So how popular was Sonic The Hedgehog 3? enough to get the Happy Meal treatment when it did come out



Though granted around this time the SatAM Sonic was a thing but I'm too young to remember it (I'm old enough to remember when Teletoon aired Sonic Underground (There is also a hack game called the S Factor where you play as one of the characters in that show (it's not on this site though) which I'm shocked they did, why don't they just incorporate Sleet and Dingo while we're at it) So anyway here we are taking about Sonic The Hedgehog 3, a rather ground breaking entry in the Sonic franchise. How Groundbreaking? We can save our games! We Can go back to other rounds after we finish the game so we can try to collect the emeralds we missed or we get that taunting Try again screen with Botnik and Knuckles


Gameplay and Story: Robotnik's death egg has crashed on an Island and manipulates it's only inhabitant....oh WELCOME TO THE FRANCHISE KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA! (oh by the way, an interesting note to bring up, Knuckles made it into Sonic Underground....Tails DIDN'T....why? though Knuckles was on the show for like 4 episodes) Robotnik manipulates Knuckles into thinking that Sonic and Tails are the bad guys and are after the master emerald (which by the way we never see) and wouldn't you know it Sonic and Tails have tracked down Robotnik, but our heroes get ambushed by Knuckles, the Chaos Emeralds are stolen (you know I'm starting to think the Chaos Emerald trilogy in SU was made as some kind of love letter to the games) and now they have to get them back

Graphics: They are kind of the same as the previous 2 entries, but man the second part of round 2, probably my favourite of the bunch, but man am I supposed to be in a dangerous Hydro plant type place or am I in some kind of water park. Round 4 kind of reminded me of that Casino round in Sonic 2 minus the slots. The Arctic region was something new seeing Sonic snowboard, and the possibility of getting frozen.

Soundtrack: You know when I was a couple of years into playing this game, thought that the first Boss music sounded a little bit like Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror. and no wonder we later found out like years after Jackson's death that he did INDEED contribute to the soundtrack at one point, then guess what hit the fan for Jackson. If the developers were trying to hide it, they didn't do a good job.

Addictive: Well it definitely kept me coming back considering that I got this game along with the console and multiple other games (which I will review) it took me until the Spring of 2003 to master the game

Depth: This was the first sonic game to NOT also get a SMS release, but it's probably for the best. This game is extremely different than it's predecessors, the items are no longer in computer monitors and rather than just that blue glowing Shield, we get THREE different shields, we get a fiery one, good for plowing through barricaded areas but useless once we hit water, we have a bubble shield, good for bouncing, excellent for if you are under water (I could have used those in the previous two games) and especially useful in level 2 of round 4 when we have to push that stupid whatever that rotating thing was down enough so I can have space to squeeze down there and finish the round, that thing was a total time waster. And of course the electro magnetic Shield useful to attract coins, good for high jumping as well (but not in round 4 act 2) but also useless when you hit the water, there are bonus rounds, you jump into a floating ring to play a bonus round to retrieve the chaos emeralds, the only enemies in this level are the red spheres. There is also the checkpoint bonuses where this time you jump to a gumball machine to try and get a shield, get coins, reset the red springboards(which you can only use once hence the rep gumball) and once you hit the springboards are gone the round is over...oh I almost forgot during the ice levels there's another new obstacle in the game there are Robotnik cards, don't touch them you will lose your rings, if you have no rings and you touch one, you lose a life.

Difficulty: I had difficulty with it at first, I was stuck on Angel Island for a long time but even once I got to the Hydro city I hit a brick wall there, (I still remember when I did get somewhere in that part of the game, it was the first weekend of December 2001, and still trying to process the news of the death of George Harrison, probably the first celebrity death that hurt) and it seems every part of the game has a part of the game where you end up being stuck until you can figure it out (like 4x2). Like I had said already, I didn't master this game until 2003.

Overall: This game definitely brought something new to the table, new character, new shields, etc. I've been able to finish this game several times I wish I could say the same for the others. I give it a perfect score

UPDATE: I actually learned there was a better hack for those rotating barrels in the Carnival Night zone, you just hit the up and down button, where the heck was this hack when I first played the game 20 years ago?

Yeah you have no idea how shocked I was when I found out about this too

Oh, Ronald... if you're going to make an ad about Sonic happy meals, you GOTTA GO FAST.

Very nice review! That's very interesting that Michael Jackson contributed to the soundtrack a bit. And it's great that there were several improvements to the series with this game's release.