The Barrel of Doom
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- Опубликовано: 21 фев 2022
- Carnival Night Zone Act 2 is the 'Dark Souls' of Sonic zones because of that barrel (or drum, whatever you want to call it). Since I first played Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the so-called 'barrel of doom' has haunted me. In this video I want to moan about a small section in one of my favourite games that I always hated. I'll try my best to explain why the barrel of doom sucks and I'll try and explore it's wider legacy.
Note: The thumbnail image came from knowyourmeme. If you know who drew that piece let me know so I can credit them in a pinned comment.
UPDATE: The thumbnail art in this video is by Green Gibbon! of theghz.com
Videos mentioned in this video :-
- Barrel of Doom guide video by @RazorZenon ( • Sonic 3 & Knuckles - T... )
- Super-Sonic Tips for Sega Maniacs (The Worst Strategy Guide) by @SimplyAJ ( • Super-Sonic Tips for S... )
- Official Sonic 3 Game Play Guide Review by @PompeyGamesRoom ( • Official Sonic 3 Game ... )
Music used in this video :-
- Balloon Park Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 3
- Carnival Night Zone Act 1 from Sonic the Hedgehog 3
- Carnival Night Zone Act 2 from Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Find me on Twitter: / thejohnnyvector 
Игры
I've been told that the thumbnail art in this video is by Green Gibbon! of theghz.com
Check it out here: web.archive.org/web/20060521123818/www.theghz.com:80/
cool art
Yes
Fun Fact: The "ancient civilization" mentioned in Lego Sonic dimensions is a reference to the Sonic 3 and Knuckles Fanbase
You sound like vecomia
I keep hearing about this fenommina.
It seems to be a problem with eggs specifically, usually the yues kind.
Me, nor anyone I know struggled with this.
The manual has an image of it next to section about "experimenting".
I have consistently found that eggs have a problem with words.
This makes sense as their language is [conflicting statement].
Imagine the same word for golf seats, brown drinks, circles and trees.
I love how literally every Sonic fan knew EXACTLY what you were talking about as soon as they saw the thumbnail
@Izumi Culture There were most DEFINITELY guides in the 90s/2000s. Ever heard of the billions of Sega magazines out there? At least ONE has to cover how to get past the barrel. There’s also a S3&K players guide.
this bloody thing killed me cuz timer xD
@@ethanhobbes3476 Not all of us encounter these books so we had to figure things out, even by word of mouth from friends. There were hoaxes back then too lol 😆
@@DaburuTori I remember doing several playthroughs running the timer lol
As a sonic fan, I have no idea why everyone’s sweating about the barrels
All those billions Dr Robotnik has spent building robots, giant mech suits, space ships, time machines, interplanetary theme parks, and even an entire death star to eliminate Sonic, and all he needed to do was to stick him in a room with a bloody barrel!!!! XD
But, all they needed to do is put a sign next to the barrel with up and down arrows on it. just a quick refrence for people to glance at. They could have easily disguised it as a neon sign in the zone.
I did think about how they could've kept the puzzle in without making it trivially easy. I agree that some sort of subtle visual hint (maybe a sign in the background?) would've worked.
Alternatively, the Barrel already has up and down arrows on it.
Have them 'glow' when you press the up and down arrows to show feedback: have them glow on the naturally moving barrels to show they do so, so you know you've got to do something to get them to light up on the push barrels.
Crossover comment moment.
...But, hello, you! Love your videos too, Larry! Thanks ever so much for many years of service!
I mean, Marble Zone already had these rather useless billboards with directional arrows on them thrown around everywhere, it wouldn't look that out of place in something like Carnival Zone. They could place them near the earliest controllable barrel to keep as reference for the rest of the zone; even if some people would ignore it at first and get stuck on the room with the barrel anyway, they'll eventually notice it on repeated playthroughs.
Funny enough, the D-Pad method worked for me when I thought half jokingly, "what if I do this?" And I remember my dad was shocked to see it work, and he said he never beat the game because of the barrel of doom 😂
Lol
Same
When I originally played it, I was able to time the jumps perfectly to go through the passage ONCE, and was never able to repeat the feat. Only years later when f.a.q.s existed did I find out the solution. I remember thinking "So simple, but how did they expect me to figure it out?"
I had a reputation in the neighborhood for being the one kid who could beat "The Barrel Puzzle."
I told them what to do. They just didn't get it.
Haha, quite a reputation. A hero among men.
You weren’t the only one who figured it out first time.
"I explained to them. They just didn't get it" in joker's voice
nice video
"They didn't get it"! After it defeated me repeatedly and I gave out the advice on success, I received the same reaction 🙃
One of the most validating moments of my life was finding out years later that countless other people had the same issues with the dreaded barrel. I only managed to get by it once as sonic, so needless to say snowboarding in Ice Cap zone felt like a magical moment.
Good point. The snowboarding scene is such a treat.
