that was not losing their minds with the inclusion of knuckles into I mean I'm sure PC gamers were just like yeah so what are T modded knuckles in the doom like six months ago who cares but this was just the coolest sonichu is designed around Sonic and only Sonic nobody else's special abilities sonic teased all the design could prove problematic for a character like knuckles considering his abilities aren't one for one with Sonics but the developers took their time to go back and tweak some of the levels in mechanics to better suit the end kid now they would place new item boxes here or there since novels climb up walls that originally had to nothing up there could go super rings would stick around after you got down to special stages which was a nice change of pace really these are just nice little tweaks here and there so you could take advantage of knuckles abilities on occasion Sonic 2 was already a great game suddenly you had a new excuse to go back and check it out again I think it's so cool that they managed to manipulate the code to work with Sonic 2 as well I mean they really didn't have any reason to do that and I would have loved to see this work elsewhere but considering this was near the end of the 16-bit generation I I'm really just thankful for the inclusion at all for me having Knuckles in Sonic 2 just solidified how well he integrated into the entire franchise remember back then he was still a new character but even in 1994 it was clear the echidna was here to stay and that's really cool and on I'm glad they did all this with Sonic 2 but the bigger deal and the whole point of this crazy cartridge connection was combining Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles to create the true full adventure when three launched there was no indication that part two would be coming just a few months later caught everybody off guard here in the states and the original plan was to release Sonic 3 & Knuckles has one single cart in Japan they ended up splitting it and two over there as well but it really goes to show how important it was for Yugi and his team to have this combined adventure as the true way to experience the game regardless of what creators would tell you down the road as hokey as it is I believe the lock on gimmick is awesome I'm not saying splitting up games is always a good thing especially in today's market but back then it was a novel idea and a very Sega idea Sonic and Knuckles worked as a separate purchase because well at its core you are still buying a video game and has already extensively covered it was perfectly fine on its own and speaking from personal experience that's pretty important because I did not own Sonic 3 at the time I got Sonic and Knuckles having a limited amount of games to play SNK provided me yet another solid Sonic experience and a really awesome new character to play with and I could also combine my copy of Sonic 2 to get even more out of the game I had thoroughly played through Sonic 3 on a couple of rentals and I loved it but again I didn't own it so I really wanted to try what I thought were the only new gimmicks to the game when you combined them that being playing the exclusive character from the one cart in the other and honestly as a little kid at the time and this being a brand new experience with no internet guidance this game was still challenging and hiding a great deal of secrets I would remain unaware of for quite a long time but enough preamble we've already explored why Sonic 3 is great and why Sonic & Knuckles is great now it's time to look at the combined adventure that is Sonic 3 knows [Music] something that younger sonic fans even those who count this game is one of their favorites in the series might overlook about Sonic 3 & Knuckles is castello unexpected and atypical it was in 1994 if you grew up playing it on compilations it would be really easy to take this for granted but there was this span of time lasting eight months which is a frickin eternity when you're a kid where Sonic 3 was the only part of the game that we had so all we can do was wonder what's on the other side of that pillar what's this arrow pointing to and what would we find if we could get there sort of finally unbox that strangely shaped cartridge to learn that I could now combine these two games into one and answer all of those questions and that I could even take knuckles for a spin in a game that predated his creation this was like nothing I'd ever experienced before and I wouldn't experience anything even close to it again until years down the road but stuff like DLC and online updates Sonic 3 & Knuckles was like magic - games became one to create something that was bigger better and more epic than the sum of its parts that kind of adaptability was always something I loved about Sonic from the high-stakes drama of satam to the light-hearted slapstick of adventures from Sonic 2 to adventure 2 to colors and beyond this series has been through so many eras and has meant so many different things to so many generations of fans given that it's okay to critique the aspects of the series that don't do it for you but please do that without tearing down other Sonic fans contrary to what metal believed there was never only one Sonic and our phantom would be stronger and more welcoming and more magical if we could celebrate that everybody has their preference on which Sonic as their favors but we're all still locked onto each other as fans of the blue and by the way hey Nick congratulations and thanks for having me on I knew you'd make it when you look at it and I mean literally look at it goodness gracious this is purty they have this almost faux 3d style going on with the graphics everything kinda a sheen to it and even without mode-7 that rotating effect the SNES could pull off the special stages looks particularly impressive and apparently it wasn't too taxing either because they could generate loads of these suckers I mean III don't know how they pulled it off but again you got strife Fox's video if you want to get into a little bit more and before anybody asks me again because I guess this is a sticking point I really don't mind the look of Sonic's sprite in this game I think it fits with the rest of the aesthetic it's perfectly fine outside of looking pretty game also sounds very pretty as well which again is a commendable effort considering this is on the Sega Genesis and that usually sounded like yeah like like that the team really pushed this system to its absolute limits on every front and look we've already covered the music before in a separate video so I'm not gonna delve too deep into it this time but if you somehow skip that or you weren't aware Michael Jackson and some of his crew actually helped out with some of the tracks here which might be the reason why we're not seeing anymore re-releases of Sonic 3 & Knuckles still available to buy on Xbox and steamer wherever it was before all the alleged legal problems have cropped up I've discussed it already countless other people have discussed already not lingering on it but I bring it up because recently believe it or not we actually had some news about Sonic 3 surfaced during this marathon a couple months back a beta surfaced online for Sonic 3 showed us like a lot of cool little things like Sonic manias drop - apparently that was in it some different sprites this and that the other but interestingly enough it turns out there were separate tracks of music before Michael Jackson got involved the same tracks that are used on the PC version of Sonic 3 and I said in that last video that they sounded like but because well they sound like but [Music] but as it turns out you filter it through a Genesis the original way was supposed to sound they're all pretty good actually [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] and I would argue some of them are a little more fitting some of who use a bit of Polish but all in all like these are really good think I still like ice cap better but as far as launch base and carnival nights concern I much prefer these ones regardless let's not get into another sonic CD discussion here whatever version you go with this is all great stuff you can hear the talent and skill behind whatever track you listen to bringing out the very best of of ancient sound ship [Music] you Oh Sonic 3 & Knuckles is more than just nostalgia or a heartwarming memory for me it was an integral part of my childhood friends and I would spend the weekends helping each other complete blue sphere challenges or sharing new green locations we found or gloating about who beat the endgame first I played this entry so much my family recognized the music my siblings have memories watching me play it and attribute the game to sibling friendship and shared memories but despite my shameless love for Sonic CD sonic 3 and knuckles is still the definitive sonic experience for me and I only now appreciate the voiceless storytelling all these years later it seems dramatic but without Sonic 3 & Knuckles I may not be the avid fan or artist that I am today [Music] now that you have to combine and complete Sonic 3 experience you can now take tales further than ever on the island with the Sonic & Knuckles levels I was happy to see their spots designed specifically for him in those later levels as we've discussed before tales flight can be considered the easy mode but don't write them off like I did for so long that doesn't mean you're gonna be bored the fight is still satisfying and a great way to slow down and really get a lay of the land for each level the game rewards you quite significantly for exploring and tales is the best way to do them it's so easy to zip by giant rings if you're not paying attention and there are some that tails and sometimes knuckles can only get to and with tails specifically for those a lot more familiar with sonic Knuckles campaigns tails playthrough does not allow you to access a super forum until you get to the second half of the adventure one of the cool perks brought on by combining Sonic 3 & Knuckles and in a way that makes the first half of his adventure more of a challenge if you're already very familiar with playing these levels yeah that's great and all but like many kids at the time what was really exciting for me was the fact that now I could explore Sonic threes levels with Knuckles again from my own unique perspective this was especially special because I played so much of Sonic & Knuckles by itself before I finally had access to both games so I was already very familiar with Knuckles by the time I popped 3 on top and I gotta tell you that was incredibly satisfying the developers clearly planned a lot around knuckles abilities in three and T's players with barriers that were clearly meant to be destroyed imagine playing a Metroid map and never getting access to the super missiles to unlock green doors or like in a more real world since anyone that's growing up an old house that had a sealed-off door you can never ask like that drives it crazy man Narni could be in well with SNK knuckles pops on by with the keys and finally lets us in and what we got was well the same mini boss you'd be getting with the other characters except now it's a little bit more aggressive with that flamethrower and after you beat it discover a whole new section of the level that we had never seen before with layouts designed specifically around knuckles ability to climb and Glide seen as this is Knuckles home turf makes sense that he can dip around spots that songs not only unaware of but couldn't even access if he knew where it was and Cena's knuckles zouri technically takes place after sonic story it also kind of makes sense that the bosses are a little harder this time around they're a little more refined and therefore a little more aggressive why would you bring them back if they had flaws worth fixing right sonic team basically once you break through this rock barrier you are entering the hard mode of the game I was expecting some three to become significantly easier once I got the Echidna but I instead found more challenge than ever before and see just a bit more of this mysterious island through the eyes of its guardian now just the way they doled this out with the releases it's just so cool knuckles is basically the master quest of this game and it's just man yeah I love walk on technology now with all this love details in our new boy knuckles as a kid I was wondering what's even the point of playing his song what's special in his playthrough I mean I guess he's the only one that gets this opening cutscene and that's you've seen enough of that but not much else changes a whole lot for Sonic he is the only character you can play in either cartridge on its own but that does not mean he's not worth playing ultimately he gets some amazing changes when you combine the two games but you're gonna have to earn them more on that a little bit later Sonic still has to act as the standard place time he can't scale a level like the other two but don't count him out all the other abilities are built off the core gameplay that he provided in the earlier games the levels are far more explorable and the other two can maneuver around a little bit easier which is gonna require Sonic to get a little more creative there are some Hidden Springs and floating platforms that Sonic's got to pay attention to where the others not so much Sonic's gameplay does not allow you to fly or glide over your problems it requires you to understand what speed and momentum can get you with belt patience and practice yeah believe it or not you sort of need those things to get the best out of a Sonic game sonic has to use that to maneuver not just the main pathway but it also required the to have a pretty solid handle of what sauna can do and how he interacts with his skate ramp pinball environment like any solid platformer this game rewards you the more you master the place time and maybe it's just me but few games are more satisfying than classic Sonic you will hit traps and enemies but again that's why the ring system is so forgiving it sometimes feels cheap not going to pretend that's not the case but it's a lot better than throwing lives at the same problem and having to restart from checkpoints over and over again there is that - from time to time this is still a platformer but all in all classic Sonic is still a breezy set of games I'm not saying they're devoid of challenge especially that first one but I don't really agree with the critics you see these games are too cheap Sonic doesn't have to hit most of his enemies in one particular way he can murder ball his way through most of his problems and you still have to learn how to react to those robots but for the most part you're gonna be fine at the same time I also don't agree with the notion that all you have to do is move right to win there is still challenge there it just isn't as taxing as a lot of other platformers by the time I figure out a Megaman game I'm pretty drained I know there are a lot of you out there who have mastered these suckers and will scoff at me but my blood is boiling more often than not with those games I feel accomplished and yes they are fun but when I put one down I am tired and I have very little interest in jumping back in the trial and error is so ridiculously high and so damn punishing and again that's not to say that Megaman is bad these are brilliantly crafted games and the high challenge is again the major appeal I know there are more comparable games to Sonic's gameplay but just hear me out I bring in this comparison because while yes you will still hit things you do not want to hit in a Sonic game there's a reason I keep saying these games are digital skate parks the more experience with Sonic is like learning how to land new tricks on a skateboard it's fun to roll around at first and yeah you're gonna get hurt on occasion but eventually you're gonna learn jumps and tricks and all of it will start to flow together giving you an adrenalin rush each and every time regardless of how well you master these layouts but I've never actually learned to skateboard I'm just kind of going off the pro skater games so I hope that makes some kind of sense there's just a lot of crazy ideas happening at once and the way I describe it this game should be an over-ambitious hot mess but somehow it's not this shouldn't work but it just does and it just gets better the more familiar you are with the physics and level layout I get like any solid platformer still a tricky thing to balance out for games I mean like seriously when was the last time the Pokemon game actually was a challenge for you they're just 40-hour tutorials for the multiplayer and mario has always done a fantastic job of ramping up the challenge for experienced players looking for something more but as iconic as it is the first few levels can feel it will stale after one but the better you are with Sonic the better you are in this skatepark the early sonic stages get so much praise because they normally allow you to just go nuts and it's fun to play around with these physics and yes I know I'm just speaking in circles here I haven't made my point the simple gameplay has to work with these three different characters with their different abilities it has to work with every level that challenges and entertains with a plethora of new gadgets and enemies and you don't need to learn an entirely different control scheme or placed on and somehow you're never bored with what is basically the same principles that were established all the way back in Green Hill Zone it is absolutely crazy that all of this comes together as well as it does this game learns all of these lessons from the previous entries in the series but still changes things up enough to have its own unique identity it still leaves enough of what made those older titles special and even encourages you to try one of them out with some echidna seasoning the platforming element makes a big comeback unlike Sonic 1 and no longer feels like they're trying to copy other games but instead offering challenges unique to Sonic and his abilities and at the same time they still offer a lot of high speed gameplay that you would find in Sonic 2 and I know a lot of fans are now saying they don't like the stop-and-go element this brings about but again you're using the same physics the same controls and it works together quite well and another critique I see a lot when it comes to this game there are a lot of random devices and mechanics from level to level and yeah not all of them are integrated quite as nicely as they could have been but all-in-all they're more fun than they are not Sonic is all about treating these environments like a playground go try out some the goofy rides this thing is still made for kids you got to remember that not everything needs to be a death-defying challenge and not every single thing needs to constantly have you zipping forward a mile a minute you are required to master momentum to get through the environment but Sonic also has to play decently when he slows down I mean yeah the barrel is a massive pain for us kids who didn't know any better but what you know to do it's done you're never gonna make that mistake again and this clearly made to be a challenge they would have locked you out otherwise the developers forced you to slow down and think through the problem because as it turns out it's a pretty easy solution so many of us got stuck myself included how ridiculous did you feel when you realize all you had to do was stop and just move that d-pad up and down what's this portion necessary would this game have been better without it that you've been propped probably I think it's that's very possible there are always gonna be things they could tweak and refine I mean we wouldn't have sonic 3 error otherwise all in all the level design holds up against most of the scrutiny remember the developers were told to just go wide not to worry about what the technology can do they'll just figure that part out later they started with a fun idea first and built the technology around it they didn't care about the barriers because they were smart and talented enough to know that eventually they would break that barrier down the barrel and a lot of other little mechanics tells me the developers are asking their players to think this challenge through use your head it's not rocket science the answers are right there in your hands you've been bottlenecked into the situation learn how to solve it and understand that this game on top of the high speed fun and platforming is gonna require you to think outside the box sometimes break down that damn box they throw in all these crazy ideas into a game that requires just the