I predict that Punxsutawney Phil will NOT see his shadow in 2024!

Sonic 3 & Knuckles had such a big impact on me back then. Still one of my favorite games ever.

1994 was an AMAZING year for gaming and the game that will always come to mind first for me is Sonic 3&K.

For Sega's mascot, the third time's the charm! I love how Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was the first half of a longer video game story, a story whose conclusion came later that year in the Sonic & Knuckles lock-on cartridge...

Another wonderful entry into the GTV library. Also LOVE the S&K vs DKC tease at the end. I was a Genesis kid, and I’m still not over DKC turning the tides of the 16-bit war. Love your work, my friend!

1994 was Sonic's best year. And this game was the biggest reason why. But there are other reasons too. The (archie)Sonic comics were hitting their stride, SATAM was still airing, Knuckles made his debut, and every Sonic game released that year was of solid quality.

Sonic 3 is still an interesting sequel 30 years later. 😀👍🎮

Sonic 2 was the first video game I ever saw, but Sonic 3 was the first game I ever fell in love with. Still to this day my favourite game and my go to comfort game.

19:31 There are sprites that depict Knuckles in Competiton Mode gliding and climbing, however he is unable to perform these moves within the mode proper; In Sonic 3 & Knuckles, he can only glide and climb in the single-player campaign.

I grew up playing a lot of classic Sonic as a kid and boy did I sink a TON of hours into this one! Still get a little misty-eyed when I hear Endless Mine 😢 Thanks for making!

Learned more about the story of Sonic 3 in this video than I did from the "Console Wars" book. The author seemed to spend the lion's share of pages covering the buildup to Sonic 2sday as well as fluff about the personal lives of SoA employees. The book managed to cram the events 1993 and after in the last 100 pages. The development and release of Sonic 3 seemed to be mostly glossed over in favor of minutae about drama. In fact, I don't recall the book even covering the launch of Sonic 3. Console Wars buried the lede in thst regard. The contrived extrapolated conversations could be downright cringe, too. I kept thinking, "Nobody talks like that!" Don't get me wrong, the book is still worth checking out, but it can be annoying at times. With all the glaring omissions and glaring inclusions. I wish it would've given more attention to the people who made the games. The book mostly dealt with businessman who mostly see the games as product to be moved rather than being passionate about the contents of the game. Anyway I curious how you feel about the Console Wars book.

Thank you for all of your hard work!! ❤ cant wait for part 2 at the end of the year 🎉

Such wholesome content ❤

Wow, I'm bang on time! "1 View, uploaded 47 seconds ago" KZfaq said on the Home Page. 😁

I can only image the hours of work this video took. You can tell. And it payed off. Never have a seen a video about a game this complete. Well, I have. Other videos of GTV.

Another very good documentary. It was such an interesting time. Sonic 3 & Knuckles are true masterpieces.

Your stuff is always so well made. Thank you for everything you do!

Great video! Happy Hedgehog Day everyone! ✨🌀

Pretty excited for the next episode.

I love how you saved the best music for your tease at the end for SONIC & KUCKLES!!!! Nice touch!!! So pumped for October!!!! Great job as always, GTV-Japan!!!

I remember those early 1990s days playing Sonic the Groundhog before they changed the name

Would've loved to have been in PA for this, but i was waaaay on the West Coast. The most i got on Hedgehog Day was a Blockbuster rental and the Happy Meal toys

Great videos as always and right on time for Sonic 3's 30th anniversary. Figures you would release Sonic & Knuckles' video on it's 30th anniversary during October. One quick correction however, Knuckles doesn't glide or wall climb in the competition mode, not even in the Sonic Origins remake. What Knuckles can do that Sonic or Tails can't is break on a dime, making him useful in Balloon Park (Tails' flying makes him useful in Chrome Gadget and Sonic's speed in the other 3 stages).

Awesome video! Growing up in the '90s was amazing! The Sonic 3 release was indeed _huge_ !! I remember drooling over preview pictures in magazines prior to its release as I couldn't wait to play it! Though, there were so many classics released that year like Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, Earthworm Jim, Castlevania Bloodlines, and Sonic & Knuckles! It was a fantastic year for games!

Fantastic video like always! Glad you make the time to do these!

Recently theres an image started to circulate on the Internet where 2pac and Suge Knight are playing Sonic 3!!!

played sonic 3 at that time of release and wow, it was something else. love every minute of it

My God, what a tease of an ending. XD Fantastic video, as always. Great work!

Another fantastic and polished video, I always enjoy your story telling, you can feel your passion and love for these things and that's very special. Awesome stuff! (ps recently renamed my channel, was Pixel Vixen)

I still remember going to my friends house for his birthday and playing Sonic 3 with him. That was an epic 2 hours but i was definitely wondering why it was too short. 6 months or so later, we found out why 😅

Sweet! These are so well made.

I was more of an Nintendo kid growing up but I'll always say Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the Sega Genesis's best game and my favorite game on the console. Together and not seperate, though.

Sonic 3 was released 10 days before i was born in February 12 1994 i love the sonic games alot ever since i was 9 years old back in 2003. Best regards Nikita.K

Sonic 3 and knuckles for sure is my favourite sonic the hedgehog game period. This is part 1 of that ultimate game. It’s so good and I love it, I might want to replay it.

Till this day one of the most replayable games ever made Every once in a while i just need to get all 14 Emeralds and reach the credits

Most people thought Sonic 3 & Knuckles was an awesome combo cartridge, but some took it as a knuckle sandwich. The blast processing is real with that one! They didn't include it in the Sega Mega Drive Classics compilation for the Nintendo Switch, but luckily it emulates perfectly on my NES Classic Edition! Anyway, great video, and I'm looking forward to the next. Also, Punxsutawney is the most stupid name I've ever heard for a town!

Ah, man! Do we really have to wait until October for the sequel? Sonic 3 is my all-time favorite Sonic game, and Groundhog Day is one of my all-time favorite movies. How come I never heard anything about Hedgehog Day? Another great video. Thank you very much for uploading it. I love this Sonic launch day series.

Excellent vid, as always. You couldn't make a bad video if you tried. Thanks for the great content.

Nice! Clever marketing. And I never knew the Dreams Come True guy made the music for Sonic...

Sonic 3 is likely the MD's best achievement. But I'm gonna pick sides with DK when the next part comes out. The old days are so exciting with many great releases.

I appreciate all consoles now, but during this time i was a sega dude and this was such a wonderful drive down memory lane. Alot of what you covered explains why i felt so blindsided by 3s release. I remember the hype for 2... but for 3 i just ran into it in a Fiesta in Houston (Fiesta is a grocery store... if all things)

Sonic 3 & Knuckles is among my all time favorites, and my favorite game from the 1990's.

Rubbing my hands over here like a fly ready to feast.

man yeah the sonic 3 and knuckles era was definitely peak sonic! I did love sonic 2, but 3+k added so much new stuff between the extra levels, new bonus rounds, and the new powerup items!! a while back I picked up sonic jam on saturn so I got to revisit those games again, I may have to dust it off to play some more! definitely looking forward to the sonic vs. dkc grudge match though, country was easily one of my top ten SNES games! though its a tossup which I liked more between it and 3+K...

I make the weather.....its just supposed to be a little flurry. Chance if departure 90% thanks deloris......good stuff K

I didn't realize there was so much drama with the Groundhog Day movie. Now we need a Groundhog vs Hedgehog movie crossover.

I remember when the game's promotion included a Happy Meal promotion. Similar to how Super Mario 3 was launched with one years earlier. I got everyone BUT Sonic, but I especially loved how the Robotnik toy was based on his Adventures of design.

Absolutely love this channel! Combining history and video games a marriage dearly underappreciated

This is GTV, racing to the top.

Saving my thoughts for October. . .

nice video

Wow, the 90s had to be the most experimental decade of them all.

Happy 30th anniversary. Sonic 2D always alive,because of rom hacks like "Resort island"

Part 2 in October? What a wait!

This game along with Sonic and Knuckles made me beg my mom for a Sega Genesis which I finally got for Christmas in 1994 along with Sonic 2 included.

So we had Hedgehog Day, but what about GTV-Day?

I really hope the October release date for s&k video is a play on the original release dates and it will actually come out next month

Awesome video!

Great job with this Sonic video.

I gotta wait until October?! Man, YOU'RE TOO SLOOOOOWWWW!! (That's just a Sonic joke, take as much time as you need! I'm sure you have quite a few banger videos coming out this year anyway! Your Processing can only be so Blast...)

The irony of getting an advertisement for Sony PlayStation for a video about the height of the console wars between Nintendo & SEGA.

I wonder how lock on technology could have been further implemented with other games. Could it have been a cheaper means for sequels to be made, a continuation for stories such an RPG, more ram for more spite work or animation. It could have breathed new life into older games as well. We will never know.

I have such a nerd boner for the font used in the title cards for S3&K, it felt so clean and modern for the time and still holds up today.

Ahhhh, Sonic 3, the beginning of the end of Sega...

you forgot to mention one of the reasons why they split the game into 2 parts... 1 being a mcdonalds toy promotion that was coming out the same time and they couldnt avoid it so they had to make due with what they had done and they refined the later half with the lock on which now a days could be considered DLC but back then it was a full 50 bucks give or take to get what would be nothing more then 6 more levels and some polish to the earlier levels... on the plus side of things when they made the split up on the game they added the sonic 2 lock on to play as knuckles in there... they tried sonic 1 but couldnt get the color palate to work with knuckles so they scraped that idea

7:00 Now, the story goes, during production of the game, that certain songs were considered to be demo tracks to future or existing songs in Micheal Jackson's discography. Jam was connected to Carnival Night Zone and the Sonic 3 ending theme without the Sonic and Knuckles game attached later developed into Stranger In Moscow. However, the quality of the sound system that was used for the game was considered to be so bad, no pun intended, that Micheal Jackson did not want to be associated with the project at all! Bill Baxton was one of, if not the only, member of Jackson's team that helped make music for the game. He even put in a sample of the tune, "Hard Times", from his own band, "The Jetzones" for Ice Cap Zone. Years later when allegations against the pop star arose, all other releases of Sonic 3 had the music changed to avoid copyright, but not for the better. To this day, if you want to hear the original sounds of Sonic 3, you have to buy the game in the open after market or by emulation and that's if the original ROM is available. 9:21 This idea blew my mind after I beaten Sonic and Knuckles first and Sonic 3 later. When I decided to put the 2 together and it showed Sonic 3 and Knuckles with the opening theme from the other game, I was so excited and tried to play the entire game from start to finish with the Super Emeralds! 17:39 Fun fact! You are not actually running in the special stage where you are collecting the Blue Spheres. If you want to know how it was done, check out StrifeFox's channel. He created a video on how certain elements of the game are made. 18:41 It can also deflect certain projectiles. The Thunder shield can also protect you from projectiles as well. Just don't exposed them both to water. If you manage to hit the Thunder shield as Super Sonic, you can gain the extra bonus of attracting any near by ring to you. 25:20 Big oof!

I've always felt that a majority of the levels in Sonic 3 are weaker in comparison to S&K. Anywho, I can't wait for October!

Funfact about the movie Groundhog Day, i lived in that town where the movie was filmed Woodstock Illinois. my family would go to that town every once in a while when i was a kid, and i even saw the sign on the bottom that says, "Bill mury steped here not to mention the scene were phil meets ned was next to my grandfathers old lawyer office if you see one of the doors that says jones thats my grandpas last name just thought i would give you my experience with my childhood and the movie.

One of the best games ever made🙏💎

If someone had told me a new GTV would drop while I was on vacation I might have postponed the trip! That part about Michael Jackson was some interesting trivia.

Vid of Sonic & Knuckles going toe-to-toe with Donkey Kong Country coming this October? To quote Homer Simpson: "But I want it now!"

Today is also the day that Paramount Pictures revealed the movie title for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 that's coming to theaters this December. Later this year will also be the 30th Anniversary of Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country.

IT'S GROUNDHOG DAY!

“Hardware that cost 99 dollars” Nowadays a single game can reach such prices. True it’s usually a special edition of sorts, but it’s usually not worth the asking price. Even Baldur’s Gate 3, has a lot of the collectibles in digital format (music, art book), despite buying specifically a physical edition.

Sonic 3 was a great game, but I'm always left wondering how it would have been at the time, if they hadn't rushed the development team, and it had come out whole, it's known that the game came out with glitches, which Sega knew about, because They even warned about it in the manual, the infamous "Robotnik traps", although well, in the end I guess it was more interesting that way, with Sonic and Knuckles being released separately.

Happy Hedgehog Day! Did you see the Sonic X Shadow Generations announcement? I wonder if Sega did that as a sort of callback to Sonic 3’s Marketing Campaign without even knowing it haha.

S3&K is still the best Sonic game Sega ever made. Mania would have overtaken it, were it not for the over-reliance on classic stages.

