Sonic 3 & Knuckles 1994 By: Sega

Overview:

After saving the day from Dr. Robotnik's Death Egg in Sonic 2, Sonic the Hedgehog goes for a vacation on the floating Angel Island. However, it looks like Sonic is not welcome, as Angel Island's guardian, Knuckles the Echidna, has taken Sonic's chaos emeralds!
Knuckles has been deceived by Dr. Robotnik into thinking that Sonic is the bad guy, but when he finds out, he rushes to crumble Robotnik's empire and regain the Master Emerald!
Play as Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles and defeat Dr. Ivo Robotnik before he can relaunch the Death Egg!

Directions:

It's Sonic! Speed through the levels as fast as you can without getting hit. If you get hit you'll lose all the rings you have (or die if you have none). All Characters can spin dash by pressing Down and A, B, or C.

Sonic: The Fastest Hedgehog around! Well, everyone's speed is the same so that really doesn't matter. Sonic has the "Insta-Shield" special attack that will protect Sonic from things that would normally hurt him while doing damage to enemies. It only works for an instant, though, so it requires good timing to protect yourself. Just press A, B, or C while in the air to try it yourself.
Sonic is also the only character that can use the special powers of the three shields (When he has a shield he looses the insta-shield power).

Electric: This lets Sonic Double Jump and attracts rings for all characters.

Fire: This lets Sonic do a Flame Charge in the direction he is facing and protects everyone from fire.

Water: This shield lets Sonic bounce around and gives everyone infinite air underwater.

Tails: Tails can fly for a limited time by tapping A, B, or C in the air. While flying he can damage enemies if he hits them from the bottom with his tails. Tails has to obtain ALL the Chaos and Super Emeralds before he can transform into Super Tails.

Knuckles: Knuckles' path usually diverges from Sonic and Tails' because Knuckles cannot jump as high. Knuckles, however, makes up for his small jump(Knuckles In Sonic 2's final boss is A LOT harder with Knuckles' dinky jump) with his ability to glide and climb walls. Simply press A, B, or C while in the air to glide forward. If you hit a climbable wall Knuckles will attach himself to it. Just press Up or Down to climb/descend. When Knuckles is gliding he can hurt enemies with his fists.All Characters have a Super Mode. Sonic and Knuckles have Hyper Modes. To reach these modes you have to collect all the Chaos emeralds from the Blue Spheres mini-game found when you jump inside hidden giant rings. Once you have 7 Chaos Emeralds, you'll be able to transform into Super Sonic or Super Knuckles by pressing A, B, or C in the air if you have 50 rings or more. These super characters are faster and invincible from everything except drowning, pits, and getting crushed.

Once you complete the first half of the game (Sonic 3's levels) you'll be able to start collecting the Super Emeralds. With the Super Emeralds, Tails will finally be able to transform into a super form while Sonic and Knuckles will unlock a new hyper form. While collecting the Super Emeralds you lose the ability to enter Super Form.

Hyper Sonic gains the Sonic Boom attack, which is essentially a flame boost that you can aim that kills all minor enemies on the screen.

Hyper Knuckles gains Quake, if Knuckles glides into a wall fast enough he will shake the screen and kill all minor enemies.

Super Tails gets four golden Flickies who hunt out and destroy enemies on screen and attack bosses.
Special Stages: Blue Sphere stages are the only thing standing in your way to getting the emeralds. The objective is simple, get blue spheres. Move around the 3D mazes and AVOID RED SPHERES at all cost. If you create a box of red spheres around blue spheres the whole thing will turn into a box of rings. If you collect all the rings and all the blue spheres you will get a Perfect, a lot of points, and a continue.
Mini-games: If you have 50 or more rings and you activate a star post, a ring will appear about it like in Sonic 2, however this isn't the way you get emeralds here. In S3&K this takes you to one of three mini-games (the exact amount determines the game).

Slots: A mixture of the Sonic 1 special stages and Sonic 2's Casino Night Zone. Jump off the rotating walls and try to fall into the slots machine in the center. You can win big or lose it all!

Gumball Machine: Hit the knob as many times as you can and collect the items!

Glowing Spheres: You're stuck in a field of magnetic spheres! Roll to the top and jump off to the next sphere while collecting rings and power-ups! Move quickly, as a gravity beam will grab you if you are too slow.