directional path and a single button to get anything done and showed us all the different ways we could use them and yes some fare a little better than others but overall it's astounding what they managed to pull off this isn't the Mario method of building a single level around one mechanic and nothing against that Mario games are the gold standard for a reason but Sonic 3 zones throw multiple platforming challenges at you the entire way through the closest we get to a level being built around a single schtick is sand Apple as act 2 and even there you find unique environmental hazards and puzzles you're not gonna find anywhere else in the game and even the robot baddies change from zone to zone and yes sometimes you're gonna run straight into them sometimes they'll catch you off-guard if you just try to barrel on through don't take the time to learn how they attack and how they defend themselves the high speed fun is there but sometimes you're gonna have to earn it it's really kind of crazy how much it's happening from level to level here the game does not let anything go to waste seriously think about it they so much heat for the water levels in the previous games but you're gonna be seen the first half of this adventure splashing around the stuff all the time and guess what it's actually pretty awesome and they even give you a shield to play around with it a little bit more even the notorious special stages from the first game get repurposed into a fun little bonus section and also gets merged with Sonic to his iconic slot machine from Casino Night keep in mind the series has not even existed for more than a few years at this point and it's already doing something better than a lot of the current games yes you need to have iconic sonic environments stage hazards and whatever else you have to help you define what makes Sonic's words stop you need to have this stand out from other franchises but if you're gonna reuse portions from the older games yet gotta get creative and improve upon the Sonic 1 special stages were a cool concept but that shouldn't be the main way to grab emeralds it's to luck base to slow but what if you combined it with another iconic block based reward system jazz it up with a casino style melody and you can keep cranking that slot machine like a retired old woman in Vegas with a 7-eleven big gulp filled with quarters also the spinny orb thing like I've seen so many people complain about the last level of Sonic mania and I was like what are you talking about those super easy and I kind of forgot just how much trouble these electro balls gave me back in the day but once I got the hang of them they're a lot of fun I just love even in these simple bonus stages things that season players would eventually just kind of skip over I just love how much creativity is put into these and how much variety you get you get three separate bonus stages here and again nothing to do with the special stages where you get the emeralds current Sonic Team please take note here stop throwing the baby sonic out with a labyrinth water [Music] sonic the hedghog as a franchise like many others impacted me very greatly when I was a kid the cartoons the games I had some merchandise it took up a lot of my time back then and I think all of my time playing games such as sonic 2 sonic adventure 2 if we look even further past that even Sonic Colors and generations I think they greatly impacted how I look at video games as a medium and I think it says a lot about a franchise that technically is very childish and cartoony and for kids that I have such dramatic opinions regarding those little blue furball that I think it also helped affect me how I present myself on YouTube as well so the divisive mists of the franchise has at least led to very interesting conversations but I can safely say I'm a big fan of Sonic the Hedgehog and I plan to be one for many years down the line [Music] let's talk about the island itself for a little bit here we have had iconic landscapes right from the start of the series and as tired as you are of green hill this is a definitive sonic landscape but as far as world building is concerned Angel Island floats above the rest this hunk of land sits in the sky above Sonic's planet of Earth or Mobius or insert name here the games tend to keep this vague so they can always add more to it as needed and that's part of the allure of this particular location because they can build up so much in terms of story and history in the game itself the developers do a fairly commendable job tying one location with the next Sonic Team left behind the more surreal designs and instead came up with something more grounded or I mean grounded first Sonic goodness knows AO it um keep pushing hard for that later and they even hint at some history and prophecy in the background elements of the game and we'll get to that one a little bit later but the landscape itself is littered with ruins showing you there was clearly quite the society that once lived here and apparently they also love their water parks and I just realized I mean that is that hydro city actually is the city or is it or is that their toilet selfish to which system mean marble garden is the next stage time is it is just right above them are we slipping around in poopie water so this ancient civilization is Knuckles extinct clan why do some of these things have human faces who is that pyramid for there's clearly a lot of stuff we could take way too seriously here one is they're both trying to give you a more cohesive adventure while still giving us a varied terrain I mean it's kind of where that Colonel Knight is here at all I mean did they make that or is that Robotnik's actually you know it kind of makes you wonder all right so you're telling me there's this blue dude who's currently a yellow dude took down your ride and I got a part on my lawn and you want me to help you get rid of them why would I do that I'll uh I'll I'll build you your own carnival no lines not a single one we have already very heavily covered all the things that Angel Island zone teaches a new player and hide raza t we're hydrocity made water levels fun and marbled guard seems to be all about sneak attacks with those stupid morning stars and grasshoppers and spring spikes everything is hidden or not what it seems or just the cheap shots all about deception but yeah this level is probably a little bit messier than the rest but even here like any other game there's a fluidity once you've mastered the traps that lie before you eyes cap I barely brushed on last time and it has a really neat opening with a snowboard but just a wine pointlessly for a second I remember being a little disappointed as a kid because well I really couldn't do much with this thing it looks cool but you actually will miss out on rings if you jump or do anything the most beneficial thing to do is literally not touch anything I feel like there's a reason they went back to ice cap in Sonic Adventure but for this game no I can't really complain about what's really just a fun little opener to the zone I think it does a good job of reminding you that this game is supposed to be a fun ride at the end of the day generally winter levels are designed to be cold in hazardous but instead it feels like Superman installed snow slopes in the fortress of solitude yeah I don't get a lot of time with a snowboard but I do love that you're required to get on this ice slab and shove it down a hill like you're riding a sled and I've already gone over launch base doing a fine job showing you the looming death egg in the background you would think that there would be a jarring dip in difficulty when you were jumping from launch base into mushroom hill but that's not the case each level is so unique and comes with its own set of challenges I mean really the biggest jumps in difficulty would be probably marble garden zone or sand appleís and those are each but the third zones in their separate games it's not so much a difficulty curve as much as it is like a like a bridge I guess live and learn we're not we're not there yet just hang on guys every zone works because they are different from each other yet are based around the core gameplay that gameplay is always fun sonic always feels great to control what I love about this game is that it does everything in its power from stage to stage to show us all the crazy ways you can use this gameplay even if some of the contraptions have none thing to do with the Rolly ball physics it's just another fun ride in this digital theme park this adventure felt so much larger than actually was when I was a kid because there was a lot to learn from stage to stage it truly felt like a grand journey but it's never boring because you literally cannot spend more than 10 minutes in each stage it's still zippy but it's not padded out with needless nonsense and it doesn't hold your hand playground it may be but this playground ain't supervise it's just laid out well enough that you can teach yourself how to work as an animal ball and while the game does not feel like a chore I also appreciate the option to hop out when needed seriously there is only one cart in the classic Sonic games that allows you to save your progress thank goodness they brought that over to the combined game I was always bothered that Sonic and Knuckles on its own doesn't allow you to save one I had that game in only that King and boy howdy I am NOT even in the final section of the adventure the stand-up portion that tells you despite all this new stuff all the love and attention given to rad red and finally letting our little fox boy shine on his own all of this never two tracks away from the point that lets us know that at the end of the day Sonic is the hero of this story in all honesty sonic has defined my life I started collecting 25 years ago this month when I was only six years old I stuck through the series through all the ties and loes no matter who tried to get me down and talk crap about me liking the series wanted to win it was at his low point I never cared about what other people thought anybody then that has come to know me throughout the years even people I haven't seen in years I've always thought of me when they see sonic items in the store I still have people messaging me that when every time they see a sonic item asking if I have it and everybody I know just