Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Sonic the Hedgehog 3, also known as Sonic 3, is a video game for the Sega Mega Drive. The game was developed by Sega Technical Institute, published by Sega and released in 1994. It is the sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Sonic 3 and it's sequel Sonic & Knuckles, were originally going to be a single game, but were split up due to cost.

Zones
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 contains six zones, each divided up into two acts. At the end of each act you must fight against a boss.

Angel Island Zone
After Sonic arrives he is stopped by Knuckles who steals the seven chaos emeralds he is carrying. The zone is green and jungle like to begin with but halfway through act 1 it is set ablaze by Dr. Robotniks robots.

Hydrocity Zone
This zone mostly takes place underwater.

Marble Garden Zone
The ruins of an ancient civilization.

Carnival Night Zone
This zone takes place in a carnival at night. It is similar to the Casino Night Zone from Sonic 2.

Icecap Zone
Act one takes place in a frozen cave, while act two has Sonic on the snow covered surface.

Launch Base Zone
This is where Dr. Robotnik is building his Death egg.

Items
Sonic 3 contains many items from previous sonic games as well as new ones. Most notably, the shield is now available in three versions. Each shield has a unique power that can be used by Sonic. Tails is unable to use these powers as he can fly and swim instead.

Rings
Rings protect you when you are hit. If you are hit when you are carrying rings, you lose all of them, and if you are hit when you have no rings you lose a life. Every 100 rings collected gives you an extra life.

Shields
Shields protect you from harm. If you are hit when you have a shield, you lose the shield instead of your rings. In Sonic 3, there are 3 different types of shield. Each shield gives Sonic an extra attack while he has it (Tails can't use these extra attacks, but can fly instead).

Giant Ring
These are hidden around the levels. When you go into them you will be taken to a special stage. If you have collected all the chaos emeralds they give you 50 rings instead.

Star Post
These are placed at random through out most levels. If you die, you restart at the last star post you ran through. If you have 50 or more rings when you pass through a star post, a ring of stars will hover above. You can jump into these to go to the bonus stage.

Special Stages
There are seven special stages in the game, one for each Chaos Emerald you can collect. In the special stages, you must collect all the blue spheres while avoiding the red spheres. If you collect all the blue spheres you are rewarded with a Chaos Emerald.

Game Screen
The counter in the top left counter shows how many blue spheres are remaining and the one on the top right shows the number of rings collected.

Bonus Stages
In Sonic 2 jumping in to the stars above a star post brought you to the special stage, however in Sonic 3 you are brought to a bonus stage instead. The goal is to try and collect as many useful items as possible. The items available are: