The Making of Sonic 3 & Knuckles

I just wanted to share this excellent "making of" video that came out today, since it goes into great detail over my favorite platformer of all-time. As much as I've been loving Sonic Mania over the past year, this is still my G.O.A.T, and it's always interesting learning about the programming mastery of Yuji Naka as well as the drama over at SEGA Technical Institute (STI). For example, one thing I didn't know until watching this was that Sonic Spinball was solely created to fill in the '93 holiday void as Sonic 3A didn't come out until the following February.

With 14 zones, 14 special zones, three characters, three bonus stages, a versus mode, a Michael Jackson composed/inspired soundtrack, and lock-on features that let you play Knuckles in Sonic 2 and "Infinite Blue Spheres," I can't help but love Sonic 3 & Knuckles to pieces. I only wish I had kept my Sonic 3 Happy Meal toys from back in the day...

Oh, and fingers crossed we get that Christian Whitehead remake eventually.

Good vid.

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

Ah, my favourite childhood game. Silky smooth gameplay, so much content, badass music.

My most affective memory of it, however, was actually a negative one: the infamous Barrel of Doom. I remember getting through it on the first go, then forgetting how to do it again until years later, slamming many controllers in frustration in the process.

These days, I wrote down a note so I never forget again: "Hold down, then up, repeat until enough height, then slip under."

Hey man, thanks for this. This game is one of my happy places from my childhood.

probably one of the best game on genesis. a game of my childhood.

easily destroy anything mario of that era.

I'm still frustrated at SEGA for not re-releasing the game.

"It's because Michael Jackson worked on the soundtrack!" That's stupid, as there's no way the Michael Jackson estate owns the soundtrack. Michael Jackson's involvement in the project fell through. The estate has nothing to do with the music, they have no legal claim to it. Bottom line.

On top of that, the game has been re-released before! For the Mega Collection (and a few others). So why was this not an issue then?

If the rights to the soundtrack were an issue, didn't the PC version have a different soundtrack? Couldn't they just re-release that version and add the Genesis music back in pending rights?

WTF is SEGA thinking?

The best Sonic after Sonic 2. And one of the greatest platformers.

Whenever Sega makes a new console, I only buy it just to play any Sonic games they throw at it! I was a huge Sonic fan and Sonic the Hedgehog to Sonic & Knuckles was my JAM! Thanks for sharing this Renegade_Fury :)

And still waiting SA 3.