seems to generally enjoy the series the movie the games the comics despite the series low points I really don't see a lot of people not enjoying most aspects of it and to me you know that's it's bought me a lot of other people together as well I've even traveled other countries and met other Sonic fans that I've talked to and then coming though through the sonic community so needless to say it's been a huge part of my life and I hope it is for the rest of my life something else I have not really talked about a whole lot in previous videos but probably dig into a little bit deeper here is the story but I mean if you played the games or watch these videos at all we're all pretty familiar with it by now right robotic Nick man crash-lands his death star with Groucho glasses into chuckles floating island and to get out of a parking ticket domo arigato mr. Roboto convinces couples that the Cheetahs hair is powered up so much to lead off his head and his blasting all over creation in search of kay knuckles prized Ring Pop you can't share a Ring Pop I don't want head chuck spit all over that look at that glitzy psychopath he probably has rabies that's right okay I'm supposed to be gushing over this game but real quick something I've always been a little bit critical about here so much of the overarching story of the classic games rely on heavy inspirations from iconic pop culture icons and look they did a wonderful job kind of making it their own but goodness gracious that is the best we can do here you got Dragon Ball Z and Star Wars all over the place here and they are integral to the plot of this game look the Death Egg is awesome supersonic is super awesome I do not care that they're clearly inspired by DBZ or Star Wars but let's not pretend that these are not the sources for these designs I know I'm not a hypocrite we'll talk about that another time that's all I'm gonna say about that particular criticism story is pretty straightforward and yes it does make knuckles look like a bit of an idiot but unless apparently you have that Japanese manual to help to spell things out so a big shout-out to a rein pooper why does everybody have cooler channel names than me as pooper pointed out in the Japanese manual they go out of their way to clarify a few things and thanks the translation or maybe changing their minds between games they also muddle some things up but we'll get to that in due time the end of Sonic 2 saw the defeat of Robotnik work well in Japan Eggman and his space fortress the death a and he thought it was destroyed Sonic and Tails went on their merry way but the egg turned out to be quite resilient as it plummeted towards the planets came across a large cluster of clouds but instead of passing through them the ball slammed into mountains and forests that crashed into an island in the sky the force of the impact pushed this landmass into the ocean below causing a massive tidal wave but we all know that stuff so so far so good but it also gives us knuckles perspective or according to the manual knuckle for short do you know what short beans they again I'm sure that's just a translation thing but uh [ __ ] it just sounds silly in English just to focus on knuckles real quick they also give him a profile says he hates bright sunlight loves fruit also points out that he's in a kidnap which is a marsupial except it isn't also he likes to dig because he's a mole after all know what both of these things are incorrect what are you talking about whatever anyway as the story goes at least from knuckles eyes he was on a stroll and suddenly a massive earthquake hit the island and Knuckles sorry knuckle was knocked right the hell out he would later wake up to find the Chaos Emeralds were missing and that's where it gets confusing is he guarding the Master Emerald or chaos emeralds or both were there Chaos Emeralds there before or there two sets of emeralds in the world because I'm pretty sure Sonic was running around with them in Sonic 2 this is a point of contention for fans and I'm utterly dumbfounded and I'm sure we're gonna get some fun debates down in the comments we could do a whole video about this and maybe some point we will but what you need to take away from this is magic gem is a big deal knuckles spots giant metal sphere and immediately assumes that this is the egg of an ancient dragon that is foretold to destroy the planet dr. Eggman appears and I yes I will call him that for the Japanese version of event so enjoy that all you advocates for fat shaming and the good doctor discovers a massive reading of Chaos Emerald energy when he runs into this guardian of this mysterious island Eggman claims that he is a scientist researching the you guessed that that egg that egg with' with his face on it and then you know the rest he convinces knuckles that Sonic is an evil Hedgehog after his emerald or emeralds whatever meanwhile thanks to Angel Island hitting the ocean below and causing a massive tidal wave it catches one of its rings and ends up on a beach where Sonic is hanging out Sonic looks it over and it reminds him of a story he's heard about of an ancient civilization that was wiped out in an instant so there's this huge tsunami now they're ancient rings clearly there's an adventure to be had so Sonic and Tails set off regardless of translation errors or confusion you can see the building blocks for yet another adventure down the road but that for another time none of this extra stuff is in Sonic 3 like I've already covered in extensive detail regardless of chaos emerald confusion it feels like Saiga mostly dropped these details and just left it as knuckles being tricked these little wordless cutscenes are all you really need to know while playing through the game on its own the game tells the player all it needs to know in these cuts I think beyond the core of Sonic's gameplay there's something to Sonic as a character that goes just so much further when you talk about Sonic you often talk about childhood and nostalgia rena-san has always kind of become a cliche in some ways but it rings so true like you grace your knee trying to learn to ride a bike Sonic was there when he got back you had a bad day of school Sonic was there when you got back his cheeky faces grinning at you from the box are about video games you opened it up and suddenly you're just thrust into this new world playing as the unbreakable spirit of eternal optimist that is Sonic the Hedgehog and I think that's what makes Sonic thrive so much in so many different mediums and as you grow up you realize that Sonic has always had your back and still does because part of Sonic's unbreakable spirit is also in the franchise as a whole no matter where you look you can still find Sonic no matter how old you are or what position in life you're at you can still find some form of Sonic pass that too-cool-for-school nineties attitude with Sonic there's always been this desire to do the right thing and look out for your friends and loved ones and just be yourself a free spirit and I think that's what makes Sonic so timeless and because you can stay with us as we grow older in many ways the unbreakable spirit that we can relate to him this kind of icon of perseverance keep going keep on running becomes not so much just a video game icon but like an old friend and a philosophy and that is why Sonic matters to me you when you really boil things down you could assume there really isn't a great deal that changes between the games when you combine Sonic 3 & Knuckles but to me watching these release and that big stink about the lock on there just had to be more to this there had to be a reason to go to all this trouble to combine these two games into one why go to all this effort making a Sonic game look like a mini 32x why make all this technology that only worked for a couple of other games there were questions that began to form in my head when I started playing more and more of the game and then I can't tell you the exact order I did everything when I played this as a kid I can tell you that I played around with Knuckles quite extensively and not so much Sonic at first I already played with him in both parts separately and he couldn't glide or fly like I said I didn't see the point but I had noticed some changes with knuckles maybe they could've been lazy and just had knuckles drop knuckles into hydrocity at the end of Angel Island but no they showed knuckles dropping himself down there surely they had to do something with Sonic I hadn't seen before maybe something in mushroom Hill there had to be something for the main character the star of the adventure there had to be a reason to bring these two games together there had to be something special I'd been missing so I played through the first half with only Sonic but strangely the big arm boss was gone and then we got to mushroom hill and I had thought like knuckles maybe it was nothing more than a quick transition but running just a few feet ahead of me I was in for a surprise [Applause] this little cutscene meant so much to me as a kid because this told me that I would be rewarded for my patience I would be rewarded for my curiosity this we know you've explored this before but you went out of your way to bring these two halves together and only now will you know all of its secrets I've been so integrated with Sonic my whole life and I was so surprised to see comments on my hypersonic video that had no idea this little cutscene existed some were completely oblivious to the rewards this cutscene leads you towards and you know what that was almost me at some point the game was so jam-packed it let you tackle it in whatever order you deemed fit play a few levels as one character if you bored you can jump to another grab all the Chaos Emeralds with one guy grab some with another or grab none at all you can even play the last game with a new character if you felt like it even something as obvious as playing through the complete game with Sonic could very easily be missed by an inattentive kid and in my case having to rely on renting sonic for a few times to even get to this point it's not impossible to imagine that you could never come across this cutscene in your formative theaters it's not like we have the internet back then but as a kid I wanted to see if there was anything different at this one point so I played through all of Sonic 3 again and discovered yes there was and even if you play through this not having to wait half a year for another cartridge or messing around with the other characters even if you played the complete Sonic 3 and rolled through as the blueberry baby boy your very first time through this cutscene tells you that things are changing from this point on knuckles has been a step ahead of you this whole time but here in this one critical moment he slips up and exposes his greatest weakness and annoyingly gives Sonic access to the Master Emerald in every other classic Genesis game even when Sonic 3 & Knuckles are split into the Chaos Emeralds as integro as they might seem to be really only mattered in the last little tidbit of the game they just acted as a completion scorecard the core game would still play out the same regardless and look that's not entirely true of sonic Knuckles alone and you can make an argument for the game your games but this little grotto magnifies their importance without this little scene you wouldn't see the Master Emerald till the end of the game but as a complete package Sonic is discovering a little more of Knuckles story who has been well-established as an antagonist but the release of SNK shows us what this angry and kid nut is all about when you discover the hidden palace all your Chaos Emeralds transform into grey emeralds and we all know the importance of the super emeralds but let's hang in this chamber for just a little bit longer in every other classic game and again this includes 3 & Knuckles 1 split there's a disconnect between the core game and a special stage that's nothing like anything else in the games the first game is surreal and dreamlike and the next two special stages offer a completely different perspective with their own set of rules you grab an emerald and you get a reward screen but then you jump back into the core game like nothing happened but when 3 and K are combined the emeralds aren't relegated to the endgame cutscene but now show up smack dab in the middle of the story Sonic is right here standing next to these things and just having them exist in the same 2d plane as the core game lets us know they matter more than ever this matters more than just unlocking a bonus Super Saiyan motor and all clear screen knuckles is more than just some snickering red head and now that we've seen the size of the death egg and seen the power of the standard emeralds and you see how miniscule they are compared to this big sucker right here without uttering a single word this simple cutscene amplifies the importance of the emeralds making the final levels of the game that much more impactful so back out into the world we go with the understanding that there is far more at stake and sonic once realized you Sonic is and always will be my favorite video game franchise and it definitely didn't become my favorite from its video games alone he'll know the fans artists modders and the community made me absolutely love this franchise even when the games themselves may be lacking through this community I've met some of the most amazing people that I just know I will be friends with for the rest of my life the Sonic series has something the other franchises don't have it has that magic that comes from its fans that keeps me around will be await whatever game Sonic Team has up their sleeves and God knows with every new Sonic game we have absolutely no idea what to expect the series cannot be defined by a singular play style each game especially the 3d ones plays differently from the last though this is usually seen as a negative maybe that is what keeps us coming back whatever the answer may be I love this series throughout the game they have sprinkled hints of the threat that is the death egg and we've already gone over these levels quite extensively in our Sonic and Knuckles video but I wanted to take a little bit more time to talk about the last few zones of the game where everything starts coming together and as you push towards the final chapter you know that each and every step forward is more important than the last and everything about this game start to come together in what is easily the shortest level in the entire game one level with one enemy and it turns out to be the easiest fight in the game but that's okay because hidden Palace zone knew what it had to be what it had to tell the player and there is a lot going on in this little level how awesome is it that the only fight in this zone is against knuckles every time you got close to this jerk he is somehow always a little bit ahead of you dumping you into his toilet city err turning off the power in his big old toy room but here are two title characters face each other down with no extra gimmicks or robots or traps it's just knuckles and his two spiked mitts and yeah alright I also wish there was a little more challenge here but I don't think it was ever meant to be too difficult it's here to show you how much you have grown on your journey this dude knocked the goal out of your teeth as Super Sonic and now well now he's not even a match for default blue and it might also be easy because he isn't your enemy this isn't the real challenge despite what knuckles may believe this is not what everything has led up to as both of these boys would soon find out there is a lot more at stake and the game is telling you this during the fight itself not with just the embarrassing ease of things but also this background image the first time I saw this thing a dozen questions popped into my little baby brain what is going on here what is clearly Sonic but who's that other dealers I mean Robotnik right look why is he so massive would that have anything to do with that giant hand we just fought in lava reef what's going on with this island who put this up were the inhabitants of this island like Knuckles is this picture why he's trying to stop Sonic maybe he's not just a dummy maybe he's heard of some kind of prophecy and he's doing his best to keep this from happening there are so many ways we can interpret this and hopefully if Sonic fans out there are aware of Super Lucky's tale and hyper chuckles and electric soldier porygon but I've seen so many comments of people that weren't aware of this giant pitcher in the middle of the fight but thankfully I was in this picture sent me on a mission I played through the game as all three characters and after many playthroughs finally started unlocking the transformations keep in mind I'd never grabbed all the emeralds in the other games before this point so it didn't dawn on me to finish out the games once I got all the emeralds I had multiple save files I can jump around to willy-nilly but this pitcher told me something else was out there this couldn't just be set dressing of course if you were seasoned with the other games you would think to play through it again to get the good ending but I never would have bothered without this picture I'd seen the boss fights plenty Super Metal Sonic didn't change anything at all tails final fight didn't change anything at all but it ain't those boys on the wall it's Sonic and yes strange as it sounds I did not discover this game's final secret until after my weird random playthroughs with Tails knuckles and yeah Sonic I was a dumb kid and I played this very disorganized but guess what the game allows you to play in such crazy fashion you have so much to do in so many ways to experiment once you are done laying out Knuckles you realize that this place is the actual home of the Master Emerald the special stage is always felt like an extra bonus for Sonic games when I was a kid up to this point nothing really changed about the game outside of the end screen it ultimately didn't make a difference if you got all the Chaos Emeralds or not oh girl even out there game gear stuff it was like beating a game today without getting all the achievements you got the core experience but a platinum trophy usually does not give you anything more than bragging rights emeralds always felt like a nice extra all in all not that much changed but here in hidden Palace zone everything comes together in a few short seconds suddenly you realize that emeralds are intrinsically tied to the narrative of this game they're no longer a fun bonus if felt like Robotnik was breaking through the established rules of the game series in what was once your power is now his and all the games have done a great job showing you what these gems can do and now Robotnik is running off with the granddaddy of them all knuckles now beaten electrocuted and thrown into a pit gets up and Ponder's for a moment they didn't need to make this sprite big old dumb dumb knuckles is showing he does indeed know how to learn from mistakes sonic boom one-handed doing this to us then he's all like yo check this out just wrecks that wall because he knows everything about this island you gotta wonder how he's still doing fine after everything he's gone through but where knuckles usually is just gone the instant he's walking off screen this time the poor boys just tuckered out he uses the very last of his strength to take Sonic again the guy he thought was behind this whole mess and entrusts him to save the day to save the Emerald to save his home you are then taken to sky sanctuary which is just stupid gorgeous and epic and just it's just the best we have seen what Robotnik is capable of without his death age as soon as he found out you were on the island he set it on fire then he tried a carpet bomb you tore apart an ancient city built a carnival baby muscles already their place is really weird and then set up a launch base that showed you just how big this thing is we might not know exactly what the death egg does all we know for sure is we cannot allow this thing to go airborne look at it when he can just do with a flying battery dude can capture ghosts apparently - oh my goodness this dude has not spent that much time on the island and he is already causing permanent damage and converting wildlife from the robots and now in sky sanctuary the game stops everything to show you this sucker is back to full power Robotnik has the Master Emerald and the island is now robbed of its power source and who knows what Robotnik can do with that kind of energy this is the worst case scenario and Sonic like always is gonna run straight into it in this next a little bit I had pointed out to me by one of the commenters and I thought it was amazing and I'm so sorry I can't remember who pointed this out but I find that comment I'm gonna pin it where I can but someone pointed out to me through all of this journey knuckles has impeded your progress he busts bridges not once but twice but here in the last moment you see him really when you look at it there is no reason Sonic could not clear that jump over the other side every time before this knuckles would hop on a switch or flick a contraption in an attempt to stop you and with his last bit of energy he extends a bridge he reaches out a helping hand and also once again a shout-out to cyber shell wherever you are man for letting me know I did not dream this animation the rest of sky sanctuary remains one of my favorite levels in any Sonic game this level like all the others before it has plenty of its own unique doohickeys to dick around on and it looks radically different from everything else but this time it only has one regular enemy the egg Robo the game plays them up pretty hard they are the first thing Robotnik launches from the death egg and the game makes a point to show you this and while you can take them out with a single shot I still remember the first time I saw one of these things it caught me off guard these are Robo Robotnik's rights are larger than just about any other enemy in the game and we know like Sonic it's their first time here because we see little animals running away they're not actually here to be a challenge they're here to show you that this is an invading force this is here to show the player how quickly and efficiently Robotnik can overtake even a secret sacred land like sky sanctuary which has remained untouched for who knows how long and within seconds it's overrun with these creepy robot Devils and their efficiency would also be seen in Knuckles playthrough indicating that these things are advanced enough to operate the heavy machinery that Robotnik usually leaves for himself and as it turns out these are not the only efficient clones mecha sonic as brief as his time was shows us once again how efficient Robotnik is becoming now that he's back at full power and this boys and girls is how you do a call back mecha sonic attacks you burst with the swinging ball and chain the iconic first fight from Sonic 1 and then again with Sonic twos balloon pops I think there's more to this than just have the players say hey look at that I remember those but also to show you how much more advanced Robotnik has become and is show how far you the player have come how far Sonic team as developers have come as well pay respects to what's come before but also show how much better we've gotten in making these games and how much you've grown as a player of these games and then we top it off with a fight against mekin and the third callback fight in the level but this is no longer the penultimate fight of the game like it was in Sonic 2 that was on the death take last time but you're not even on the ship yet this whole level tells you that what ever came before has just been child's play it's been a warm-up to whatever is on that ship and it's going to test you like nothing else up to this point of course as we don't have delved into already there's more going on with mecha than just a cosmetic upgrade and yes again I feel the other robot double metal sonic is a better example of what a copy of sonic should be but I love this particular robot because he just looks awesome he's clearly based off Sonic but he's not trying to outpace the Hedgehog he's armored up and capable of taking on emerald energy this dude's not looking for a race this dude's looking for a fight granted he doesn't really put up much of one until Knuckles but that's not really the point of his role in Sonic's play you have survived everything the island has thrown it and even some reminders of previous adventures but now you are finally right for the death thing why do I love the sonic franchise well there's really nothing quite like it the unique spin sonic put on platformer games during his introduction left an entire generation wanting more there's no denying that but my interest does not actually stop there believe it or not I've actually learned to love how experimental the series can get at times you truly never know what's next with a little blue dude and I've learned so much as an artist in a teacher discussing different directions with all the wonderful friends I've made in this community to the point where it actually confuses me that other people find this aspect of the community turning them off to the sonic franchise entirely Sonic is about moving forward with hope for a good future even if you're not sure it will be now this zone was what I was missing from launch base this is what I was missing from Sonic two's death it this feels like a final level it's imposing and so dangerous even the badniks look a lot less cute than before from the background to the music it almost looks alien Robotnik has just been this silly beach ball of a character but in here we see everything he is capable of it's like walking around inside his mind this is the darkness below that pudgy exterior this is the darkness he is going to unleash upon the world and it's filled to the brim with new challenges rocket launchers electrified floors or you know a combination of the two super fun there's also this crazy antigravity chamber first time I was here I had no idea what was going on and even when I finally figured out how to hit these buttons on this contraption in the middle still took me quite a while to get a handle on things there's also these light bringing roller coasters and I've seen a lot of complaints about these from critics I've never had much issue with them unless I was near the end of a ten minute time limit and they would always just tease me about more ringed monitors letting me know what I was missing out on if I just coasted on Bob all in all the levels filled with brand new hazards and is a fitting challenge and the sub boss here is oh dear God yeah the mini boss is harder than every other boss up to this point and is quite scary for a kid even when you manage to get rid of all these flailing balls this robot Bruce out and starts freaking out every time you poke it in its massive aah alarms blaring it's pooping lasers just so stressful also important to note this level was designed specifically for Sonic and Tails as knuckles can't jump high enough to do any damage to the initial form of this baton the second act launches sonic into space the death egg has certainly made some progress while you ran around its innards here we have a lot of the act 1 hazards but now you have to mess around with gravity on top of everything else it's so satisfying to see all these little things we were teased with at the end of Sonic 2 to be fully fleshed out into its own level the background alone makes it perfectly clear that you were at the end of your journey there is nowhere else to go one way or another this all ends here and as it can expect you have quite the gauntlet of boss fights ahead of you this def ball forces you to use the gravity to your advantage and as a kid I also assume that this slower tedious fight was also here to drain your rings if you have a super form game's not gonna give you any breaks but this is only round one from here the big end all egg Robo pops up you got a clip as nails and hit him in the jewels I know we've covered this ending before quite extensively but when you combine this whole adventure together when you look back at everything you have accomplished and how all of this ties together after you have conquered the challenges of Angel Island Robotnik the emeralds and even reminders of adventures past you are lifted far beyond one single island and you are shown exactly what is at stake here let's keep in mind we don't actually know what the death a can do there's no narrative about a big death cannon or doomsday bomb but the game doesn't need any of that again look at the havoc Robotnik did to one Island all the insane contraptions you have encountered whizzing through the death pit and the Master Emerald he can build technology that can harness its power and now he's using it to fire giant laser beams at a spacefaring Hedgehog robotic is throwing everything at you to keep a hold of this gem you have worked through 14 special stages to lock its power and he has the one giant gem to rule them all but you still take him down the death egg is falling apart his giant mech explodes and he is still desperate to cling on to this thing as a child I played through this game so many times without ever realizing that there was a final fight waiting I played through all of 3in felt incomplete I had played through all of Sonic and Knuckles and it still wasn't enough I combined the games play through it with all three characters and still felt like there was more to fine once you beat the game you can choose any zone to kick off from and if you're a kid that didn't know any better there's little reason to go through the end of the game one more time once you grabbed all the super emeralds but that picture on the wall and hidden Palace told me to dig deeper so I did after finding the secret hidey holes with the giant rings after failing time and again with the special stages I finally began to master them and I finally earned the ultimate reward of the game hypersonic I had unlocked hyper knuckles and super tails and like I've gone on about them before these were incredibly satisfying to unlock but our boy sonic got the best transformation of the bunch and while it's mostly cosmetic hypersonics flashing colors of all the emeralds there's an after image and the crackling energy just looks incredible and on top of that he could now survive underwater and destroy every standard enemy on the screen in a single flash with another click of the jump button which reacted a lot like the electric shields double jump but this time you can launch Sonic in any direction you see fit I mean technically there's not a whole lot more they could add to this form that Super Sonic did not already possess but I can promise you not a single kid playing this game cared in the slightest this was so cool and thanks to that goofy double jump it's also a new way to have fun you could truly unleash Sonic's full potential