Sonic 3 is a good ROM hack of Sonic 2. It was made on top of Sonic 2 code

Mark Cerny just wild he was apart of Sega . Now look at him lol

So when the Sonic and Knuckles video comes out in October, will we be able to lock it onto this video to create one complete Sonic 3 documentary? :D

It's sad that people today seem to forget that this was the one of the best reviewed games of the year and the best reviewed Sonic game yet at the time. Probably due to the fact that every port of Sonic 3 from 2007 onward has been a butchered port.

Great video, always a fan of big game releases back in those days. Also, if anyone could point me in the direction of those Sonic 3 remix that would be nice 👀

Great job on the video but knuckles can’t climb or glide in the multiplayer. He just stops the quickest & is the 2nd fastest.

7:00, though in a tweet not too long ago, Yuji Naka basically threw hints that yes, they were working with Michael Jackson as they were flying over Neverland. 12:42, a movie by 2 Ghosbuters alumni got shafted from Punxsutawney due to uninteresting locales but a commercial for Sonic 3 was filemd there? SEGA did the right thing tbh. 13:30, that Sonic hat is so adorbs. The Sonic game that I grew up with thru a disc that had multiple games. 25:20, well...that's a pile of fish they're gonna have to fish aggressively. Been reading Console Wars by Blake Harris and I'm starting to see where this is going.

The thing I've realized about business and this time period of Sega Vs: Nintendo is that even though the SNES was at 40% market share vs Genesis's 60%, the numbers were so good for both companies, it really didn't matter. It was damn near even. a 60/40 split is a sustainable environment for both companies. All Sega had to do was take their time and release a quality follow up. The N64 wasn't great, but it was good enough to still be successfully profitable for Nintendo. This wasn't the case with the spaghetti flinging Sega did with the 32X, CD and finally Saturn all of which were hastily flung together and pushed to market without the long term support from developers and a lack of consideration to the consumer about how much our parents back then could actually afford to buy Nintendo waited, developed and released a solid enough platform, even with all its disadvantages to a PlayStation, and it kept them in solid business. Sega's lack of steady leadership focused on a solid platform moving on from the Genesis soured consumers on their platform and even when the Dreamcast came out in the next generation, which could've been a solid enough platform to keep the company in the hardware business, the consumer had their alternate to Nintendo. They had Sony. Sega had let the consumer down and the consumer in reaction, let Sega down, like a rejected date to the prom. They were let down easy, but they were let down nonetheless... To the point that the Dreamcast is basically Sega's equivalent of NEC's Turbo Graphx 16... In that both consoles are completely solid platforms with great game libraries that absolutely NO ONE (in comparison to their competition) invested in. People want both of those consoles in their collections and love the game libraries, but they were abject failures in the marketplace of their day.. Sega could have EASILY stayed in the hardware business had they just taken their time, communicated with the consumer effectively and released a competitive follow up platform to the Genesis. It's honestly a great example of growing so big then resting on your laurels far too quickly. Nintendo only now 30+ years later has the kind of built in good will with gamers to make these kinds of mistakes and survive long enough to rectify them. Sega didn't hold that luxury, though at the time they thought they did..

What if in an alternate timeline, Sonic 3 never got split in-half? And if the full game came out on Feb. 2, 1994? How'd Sonic's history have played out? Imagine growing up that parallel world with altered memories.

#KongCountry&Knuckles

19:30 Uh, I don't think that's true. Last time I checked, Knuckles plays like Sonic in the split screen mode. No climbing or gliding. They didn't even fix it for the lock-on game.

Before i was born

Rip groundhog

Sonic 3 & Knuckles will go down in history as not just my favorite Sonic game of all time, but my favorite video game of all time. The gameplay is peak Classic Sonic, which has some massive yet amazing level design, the Special Stages are unique and are much better than the ones compared to Sonic 1's Acid Trip and Sonic 2's Half Pipe, plus the addition of the Elemental Shields and their useful abilities really help you get out of sticky situations. What's also great about S3&K is that it has the ability to tell a story without a word. The player is able to see it via cutscenes and level transitions, and it really does make for a great Classic Sonic story. And despite the legal issues regarding MJ and the Sonic 3 music, I'm actually glad that S3&K finally got re-released via Sonic Origins.

Donkey Kong use a special chip, well all well locking games use special chip

GTV Japan 3 & Knuckles!

1:40 that's probably revenue, not profits

Dk is the best 😊.Also #Mario vs Donkey Kong

Sonic 1 was the best and last time we'd get good sonic bgm.

