::Knuckles Chaotix::

First of all, I wanna go on the record and say that I like Knuckles alot more than I do Sonic. 1. He's red, and for those of you that know me, i LOVE the color red. ^_^ 2. He can break through breakable blocks and walls by simply walking towards them. This prooved that even though Sonic had the speed, Knuckles defenitely had the power, cause as you all know in Sonic 3 Angel Island Zone Act 1, there was that section before the sub-boss where you couldnt go down, you HAD to go up, because those boulders blocking the bottom path sonic couldn't break even as Super Sonic. 3. He can glide through the air and pick up speed while he's gliding. That is fucking amazing. Sure Tails can fly in the air but it's only for a short amount of time. At least with Knuckles, you can glide for as long as you want to untill you either decide to stop, or hit a wall. And speaking of walls, 4. He can climb walls. Fuck yea!! Sonic 3 & Knuckles had all sorts of little secrets that weren't accessable with Sonic or even Tails for that matter. Hell, Sonic 2 even had some secrets of it's own, more so in Chemical Plant Zone. Perfect stage to get to the top-most point of the screen to rack up on alot of 1ups. Not including the ones that you could normally pick up as sonic or tails, there are 3 in the first act, and 2 in the second act. Once you did that, you were defenitely set for the rest of the game. The only flaw that Knuckles had was the height of his jump... its basically half the height of Sonic's jump.

After the huge sucess of Sonic & Knuckles for the Genesis, Sega decided to make another sonic game for the genesis, but was later canceled. Today it is known as Sonic Crackers in the rom hacking/emulation world. This was debated as being the 4th sonic game made for the Sega Genesis, simply because even though Sonic & Knuckles was truely the 4th Sonic game for the Genesis, we later found out that it was just a "Sonic 3.5/Sonic 3 part 2" game. See, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles was supposed to be it's own individual game, but since it was too big for the cartridge/Genesis (i forget which one), it had to be split into two parts, hence why the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge used "Lock-On" technology. At the time it was a big thing, because that ment that you could play any game with Sonic & Knuckles. Well to be more specific, you could only play the "Blue Sphere" game (which was Sonic 3 & Knuckle's special stage zone). The plus side though was that each Genesis game had it's own Blue Sphere stage, so every stage was completely different, both layout and color wise. As for the Sonic games, aside from the obvious Sonic 3, if you locked on Sonic 2, you got to play Sonic 2 as Knuckles only, which made everyone very happy. So you would think that you could do the same thing if you locked on Sonic 1 right? Wrong. You get the Blue Sphere game again, only this time, unlike all the other non-Sonic games, which just had one special stage and that was it, Sonic 1 with Sonic & Knuckles had a whole series of special stages. Scoring for this one was funny though... lets say you played stage 1 and if you got all the spheres but didnt get a perfect (which is collecting all the rings), the next stage would be stage 2. But if you DID get a perfect, the next stage would be stage 11. In other words, for every perfect you get, you skip 10 stages... which is pretty cool , specially since you get a little animation of the "Cast Of Characters" at the end of each "Perfect Game".

Anywho, back to Sonic Crackers. This game was being developed around the same time that the Genesis started getting two new "add-ons" to increase its life span to continue to compete against it's competitor; The Super Nintendo. One add-on was the Sega CD (which sad to say, I never owned v_v), and it was the first Video Game console to use CDs. It had its own Sonic game "Sonic CD", which sorta broke away from the genesis story line but introduced a few new things, which I wont go into detail about. The second add-on was the "32X" (THIS one i DID own ^_^). It went back to cartridges which confused the hell out of alot of people... cause why go back to cartridges if they made the Sega CD? Anywho, just like the Sega CD, the 32X got it's own Sonic game... although Sonic wasn't a playable character in the game. Yep, I'm talkin bout Knuckles Chaotix, and it was the game that "Sonic Crackers" was supposed to be. Don't believe me? Well, let's look at the facts. For those of you keeping score at home, and have the Sonic Crackers and Knuckles Chaotix roms with you, you can play along with me. Sonic Crackers and Knuckles Chaotix both use the teamwork system via two rings keeping them together like a rubberband... thats 1. Sonic Crackers and Knuckles Chaotix both use the same music and songs... thats 2. And finally, both Sonic Crackers and Knuckles Chaotix use the "transition from day to night" setting for the stages... thats 3. Oh and if you wanna get more in-depth, if you use the stage select cheat code in Knuckles Chaotix, you'll notice one of the options is also "Character Select" and who is the first person in line? Mighty The Armadillo. Now in order to understand why Mighty is so important in this factor, we must first have to look at the character itself. It's pretty much a Sonic clone except its a red armadillo. Even Mighty's sprite is Sonic 1's Sprite retouched and recolored. TECHNICALLY, Mighty wasn't even supposed to be in Knuckles Chaotix, and it isn't the first time he's been in a "Sonic related" game before. In japan arcades, there was this other Sonic Game called "Sega Sonic The Hedgehog". The graphics were kick-ass and it's playing style was different from the other games (aside from the fact that you used a trackball instead of an actual joystick. It's hard to explain, but I did find a few videos explaining it and to give you an idea on what it was about. This is the whole game with Sonic and a little bit of the other character (Ray The Squirrel) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Qr0kS XGEg and this one has Mighty The Armadillo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQxDJ3 Q860 (please excuse the dude talking). On top of that, it's also been told that Mighty was actually the first idea Sega had for a character BEFORE they came up with Sonic, so in theory, Mighty is actually the OLDEST Sonic character in existance... some would say that Sonic is the actual clone instead of Mighty, but at this point, its pretty much personal opinion. So yea, there's some background info on Mighty. The next slot in the character select list in the stage cheat of Knuckles Chaotix is this line that reads "*********". This was Tail's spot in the beta rom Sonic Crackers, but if you select it, you get a freaky colored Knuckles that freezes the game as soon as it starts... I.E. unplayable. THEN comes knuckles and the crew. And speaking of Knuckles, he got a totally new sprite job, which to me came out really good.

