Retro Recommendation: Sonic 3 & Knuckles

This is possibly one of the most chill games ever, in fact it's actually two amazing games in one. Back in the old days, the game cartridges for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic and Knuckles could "lock" together, which allowed you to play through both games continuously. (Kinda like Goku and Vegeta in DBZ)

Not quite as awesome, but you get the idea

This game is crazy fun and crazy simple. No sappy dialog, no freaking tutorial mission, and no bullshit objective. All you gotta do is keep moving and breaking stuff, and as long as you have at least one ring, you can get hit as much as you want. The 13 unique zones are as beautiful as it gets with 16-bit graphics and the music is upbeat and catchy. Each zone is fairly lengthy, consisting of two levels as well as a mid-boss and a final boss. Every zone also acts as a auto-save, so when you run out of lives you can continue without restarting the whole freaking game.

You get 3 characters to choose from, as well as the option to play as Sonic with a computer controlled Tails.(Or you can have a friend play as tails, but it really sucks because the the camera only follows Sonic and the game is way to fast to do anything really, however it can be helpful for a tough boss.)

Sonic is the blue guy, and he gets the power to run really fast as well as a shield that last for about half a second if you hit A in the air.

Tails is the yellow one, and he can fly/swim if you keep mashing A in the air. Personally I hate tails, dunno why.

Knuckles is pinky, and he has an offensive glide if you hold down A in the air, and you can use this to smash into enemies. Knuckles can also climb almost any wall by gliding into it.

Like I said before, gameplay is fairly simple: keep holding right, keep grabbing rings, and smash anything in your way. However the levels are anything but simple, you will have to deal with loop-de-loops, massive jumps, spirals, and many other obstacles that can only be traversed at high speeds. Or you could be a little punk and fly over everything as Tails.

 The above screenshot shows Knuckles running around Hydrocity, the second zone as well as the dreaded water level. You will have to either collect water bubbles for air (bottom-left) or find yourself a water shield that will give you an infinite supply of air and deflect basic projectiles (bottem-right).

 The next zone is the Marble Garden zone, which features tall mountains and blue skies. You can find these really cool little running platforms (bottom-right), that will allow anyone to fly across the level. Also the bad guy, Dr. Eggman, will show up and start a huge earthquake.

 This is the 8th zone, which is one huge flying battleship. You will have to navigate the giant engine rooms as well as make some pretty precarious jumps as it's pretty dang far back to the ground.

This shows the typical boss battle. Basically you find Eggman, break whatever crazy toy he's got, then free all the little animals. Simple, yet watching all the little animals dance around after you free them always feels good.

There are many ways to play this game, but the cheapest is to just download a genesis emulator and play it right on your PC. Simple, easy, and doesn't cost you dime. It's also technically illegal, but no one really cares. Another great way to emulate the game is via an android phone, just search for "Genesis Emulator" in the marketplace. Here is a link to the rom.