I am a non-conformist and my opinion on this has also been the small minority one, with almost nobody else voicing any of these things, but I know it has merit. I'm about to complain a lot, but it's mostly so people can get another perspective from someone who was there at the time. I was a huge fan of Sonic. It was my favorite series back in the day. However, Sonic 3 did not impress me. It left a significantly bad impression. (Late 1993 also had the huge disappointment of Sonic Spinball for a kid who was - perhaps too innocently - expecting something much better...and only being able to rent a Sega CD and Sonic CD kept me happy with Sonic from late 1993 through 1994.) Of course, this is all relative, as it's still one of the better games of the era, so keep that in mind as I complain. Let's start with the story. Wow! The most involved story to date, right? True. And that story starts with the invincible Super Sonic getting punched so hard by a non-Super Knuckles as to have the chaos emeralds fly out of him like rings. Nobody else had a problem with that? For 30 years, I'm the only person I've known who ever had a problem with that. I don't know if you've seen the movie Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' where the new and all-powerful Super Saiyan Blue gets shot through the chest by a basic grunt laser gun, but the feeling is similar. Let's now get to the stages. Sonic 2 had 9 zones, not including Sky Chase or Death Egg. Sonic 3 had 6 zones. (And the two-player mini-zones were so short but gave a tantalizing glimpse into what could have been added in one-player mode.) Oh, but those zones were larger, right? Yes, but they got old, and to me, they were frustrating as well. I prefer more and shorter, versus fewer and longer. Of course, I admit that some Sonic 1, 2, and CD zones are too short, but to me, they tend to be more interesting than the Sonic 3 zones. Ironically, Sonic 3 zones seemed to have fewer paths in many cases. And the tops... Oh, the tops... I hate those things that have you slowly inch your way across Marble Garden just to then touch the ground and zip you to your death by crashing into some barely on-screen enemy or obstacle. On the bright side, Hydrocity (minus the moving wall) is a water level done right. Much better than Labyrinth Zone, for example. But even that has the up and down rotating platforms and blowers that slow things up, and while the slides and running over the surface of the water are fun, it's a taste of the gimmicky from later games, whereas I feel that Aquatic Ruin was a water level with more classic gameplay, which also rewarded players with a top path out of the reach of the water. But really, Carnival Night (where you are walking into bumpers going the other way and had a drum that you jumped on and had no idea how to move otherwise) and Launch Base didn't seem much better than Marble Garden. There was not a stand-out stage for me, and most were simply not particularly fun. Now for the aesthetics. Sonic 1, 2, and CD had an "unreal" quality. The trees were not trees. They were metallic/robotic or plastic or something along those lines. The dirt was made of boxes, like the old Sealtest checkerboard ice cream. Flowers spun. There were weird neon-like signs floating in the sky...like "Cope"... This was a totally new world...a world that I wanted to see more of. Sonic 3 changed all that. Now, it was like any other game. Sonic was in a more real world environment. Well, not quite to the extent of the human princess love interest and humans with regular proportions in business suits and such in the 3D games yet. But still, it was a huge step into the real world and out of the mysterious dimension that fed my imagination. And now Sonic himself looked like a stuffed animal. He didn't look cool. He looked cross-eyed and puffy. And now he was surpassed in almost everything by others. Tails and Knuckles has more abilities, yet could also run as fast as the "fastest thing alive". Sonic had the...instashield. Cue the "Price is Right" failure song. The others could literally fly and glide. Thankfully, Knuckles couldn't jump quite as high, so that was one differentiator. But anyway, Sonic now felt cute and tame and no longer particularly special or cool. And finally, there was the price. I don't think of Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles as one game. Why? Because my parents spent their money to buy two games for me, not one. So they are two games. It's easy when emulating for free or buying something on some storefront for $4.99 to think of Sonic and Knuckles as one game, but it was two. And to be honest, even putting them together as one game, I still prefer Sonic 2. Sonic 3 is still one of the better 16-bit games, but neither it nor Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the best Sonic game in my opinion. And I was one of those who was blown away with Donkey Kong Country (even though I didn't have a Super NES) and it immediately surpassed Sonic 3 & Knuckles in my eyes. Anyway, although I was a downer with regards to this subject, thanks for the video! I just wanted to give my opinion that starkly contrasts with the norm. I'm looking forward to the video coming in October about Sonic and Knuckles!

16:41: *features NO-battery back-up. :)

now we wait till october :| itll be here before we know it...

0:06 What's the music playing in the background?