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Episode 668: Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Pt. 5 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-01-27 12:00:12
Imported:
2026-06
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Stuart: We did it, gang. By which I mean, all of us. Collectively. We enabled this. We enabled ten hours or so of pure, full-fat Sonic 3 & Knuckles chat. It is, quite frankly, everything I could ever have wanted. I can’t even be modest about it. I won’t! This is good shit, my friends. We did a great game the justice it deserved, and I am proud of it. Thank you for not telling me to vigorously bugger off when it became clear just how forensically detailed we were getting.

But yes, it’s finished. Five episodes. I’d like to thank Seumidh MacDonald and Dave Bulmer for helping make my dreams of droning on about S3K come true, and to you listeners for your patience – and, it has to be said, expressions of appreciation and enjoyment. It has all gone down rather well, hasn’t it? And let’s not forget the series’ cover art by Seumidh MacDonald, S. Edward Sloane, Amanda Neipris, Abby Bulmer and, for this latest installment, Tracy Yardley. Cheers!

What’s next for us Sonic-obsessives, then? Myself, Seumidh and Dave have a few more Sonic episodes in the can, but nothing in a similar vein of hyperfixation. Perhaps in the future another long-form series like this one will crop up, but for now, we’re giving it a rest like our dads always told us to whenever we piped up. Well, mine did anyway. Actually, that’s a lie, I love my dad. I wouldn’t want him to read this and think I didn’t. It’s a fictional

Edits by Greg Leahy, art by Tracy Yardley

11:16 - Sonic Adventure DX: Unknown from M.E.

21:39 - Lava Reef Zone, Act 2

30:03 - Sky Sanctuary Zone

43:58 - Sky Sanctuary Zone (cont.)

53:22 - Death Egg Zone, Act 1

1:03:05 - Death Egg Zone, Act 2

1:16:59 - Final Boss

1:30:33 - Doomsday Zone

1:38:53 - Credits (Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ver.)

1:54:17 - Endless Mine

Closing - Credits (Sonic & Knuckles ver.)

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Comments

Normallyretro

Nothing has ever received this much attention: Not a mother's love, an unpaid bill, or a drill sergeant.

Taskbaarchitect

A cracking end to a wonderful five-part adventure as the gang guide the homing missiles of truth into the robotic nose of misconception, or something. Since everyone hosting confessed to being less familiar with Knuckles's route, I did want to mention something that I feel sums up the craft and attention to detail that pours out of this game. In Marble Garden, there's a bit where Sonic's route requires breaking a gem set in a statue. It's high enough that Knuckles's jump won't allow him to reach it, so instead, you're supposed to go a different way and everyone's normal-smelling echidna friend eventually faces off against an entirely different Act 2 boss. This is presumably because Sonic's battle takes place entirely in the sky with the help of Tails, who, in the narrative, shouldn't be around to help Knux. But if you're persistent and make good use of Marble Garden's spinning top things, it IS possible to get Knuckles along Sonic's route. If you manage this, Tails will actually show up just as if you were Sonic. He'll grab onto Knuckles just fine and you can beat Robotnik as normal, at which point the stage transitions correctly as if this was an entirely valid way to complete it. The fact that this works without glitched graphics or crashing the game, the sheer effort and polish expended just to accommodate the tiny percentage of stubborn weirdos going out of their way to push against the limits of the world, is the perfect encapsulation of why I did, and do, and always will adore Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

Craig

Afraid to start this because that means our heroes journey has come to an end. That is until the GG/Master System Sonic 8 part deep dive…

Giles Armstrong

Before even pressing play, I am anachronistically delighted this has arrived. 😏 Thanks for so much for this deep dive series, especially considering the technical error that meant needing to re-record one of the parts.

Stefan P

Fantastic to hear another episode of these and to hear all the love you guys have for this amazing game!! 🥰

KendoHead

Having just finished listening to this, I'm now lying in bed, satisfied, yet a wee bit sad - not unlike that post-wank sensation.

reecemysocksoff

Sad to see this mini-series go, incredibly hyper-focused to my interests - I don't want to add to the endless pile of Sonic-related podcasts, but would love to hear Stu. Dave & Seumidh to go this in-depth on LOADS of other Sonic games. It's been a blast

Faizel Razak

imagine if Sega releases Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Part 5~

Andrew O.

