Angel Island Zone

Angel Island Zone, Act 1

Angel Island Zone is the first zone in Sonic 3. Playing as Sonic, you get to watch a rather lengthy intro in which Sonic and Tails discover the floating island and first run into Knuckles. An alternate version of the intro had Sonic surfing onto the island, which is a leftover from a beta version of Sonic 3. The surfing sprites can be viewed via debug mode. Nemesis created a savestate with a restored surfing intro sequence, which you can download here.

Glitches

• It's possible to go into a Knuckles-only section of act 2 when playing as Sonic by using debug mode, then go up to Sonic's path after going through the long set of breakable walls. When you get to the boss, there will be two of them - one acting as Sonic's boss and one acting as Knuckles'. This can be used to give a 50000 point time bonus if you use one of the capsules to trigger the end of level and reset the time to zero, then use the other to trigger another end of level.

• When at the end of act 2, after defeating Robotnik, you can also hold left and repeatedly try to jump during the Knuckles cut-scene. If done correctly, you'll jump off the bridge as it collapses, allowing you to avoid falling into Hydrocity Zone.

Villains

Badniks

• Rhinobot — A robotic rhino that charges at you.
• Monkey Dude — Just your standard (blue) coconut throwing monkey.
• Bloominator — A red flower with a metallic blue stem.
• Catakiller, Jr. — A blue caterpillar surrounded by a shield-like contraption.

Mid-boss

Angel Island's mid-boss is definitely the easiest boss ever made. It has a flamethrower and bomb launchers, though it only uses the latter if you are playing as Knuckles. All you have to do is jump on top of it and wait until the six hits are done, and that's that!

Boss

Quite a step up from the easy mid-boss, the act 2 boss involves hitting Robotnik's eggpod eight times, while avoiding the two (or four, if playing as Knuckles) fireballs shot from it. At both ends of the arena are bottomless pits, and Robotnik will disappear behind the waterfall every now and again so you'll have to time your jumps.