Sonic 3 Complete: one Mega Drive collection built around Sonic 3's look and sound
Sonic 3 Complete grew out of a simple opinion: the presentation of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 got several things right that Sonic & Knuckles then changed. The fan project, presented by the Sonic Retro community, takes the combined Sonic 3 & Knuckles cartridge and rebuilds it so the whole adventure keeps Sonic 3's style by default: its title cards, main themes, the drum-driven Knuckles theme, and the silence between zone transitions. Before the title screen a new menu lets you pick Sonic 3 Complete, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles or Blue Sphere, which is why the project likens itself to the PC Sonic & Knuckles Collection, only on genuine 16-bit hardware.
At a glance
- Based on: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Mega Drive)
- Created by: Tiddles (project director and lead programmer), with Neo, That One Jig, flamewing, Hayate and ValleyBell among the credited contributors
- Released: first public build in December 2009; the final version, 130810, dates from 10 August 2013
- Genre: Platformer
- What sets it apart: a menu-driven collection with dozens of switchable options rather than a single fixed patch
What actually changes
- The scrapped Sonic 3 final boss, Big Arm, returns at the end of Launch Base for Sonic and Tails, followed by a new cutscene of the Death Egg crashing.
- An optional zone order puts Flying Battery between Carnival Night and Icecap, where it is commonly believed to have been planned, along with a matching palette and a restored save-screen icon.
- Tails gets his own intro, continue screen and results colours, and in a Sonic and Tails game the first player can take over Tails' flight.
- Super and Hyper forms are triggered with a different button from the double jump and can be cancelled; the level music speeds up instead of looping the invincibility theme.
- Sonic Jam's Easy and Normal modes are included, plus Hayate's Casual mode that removes the fear of dying.
- ValleyBell arranged Mega Drive versions of extra tracks from the PC collection, and Sonic 1 or 2 style sprites can be swapped in by patch. Dozens of bugfixes round it off.
Versions
The version number is simply the build date: more than a dozen builds appeared between 2009 and 2013, and the Sonic Retro page lists it as complete and working on real hardware.