Sonic the Hedgehog 3/Special Stages

In the special stages, you must collect all the blue spheres while avoiding the red spheres. If you collect all the blue spheres you are rewarded with a Chaos Emerald.

Sonic and Tails in a Special Stage

The mechanics of Special Stages in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Game Screen

This counter shows how many blue spheres are remaining.
This counter shows the number of rings collected.

Items

	You must collect all of these to get the chaos emerald. When you touch them they turn red.
	If you touch any of these you lose.
	You bounce off these making you go backwards. Just press up to go forward again.

Making Rings

Groups of blue spheres can be turned into rings by going around the outside of them.

A Simple Example

1. 2. 3.

There must be at least 1 blue sphere in the center.

Irregular Shapes

1. 2. 3.

Notice how only the spheres in the outline and the center turn into rings.

Stage 1

This is the first of the special stages. You must collect 102 blue spheres to get the emerald. There are also 64 rings available. To collect the rings, go around the edge of the 4, 4x4 groupings of blue spheres.

Stage 1 map

Stage 2

There are 135 rings available on this level.

Stage 2 map