With DKC and SMW you are wowed by a lot of stages, but for the most part they're all variations of the same gameplay. Story too. Retrieve bananas and save a princess, AGAIN. Sonic cuts through all that and gives you a tight, well-crafted experience that's filled with excitement and wonder with every act, climaxing it's story in a heated battle ending a multi-game epic with various characters and endings. Oh, another barrel cannon or POW balloon, whoop-de-do. Meanwhile Sonic is zip-lining, no wait he's on the ceiling, nope, old news, he's flying through f**king space now. No contest playground kid, go ride your dinosaur with the booties.

PosiVibez4evr

Now do Sonic Adventure please 😛🙏

Jeff Peterson

Congrats on the wrap up of an “impactful” and deep discussion of this one game. I have never been a Sonic fan, not for a lack of trying (I played Sonic 1 and 2 as a kid and just couldn’t quite get into it). From the first episode of this series, I could tell from the passionate detailing of levels and set pieces that this game was something special that I should eventually give a try. I will commit to finally playing this game this year and look forward to a good time. I’ll check out Seumidh’s video mentioned at the end to learn more about how a Sonic game should be played. The only “Sonic” game I’ve ever enjoyed is Freedom Planet and I feel like that game was HEAVILY inspired by Sonic 3 & Knuckles based on what you three have described here and made me realized that Sonic isn’t actually just “holding right and going fast”. Thanks again for sharing the love of this game for so many hours!

Aaron

I finally set aside some time to listen to this and was of course once again delighted by the gang's efflusive commentary. Aside from getting into ridiculous minutiae about the placement of specific cannons in Carnival Night or spinning mesh tubes in Flying Battery Zone I don't think there's more to be said. EXCEPT ONE THING. As we all know, Sonic & Knuckles doesn't have any save data in its cartridge, so all the game saves -- distinct between Sonic 3 on its own and S3&K locked-on together -- all exist in the Sonic 3 cart. If you'd played Sonic 3 already and gotten some save data, you'd have empty saves for S3&K, as they're distinct. However, any time you boot up S3&K with all the slots 'NEW' (no save started), it will copy over the data, level progress and emerald count, of all 6 Sonic 3 saves and let you continue from there (and deleting all the saves and restarting the game will cause this to happen again -- it's not a one-time thing). If you cleared Sonic 3, this lets you start a new game in S3&K at Mushroom Hill; if you want to play through Sonic & Knuckles with save, the game is actually designed in a way to let you do this -- well, as long as you have a cleared Sonic 3 save. (There aren't a lot of differences between a pure S&K playthrough and an S3&K playthrough other than the super emeralds and a different logo at the end of the game; there's very little reason to play S&K without S3 attached and I wouldn't recommend it to people aside from Mushroom Hill as Knuckles having a slightly friendlier intro to his abilities.)

Rich Uncle Skeleton

This series was such a joy. I came into it convinced that nothing would dethrone Sonic 2's perfection in my mind, but the infectious enthusiasm you lot brought to these eps is making me wonder if I shouldn't reevaluate... Growing up, a buddy of mine had a (Prima?) strategy guide for S&K, and it was riddled with little inset illustrations of Knuckles with speech bubbles, and someone had decided that his "dreadlocks" meant he's probably supposed to have a Jamaican accent...Lot's of "yes mons" abounded. Anyway, I guess the next challenge would be making a convincing case for Sonic CD not being just a sloppy asset explosion (with an amazing soundtrack ;-)

Peter Monks

This was an excellent series from start to finish. I agree with Stu, while Retronauts is definitely my favourite podcast ever, there really hasn't been a lot of focus or love for Sonic... Until now! This epic reminded me why I loved the Mega Drive games so much, and the level of detail you all go into is something you should definitely consider for other episodes