Sonic & Knuckles / Mania - Lava Reef Zone Act 1 ~ 2

Oh man! He's out of control! Acts out of order! Games out of order! Will nothing stop this wild man?!! So, some answers for ya. What they did with Sonic and Knuckles is, they didn't have enough space on the catridge for the whole Sonic 3 game as they planned it, so they split it into two. Think OG FF7/8/9 and their multiple discs. And the way they did it was pretty cool — the S&K cartridge had itself a cartridge slot on top. So you built a minitower, shoved the S&K cartridge into your SEGA Genesis™, and then shoved your Sonic 3 cartridge into S&K to get the full game. Unlike with the RPGs, you could play both games separately, IIRC there were different final bosses and partial endings in Sonic 3 if you played it as a standalone, and maybe some differences in S&K as well, but S3&K was the proper, full experience. You would play all the Sonic 3 zones first, then all the S&K zones. The labeling of OST tracks depends on people, technically it's separated, some zones are from Sonic 3, some are from S&K, but some people just write the combined name and are done with it. As a bonus, Sonic and Knuckles was also compatible with Sonic 1 and Sonic 2. If you slotted Sonic 1 into it, you'd get many rounds of Red Sphere Blue Sphere, the bonus stages from S3&K. If you slotted Sonic 2 into it, you could play Sonic 2 as Knuckles (not sure if it changed the levels or not). Due to this, the "& Knuckles" has become something of a meme. Finally, as for repeating zones and tracks, Generations is an anniversary game, a look back on Sonic's history. In that game, you have two characters you can play, Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic. All the levels in Generations are reprises from previous games, each with a Classic version, which is 2D (as in, 3D graphics, but strictly viewed from the side) and features oldschool stuff like spindash and elemental shields, and Modern version, which has modern Sonic gameplay and is fully 3D. So Generations has really cool remixes of those old hits. Sonic Mania is also a big callback to the past. It has true oldschool 2D graphics, proper physics, it plays just like the old Genesis classics, it has the choice between Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and more. Only about half of Mania's levels are returns, though, there are new zones, too. You've already heard Studiopolis Act 1, that one's new in Mania. You have more in the list, and let me just tell you right now, Tee Lopes is crushing it all the frickin' way. He's got the classic Sonic sound DOWN. Last note, one level that keeps returning more often than others is Green Hill Zone. It's in Sonic 1, Sonic Adventure 2, two or three versions in one of the Sonic Advance games, two versions in Generations, two versions in Mania, maybe something else I missed. Since you're familiar with the original, it might be fun/practical to one day just get all versions of that into one video, similarly how you did Gilgamesh's theme from various Final Fantasy games some time back. Okay, sorry for the wall of text, but you know, you asked, you received =)

Antis