Find me ignorant, if you must but I never owned this game before. When I finally bought it, I was thinking that it was just a Sonic 3 expansion. I did not know that you don't need Sonic 3 on the top of it to play it and that this was its own entity. That was a very pleasant surprise. Rebuilding my video game collection, I had bought a genesis for my SO, and I wanted to buy her all available Sonic games for the genesis, with her being an avid Sonic fan, so I found all of the games, this being one of them. I enjoy playing this game, as well as she does. I recommend this game to Sonic 1, 2, and 3 fans.