with little work take advantage of this unique secondary jump just go hog-wild in this wonderful world of course that isn't to say that knuckles screen-clearing earthquake or tails cheesing the pokemon league with his legendary birds isn't a whole lot of fun in their own right because they are but now that I had completed Sonic's transformation it was time to face off with Robotnik one last time to see if there was truly anything left to find in this game and there was the final level is not called asteroid field zone or space zone it's called doomsday zone this time the final time it describes the scenario not the environment these bitter enemies are giving it their all to decide the fate of the world far below you I should point out as broken as super and hyper forms are even though it's sort of their point in the game you are still susceptible to death if you get crushed or blast off into a bottomless pit and you constantly need to be wary of your ring count it's not a great deal of challenge but it is still there especially if you're not paying attention and that's why there's no button to turn this thing off you don't have all the control there is a cost to this power and by the time you get to doomsday zone you're probably fully aware that once your ring count drops to zero Sonic returns to normal and clearly in this zone you can not let that happen this is one of the few times any of these games have built a real challenge for the super forms and really every game after this just kind of copies the formula this was somehow one of the most challenging portions of the game when I was a kid you don't start off with the robot right in front of you you have no idea where he's at you just keep at this pace and just keep trying to collect rings you try to move ahead a little bit you have to figure that out and you're running out of time once you realize yes you do have to catch up to Robotnik you then have to figure out how to damage him because just coasting on by doesn't do anything I desperately try to keep a steady ring count while trying to figure out how on earth I was supposed to damage this ship and yes guiding the missile seems a little obvious now but for a little kid this was pretty demanding you don't get guidance the game has been telling you this whole time you need to think these final fights through you need to figure this out while keeping track of your rings and even when you break it down Robotnik won't let up one final mech not the big giant we faced earlier and probably no larger than the final boss in Sonic 2 is all that's between you and the Master Emerald you started off your adventures zipping around on a beach and you could barely hold this form together but now you scream through the stars with a form more powerful than anything you could have imagined no more death is no more missile trickery it is your raw power pummeling into this coward who has done nothing but run from and this is a guy with an IQ of 300 this tyrant who's built a robotic empire stolen the most powerful source of energy in the world built a looming space station of death the single most dangerous threat to the existence of the entire planet can do nothing but run from Sonic the Hedgehog and that works out about as well as you would expect [Music] there comes a moment for every gamer when they realize they are playing their favourite game of all time for the first time and I had not realized it fully until everything started coming together in hitted palace on and by the time I was wrapping up doomsday I knew that this was something truly special sonic taught me that stories can be told without uttering a single word and even in a world filled with brightly colored mascots and woodland critters there can still be stakes that you can genuinely care about what is happening to these characters on the screen and when you try you can elevate them above just a simple silly cartoon it taught me that you can be fun whimsical colorful and light-hearted and at the same time you can very easily worry that all of it will go up in a ball of fire if you don't protect Sonic is fun and it is colorful and yes it is for kids he is a corporate mascot designed to target a very particular demographic at a very particular time in history in a reaction to another corporations massively popular mascot but these developers did not set out to just make a kid's game and they were no longer just trying to emulate Mario they knew what they had and they didn't treat their fanbase like idiots they set out to make an unforgettable game and throw in every possible idea they could to see what fun could be had maybe not all of it makes perfect sense solo this is wild crazy and memorable and it should be a complete disaster but it's not it's chaos control and it is somehow unbelievably miraculously humpy now art design like this on a machine released in 1989 on a machine technologically inferior in almost every way to the Super Nintendo blasting out melodies that will stick with you until the day you die on a sound chip that sounds like complete trash in less capable hands sonic team and Michael Jackson they made the Genesis sing Yuji naka and Sonic team set out to make the very best game they could possibly make and they did and that left me a little damn irritated while I played through this game again dive in and deep birthing all these thoughts I had growing up discovering more about how this came to pass and rediscovering the brilliance of this title I kept thinking of those game journalists who dismissed the entire franchise because of a few bad games and I kept thinking of the other fans who dismissed this title for some of the more atrocious games in this series I thought of the comments of those who got angry at me for making fun of Sonic 2006 and while I thought about all this at that point I did not care about other people's preferred Sonic games I think care if I was seen as an elitist snob I just kept thinking how did we get here how did it ever become okay for something like Sonic 2006 to exist how am I in the wrong for calling it trench and when were we find with meandering bland nonsense yeah Sonic games aren't as bad as people make him out to be but why are you settling for mediocrity why do I have to spend this time trying to explain to people what to me was so blatantly obvious why do I have to defend this game it doesn't matter that Sonic oh 6 is over 10 years old at this point because Sonic 3 Knuckles is well older than that and then others just dismiss this game the moment mania rolls on in I'm glad they tweaked the gameplay it's great and a lovely reminder that this formula works but why did it take over 20 years to get here we should be well beyond this point Sega should not have to wait for fans to grow up to handle it themselves I see so many Sonic fans blame the classic fans for all this nostalgia pandering from Sega like it's our fault like we are dragging this series down and having it regress and so many people don't understand why classic fans are mad we don't just want to djs sonic was not great because this series played it safe Sonic was great because this series always boldly tried new things it always pushed forward and it somehow managed to match the level of quality and care you would only find in the likes of Nintendo Sonic was not Mario's buddy he was not at home on a Nintendo system he was a mascot for a sega system this Hedgehog sold systems he redefined the gaming industry this was a series you expected to be brilliant look Nintendo nerds I'm glad you finally joined the party welcome but while we were mourning the dead that we had lost in the sunken ship that was Sega you are coddling our survivors we had to watch this series shift its tone and game style each and every time in these desperate attempts to appeal to younger demographics in that's fine that's not why classic fans get angry about the state of the series we want new gameplay styles we want more dynamic characters but for crying out loud some quality control would be nice and now I'm even seeing the adventure fans turn on the fans of the newer generation and all I can tell you is uh now grab a drink join the club this is just another life stage for a song theme first time I thought all that while I was playing to this game and sometimes I still feel like that but if you sat through all of this if you followed me through to the end of this journey and you were still listening and you are one of those fans I got so annoyed with I asked only a few more minutes of your time because once I got over that little temper tantrum something else started to happen for over three years now I've been making videos and I will forever be thankful to those who went out of the way to watch a channel who had very little views and subscribers I can't thank you oh gee sonic warrior is enough but fact is without a large enough audience this would never be anything more than a dream but then I allowed myself to go full dork and just passionately speak about games I loved so much and suddenly a lot more people were listening and once again I started to spend a little more time with the sonic communities talk with the people in the comments get into debates or learn something new I had never known about something I have adored for decades now and then I started watching other youtubers not just the ones pointing out the flaws in a 20 year old 3d game but fans who fell in love with the series at different times with different games and others discovering for the first time in their life that even the old games can actually be a ton of fun thanks to the release of mania then even forces for introducing them to look backwards in time to see what else was there I watched people talk about the werehog a design I have hated for a decade at this point and suddenly I understood why they loved it I started to think about the adrenaline rush from the opening minutes of unleashed the excitement of sonic around in the full-fledged 3d game in adventure or how awesome I thought shadow looked the first time I laid eyes on that design I started remembering how I had grown to appreciate the freedom fighters in the Archie series a group of characters I had loathe as a kid but in recent years I've actually grown fond of and actually now kind of miss yeah that's the thing even parts of this franchise I disliked as a kid