They control Sonic and Tails, who attempt to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds to stop Doctor Robotnik from relaunching his space station, the Death Egg, after it crash-lands on a mysterious floating island.

Development began in January 1993 by Sega Technical Institute in California, shortly after the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Michael Jackson composed portions of the soundtrack, but left the project and went uncredited; sources vary on how much of his work was retained, and many tracks were replaced in rereleases.

Levels are populated with "badniks", robots created by the villain, Dr. Robotnik; Sonic and Tails can defeat them by jumping on them or using the "spin dash" attack, which also gives the character a speed boost.

[2] The levels include obstacles and other features such as vertical loops, corkscrews, breakable walls, spikes, water that the player can drown in, and bottomless pits.

When the player collects at least 50 rings and passes a checkpoint, they can warp to the first type,[9] which involves bouncing up a gumball machine-like corridor to earn power-ups by hitting a switch.

The corridor's floor contains a bounce pad, which also disappears after one use; falling afterwards causes the player to leave the stage with the most recent power-up collected.

[10] The second type, triggered by entering giant rings found in secret passages, involves running around a 3D map and passing through all of a number of blue spheres arranged in patterns.

[8][11] Failing to collect the seven Chaos Emeralds triggers a post-credits scene in which Robotnik and Knuckles taunt the player.

[26] Naka selected the majority of the team, while STI director Roger Hector oversaw development and Pamela Kelly led the marketing.

[28] The designer Takashi Iizuka said the chip was an experiment to see if Sonic could work in 3D, and was abandoned due to its low polygon count.

[31] As Sonic was an action game with international appeal, they told the story visually, using in-game cutscenes, instead of text.

He recalled having to prevent the rest of Sega from bothering the team while simultaneously making sure the game would be finished in time.

[23] According to several sources involved in the development, Sega hired the pop musician Michael Jackson to compose music for Sonic 3, but he left the project and went uncredited.

[43] Jackson's tour director, Brad Buxer, assembled a team and worked on the project for four weeks at Record One in Los Angeles in 1993.

[48] An anonymous source involved in development also told GameTrailers that Jackson's contributions, such as the Carnival Night Zone theme, remained.

[48] In 2013, it was discovered that the music for IceCap Zone was derived from a previously unreleased 1982 song, "Hard Times", by Buxer's band the Jetzons.

[54] In 2019, GameRevolution noted that Sonic 3 had been rereleased less frequently since Jackson's death in 2009 and speculated that this was due to legal problems with his estate.

[60] To promote the European release, the British band Right Said Fred adapted their song "Wonderman" to include references to Sonic.

[72] Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was released for the Wii Virtual Console in September 2007[73] and Xbox Live Arcade on June 10, 2009.

[81] Origins adds features including widescreen support and, in the expanded version, Amy Rose as a playable character.

[86] They later ranked it number 1 in The EGM Hot 50, indicating that it received the highest average score of any game they had reviewed in the past year.

Humphreys of Hyper saw only "a few new features"[89] while Sega Power thought it was "not all that different"[94] and Nintendo Life writer Damien McFerran said that "there's not a lot of new elements here to be brutally frank".

[93] The Unknown Gamer felt that while the two-player mode was less fun than the main game, it was much improved over Sonic 2 due to the change of format from split-screen to full-screen.

[89] Sega Magazine exclaimed that its graphics were "brilliant" even for a Sonic game,[93] while Provo praised the "elaborate" backgrounds.

[101] Mean Machines thought similarly, giving special praise to the camera's quick scrolling, the diversity of the level themes, and the "chunkier, more detailed" overall aesthetic.

[90] Rik Skews of Computer and Video Games stated that "the graphics were stunning, attention to detail is breathtaking".

[84] The Unknown Gamer described the settings as having "gorgeous background detail and lots of visual treats" and was impressed by the new obstacles that Sonic can traverse at top speeds.

[90] However, Humphreys described the sound as "Sonicky ... with the emphasis on the 'icky'"; he also found it strikingly similar to the first two Sonic games' soundtracks.

[104] Thomas and Provo enjoyed the use of wordless cutscenes to create a coherent story and thematically connect the zones.