Sonic & Knuckles Collection (Windows, OPL3 Music) Sonic Walkthrough

(NOTE: I need to apologize about the really bad microstutter present in this video; unfortunately, regardless of which computer I played this game on, it seemed to happen and I couldn’t find a way to eliminate it. It appears to be an issue with this particular version of the game) The Intel Pentium has blast processing. The Cyrix 6x86 doesn’t. So what’s blast proc- wait, that’s not how it goes… That’s right, it’s the PC port of Sonic 3 & Knuckles! This compilation includes all three ways to play the third entry in the Sonic series (Sonic 3 alone, Sonic & Knuckles alone, or the two of them locked on; you can also play Blue Sphere as well, normally accessed by locking on any other cartridge besides Sonic 3 or Sonic 2 to S&K). Okay, I won't pretend this game hasn't already been recorded and played to death all over the Internet, and you know good and well I try to avoid games that have been recorded a million times over. However...the recordings of this version that do exist on YouTube make a pretty fatal mistake: General MIDI music. Now, in most cases, I'd just say your preference for sound synthesizers is up to personal taste. But this is a pretty glaring exception. The General MIDI score for this game is AWFUL. The instrumentation is horrendously chosen and it can't bend notes, leading to issues like the title theme having no upward slur like it's supposed to. I'm no musician, I won't pretend I know the first thing about music making, but compared to the Genesis version, the GM score mangles everything so badly. The correct way to play this version is to use an FM synthesis chip (and no, you can't just tick the "FM synthesis" box on the options to accomplish this, you need to have a sound card that specifically has that sort of chip or emulation thereof like a Sound Blaster 16 or an OPL3-SAx). This not only gives you a soundtrack far closer and more faithful to the Genesis version, it also is actually...well, decent. It is able to pitch-bend and doesn't have any of the ear-shattering instrument balancing issues that plague the GM score. This shouldn't be too surprising, as the FM synth chips that were originally popularized in PCs, the Yamaha OPL2 and later the OPL3, are very close relatives to the Genesis's sound chip, the OPN2. I also have to confess...I never finished this game up until I recorded this. No, really. I got through Sonic 3's half, but never did so while also getting every Chaos Emerald, never mind the & Knuckles half and every Super Emerald. That's due in part to how unforgiving the special stages are -- a single mistake will ruin it, and once you enter a special stage ring, it’s gone forever even if you reload a save game. And I'm not emulating this either, so I don't have save states to save my skin. So, if you have an eagle eye, you might notice a few discrepancies from the start of the video up to Carnival Night. The reason for these is because I started the walkthrough on my Pentium 2 computer, but for whatever reason it slowed to a crawl at that zone so I had to switch over to the Pentium 1, which is how the rest of the walkthrough ended up being done. There shouldn’t be any major inconsistencies, however the sound effects are a lot louder on the Pentium 2 (initially, the music was too loud so I turned up the wave audio volume, but I think I overdid it a bit). Mercifully, the sound cards on the two computers aren’t drastically different -- the Pentium 2 has an OPL3-SAx while the Pentium 1 has a Sound Blaster 16 (with a real OPL3 chip, not the CQM synthesizer). Additionally, I didn’t realize until post that the Pentium 2 footage is actually a little faster than it should be -- I think this occurred because my monitor refresh rate was mistakenly set to 70Hz, and the game syncs to the refresh rate in full screen mode. That does at least mean the microstutter was lesser, but if it looks suspiciously faster for the first three zones, that’s why. Carnival Night onward are all at the correct speed. I could have slowed it in post but that would have meant the music would get slowed down too so I left it as it was. As far as gameplay goes, I did my best to cut out any particularly sloppy moments and deaths, unless the death didn’t cost me a whole lot of time. I admit I’m not the best at this game, and the play especially gets sloppy beginning at Sandopolis, which I had only reached that point in the game one time prior to this recording. I also cut out any special stages I failed, which didn’t happen a huge amount thankfully enough. I also did what I could to avoid using Super/Hyper Sonic too much beyond the first time just to show what he was like, though I did use him at a few bosses. I don’t have a whole lot else to say. As the title states, this is a Sonic playthrough; I currently have no plans to do a Knuckles one, though some day it may happen. Hope you enjoy!