Gameplay here was exactly identical to that in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, right down to the design of the level titles. When I looked into this, I found that Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were originally intended to be one game, but that scheduling delays and space constraints led to an eventual split. Hey, fine. Whatever. It's not like the third game was substantially different from the first two anyway. In Sonic & Knuckles I got to play as - yep, you guessed it - Knuckles. You'd be surprised how non-different that was. Hey, at least these games are relatively quick and easy. I expect to finish Sonic 3D Blast before the weekend ends. Will that game be different? We'll see.
I never played much of the Sonic 2-D platform games growing up (mostly because I found them all so damn hard), but this was the one game I remember playing the most. Knuckles was also my favorite character in the bunch. For this specific game, couldn't you stack other Sonic games on top of this one? (Not sure if that was a real thing - memory might be failing me.) If so, what was the point of that? Did you try it out? I could just look all this up, but curious to what your experiences have been.
ReplyDeleteAnd, in general, as you're pushing your way through these classic Sonic games are you finding any hidden secrets or codes that make the games more enticing to play? Not saying they're not worth playing on their own merit, I just thought these games were loaded with hidden characters or challenges or shortcuts that gives more of an mysterious quality - kind of like Mario Bros. hidden pipeline system. Might encourage me to get back into them if I knew there was a handicap to help me actually push through some more frustrating levels... like anything underwater.
With the original cartridges, yes, you could stick either Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 into Sonic & Knuckles, and that would allow you to play either game as Knuckles instead of Sonic. As far as the point goes? I'm not sure there was one. I didn't bother trying it with my compilation disc, even though these modes were included as unlockable options.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to secrets and hidden stuff, I'm really just doing the bare minimum on these, trudging through them like clockwork, so I can't say for sure whether there are or aren't any. I'd lean toward there not really being any. Each level offers multiple paths from the beginning to the end, but if there was a goal beyond that, I never found it.