which is so much better than I had ever given credit for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog were actually funny sonic addicts while I'd still need to watch the whole thing started off strong and that third season is actually turning out pretty awesome and if I'm honest with myself didn't I start this channel because I actually really wanted to talk about how much I love the weird Sonic games on Sega Saturn when I took a step back started talking with fans who weren't trying to bring down what I loved and explained what it is about Sonic they loved I remember that there's a reason I am still a fan of this franchise and yeah I guess I was kind of being an elitist prick wasn't the entire point of this channel to challenge these perspectives and find the good in the bad wasn't that far more interesting than hearing the same opinions over and over wasn't it more fun to challenge myself and share that joy that validation it was so much more interesting to hear why this series mattered to others I already knew that the classic games held up in my eyes when I started talking about them and I had to stop looking at this as a matter of my thing is better than your thing and it's dead tackle this as I want to share why this particular thing matters so much to me this is how it resonated with me and this is why I still love it today and that makes the conversation way more interesting I already know how I feel about this franchise I already know how to feel about this game I just wanted to share it with you and well I want to hear your perspective as well and I found not enough well there are certainly plenty of others who are using this platform to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog and some of them were even nice enough to share their thoughts here some of the things that keep bringing back to the Sonic series and why I love it so much is you really don't get the same experience every single time that you play like one game and then you go play another one and then you play a different one you get different experiences with them and as someone who is still somewhat of a relatively new fan to the series for like the maybe five years or so it's just really cool to see exactly how different each game is and another thing would just be the amazing community it like a lot of the people that I've spoken to the community are some of the coolest people that you can never talk to and I think because of that it's just a lot of good examples why the sonic community is really great and why I love the series what I've always looked about the Sonic series is debug mode it encouraged not only me but a lot of other people to explore games and deep things that maybe the developers never intended through Sonic and being fans they give us a conduit for learning programming game design alright new music it wasn't ever intended but now we're helping shape the industry that we grew up with and a lot of us owe it to that little blue hedgehog the reason behind why I love Sonic the Hedgehog's franchise is an amount of numerous different things franchise played a big role in my childhood he gave me the sense of adventure that I never really had the chance to grasp and it's allowed me to befriend many amazing people we've become some of my best friends I love following in this franchise and being a part of this community because it's made up of many talented people from art and music it's the great sense of community that keeps me around and that's something that I really appreciate my start with Sonic was Sonic Adventure DX on the Gamecube I know it's a terrible port but uh now we have good alternatives on Steam the sonic game and I really enjoyed how fast you were able to go in this game and it not having to be like specifically a racing game and from there I wasn't a huge selling fan but once generations rolling around no pun intended that's when I really got into the series and I just really have never looked back since it's just been so much fun and all the stories they tell with all those characters just really special the sonic franchise has been there for me since early childhood while super mario did more than enough to supply my upbringing of platformers Sonic's cocky attitude in conjunction with his highly kinetic gameplay and amazing soundtracks left a lasting impression that to this day brings a smile to my face despite the ups and downs in all the rounds I will always cherish all my race [Music] there comes a moment for every gamer when they realize they are playing their favorite game for the first time but as I've grown as I have expanded my tastes and standards within this geeky passion I wanted a more unique answer I wanted to go broader than a corporate mascot made by a committee go beyond the obvious answer for us old fans but for the second time in my life while I play through this game again for these videos I realized yeah without a shadow of a doubt Sonic 3 & Knuckles is still my favorite game of all time I can't tell you I don't sometimes still feel that irritation I felt when I looked at the other games in the series I still believe critique is so important and when a game sucks you need to say it sucks and if that offends you well you're just gonna have to deal with it but if you don't agree with it it doesn't hurt to challenge that point of view not with screaming or calling people names or acting immature but by debating your points and saying yeah I love this and let me tell you why I am going to annoy some people when I make jokes about some other Sonic games I do indeed think there are flaws that have not aged well and others that have been addressed by the standards of the day I do not like Sonic oh 6 and I think a lot of the more recent games are a bit aimless and blamed but I still love it a lot of these games or parts of these games that even I thought were bad and I'm very much looking forward to talking about why people enjoy even the worst this series has to offer I don't want to bring down what others love I'm still gonna tell jokes I will share frustrations and opinions but I want to know more about what makes a game that's so many disliked matter to those who do cherish it that is so much more fun to talk about and like Josh said this fanbase could use a little bit of that luck on technology for themselves because we are stronger together the thing about Sonic 3 cake why it still needs to be discussed is because whenever someone points at something like Sonic o 6 whenever someone says this series was never good I can always point to this black monolith of a game cartridge and say yes it was the series can do better because it already has Sonic 3 in Sonic in general is not a story about standing still sticking with what works they have that base foundation they refine it but it is still a story about ambition breaking down barriers finding creative solutions to complex problems and not giving a single damn about limitations this game is so good that it outweighs any bad brought on with the likes of O six a game so good that it challenged Nintendo and told them that we can do just as good if not better a game so good it made me an apologist for an entire series I know sonic is more than just this game he is more than a cool character design he is more than green eyes where hogs scarves he was an icon of the 90s and the 2000s but he is more than the decade he was born in he is more than momentum adventures boosting he is more than nostalgia and he is more than his failures but make no mistake there are some pretty massive failures regardless Sonic's still indoors because while he is more than those things he is still all of these things he is a gaming icon that still matters today and that's because Sonic was in one of the greatest games ever made a game that does not give a damn about the 90s this is a game that's going to make you miss the night it's going to make you miss this level of quality a game that set very high expectations and I will always always have a high standard for Sonic games because 25 years ago Sonic and his two-tailed buddy took a trip to an island and taught a little boy to expect more from his silly little hobby that a grand adventure can sit inside two little cartridges and it will make you feel for these characters it taught me that there are two sides to every story and even in our worst enemies can we find our best friends a game that taught me to dig deeper and try harder because there is always more to see a game that taught me that even in an adventure you never want to end you will know when the time comes when you feel triumphant when you feel victorious without ever uttering a single word you will know the story has come to a close and your journey is complete when you give it your all this game will respond in kind sonic 3 taught me that do games can be so much more and it taught me what it means to have standards because this was a game unlike anything I had played before this was and remains my favorite game of all time and at least to me that is why sonic matters [Music] you you

Channel: Game Apologist

Views: 362,019

Rating: 4.9459672 out of 5

Keywords: why sonic matters, sonic the hedgehog, game apologist sonic, unapologetic, sonic 3 & knuckles, hyper sonic, hyper knuckles, super tails, master emerald, sega, sonic team, sonic adventure, completionist, slopes game room, somecallmejohnny, gillythekid, channel pup, sonic the hedgehog 3, classic sonic, modern sonic, boost gameplay, super emeralds, chaos emeralds, super mecha sonic, tee lopes, doomsday zone, barrel of doom, eggman, waku waku, ign, death egg, shadow, super sonic

Id: Po7fJwjF__c

Length: 98min 10sec (5890 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MagicMudpuppy]

Nice in-depth walk on Sonic 3 and Knuckles in there. I'm honestly a bit surprised at the "Sonic was never good" philosophy being so prevalent, especially when it comes from people in my age group who likely grew up with the original Genesis games. When I was a young'n my familiars were all about Sonic... Mario was a thing, too, but Sonic had definitely established itself as, even if temporarily, the winning contender for a number of years. I like the skate park/playground analogy. That's definitely how it felt to me at the time.

[u/BroTibs]

This video shows how magical the classics were. They’re not overrated, they’re freaking EPIC