Ok now about the game... NOT what you would expect for a Sonic game. For one thing, the "Team" thing is necessary in some cases, but for the most part, it's useless. Specially when EVERY character can either fly or clib walls... well, unless you actually count those wastes of spaces known as "Bomb & Heavy"... they cant climb or fly. Only reason why their in the game is cause apparently their Dr. Robotnik's robots that got rejected and now wan't to help the Chaotix crew to stop him. And if you have the selected as partners, you'll know why their wasted of spaces... SLOW AS FUCK. Specially Heavy... my god. And Bomb just blows up everytime he gets whacked around, and his explosion damages YOU too. So it makes you wonder who's side they are REALLY on. Anywho, you can stop your partner in his tracks by holding B and then using the D-Pad to move your pain character in the desired direction, stretching out the band, then once you release B, you'll be going fast. This is one reason why the rubber band thing is useless because you can just do a spin dash and you'd get their quicker. Seriously, by the time you charge your rubber band, you'd be at your destination already if you would have used the spin dash. The other reason is that your second character is most of the time getting in the way... specially when your in the air (which will happen alot in some stages). When you wanna go one direction, your partner will either prevent you from going there, or make you go the other way. Another flaw in the game... REPETITIVE STAGES! I'm not kidding, even though there are 5 worlds to choose from, all of them have 5 acts, and all acts are the SAME EXACT LAYOUT, except with more stuff added and the goal is located differently within the later acts. The enemies are the same as the ones from Sonic CD, but with newer ones added as well... which also raises a few eyebrows. Like maybe Sonic CD and Knuckles Chaotix's storyline follows one another and Sonic CD is truely the 4th Sonic game, making Knuckles Chaotix the 5th game. But then you look at the Game Gear games and then trying to figure out the TRUE chronological order of the Sonic series can be a real pain in the ass. After all, Metal Sonic from Sonic CD is also in Knuckles Chaotix as well. So if you really think about it, it was like after Sonic CD, Dr. Robotnik decided to leave Sonic alone and fuck with Knuckles some more. Idk, thinkin bout it too much makes my head hurt. Last thing to talk about is the special stages. First of all, instead of Chaos EMERALDS, your collecting Chaos RINGS... um what? Why rings? Its not like they ever came back in a future Sonic game, so why would you not use Emeralds? Plus there's only 6 Chaos Rings, and they don't change you into any super forms if you collect them all, in fact, the only person that get's any power from them is Metal Sonic, which transforms into this red huge ugly version of himself with more spikes. The only reason why I could see them using rings instead of emeralds is because since everyone is in Robotnik's Carnival Land, Robotnik MADE the Chaos rings which gives the island and himself more power, so Knuckles and the crew have to collect the rings to take away Robotnik's power, since in the end credits, if you don't collect all the rings, Super Metal Sonic destroys the whole word. And if that's the case, then I pretty much answered my own question. But aside from the rings, the special stage itself is 3D, like sonic 2 and 3 and CD, only it makes use of the whole "polygon" shapes and designs instead of "2d looking like 3d" effect.

So yea thats about it. For the most part, it's worth playing, specially if your a Knuckle's fan like myself. Unfortunately only way you can play this game is if you have an emulator or the actual 32X and game, cause it never made it on any of the other sonic collections they came out for the PS2, XBox, and GameCube. Not to mention that I dont think it's available to download for the Wii yet. Correct me on this if im wrong.