Same. I recognized the fan art for this video's thumbnail immediately. Seeing that picture so long ago was the first time I discovered that other people had an excruciating time trying to get through the game.
Haha true. I did eventually figure it out but after a long time. (I mean a long time in small kid time... probably about 6-12 months.) If I remember correctly I got Sonic and Knuckles in the meantime and actually played Ice Cap Zone with Knuckles before playing it with Sonic. I remember I also thought the short-circuited Carnival Night Zone was cool when it happened.
You know, the weird thing about the whole drama is that I never remember *any* of the magazines or comic mentioning it and how to get past it, maybe because most of the people writing it were a lot older than those playing it and sort of worked it out as obvious. If this were these days you'd find out within hours of the game's release from the internet.
If you play with knuckles you don't even have to go to that barrel part
Thank you for making this, I've seen too many smug bastards claim it's actually an easy obstacle if you just use logic and reason. There is no logic or reason to controlling this barrel with the D-pad! You explained why so perfectly. Now I'm going to send this to anyone who says the barrel was an easy puzzle. I played Sonic 3&K for the first time this year, as an adult with a college degree, and it stumped me so much I got a time over.
Haha, no problem. The pain is real.
It’s common sense to use the D pad
@@LRM5195 Wrong. How would you expect anyone to speculate that without any clear advice? There is no clue that leads to this "common sense", it's impossible to even think about it when there's no sign of intuition in it. Without any "startup" or "basic evidence" there no way to build up a rational solution.
@@d9u5rt49 You just said a whole lot of nothing and it’s hilarious 😂
the real answer is that sonic should have a leaning animation for when you press up or down giving appropriate player feedback. kind of like how sonic runs left or right on the tops or like the leaning animation for the gba version.
I honestly think what happened was they wanted the cool sonic turning in place animation and that made it too expensive to add leaning animations on top of it so they just settled and hoped people would figure it out anyway.
I don't remember how I figured out the proper method to get by the "Barrel of Doom" as a kid but I did figure it out and for the longest time, I did just think "Why are people upset? That wasn't hard to me."
But after a while and some watching and checking, I did come to the realization that yes, the Barrel of Doom is bad game design. There really is just misleading feedback with the jumping metohd that makes a player THINK that is the proper solution, with nothing in game to tell you otherwise.
Though the barrel did get me, but in an unintended way. I remember having so much fun going up and down on the barrel I forgot to jump off it... and got promptly squished between the barrel and the ceiling. That was the biggest shock of the day for me
This barrel is literally the only thing that stopped me from finishing sonic 3
me too
Same omg
I got the trick almost instantly after one failure: In Sonic 1, the mid air rolling circles in scrap brain gave me the trick. Using my direction pad on the circle helped me master it. So I applied it there up and down after jumping on it.
This game would have marked my childhood if it wasn't for that barrel
I used to hate replaying sonic 3 because of that barrel I managed to get past that room by luck by a rhythm of jumps
I personally had no issue with the barrel as a kid but I have literally no memory of how I figured it out at all.
If I was to guess, I just naturally pressed up and down thinking it would make a difference, and it did. Dumb luck maybe?
I would agree it borders on bad design. Even if there is a slight sense of pride for not having trouble with it as a kid.
Same
I'm on the same boat. I have no idea how the heck I figure it out. Did I did it by accident? Went to GameFAQs? I don't know. I do know the first time I completed Sonic 3 & Knuckles was on the PC when I played the Sonic & Knuckles collection. I remember having a six button controller which I think it was a Microsoft Sidewinder one and everything connected on the gameport. Those where the days.
You probably forgot how often you timed out until you learned how to do it.
I didn't figure it out until later in life, but as a kid I always used the bubble shield to get through it. I always wondered why the would need you to have it at that point in time, but I rarely got there without one so never thought much about it.
Perhaps being stuck between two pipes left you wanting to go up the side of one and down the other side to escape, and you subconsciously put that into the buttons on your controller
As kids it took my brother and I along time to figure it out. We eventually learn how by accident. Whenever we played coop we would always tap up to make it look like Sonic & Tails are talking while we did silly voices overs.
After a couple of lives wasted on the jumping technique. I went to speak as Tails while at rest on the barrel and my brother noticed it moved. So he got on and joined me tapping up and we saw a lot more movement. Up soon lead to down and just like that we solved it.
I think the main reason why the barrel of doom is so feared, is because in all of the classic sonic games, we never had a reason to actually press the up and down buttons, and as such, many people would just forget about it's existance
That was a fantastic way to describe some of the gimmicks, especially giving compliments to a notorious level like Metropolis. Great video!
Hi
can you please do a video about sonic adventure 2 ?
@@Glitch-file-code hello 👋
Crossover comment moment.
@@Robert-tl2vg hello
My experience was typical. Getting stuck at the barrel for a handful of YEARS while fantasizing about what Ice Cap Zone would be like.
Did it make snowboarding down into Ice Cap Zone all the better?
My brothers and I collectively beat our heads against this barrell for months. We had a whole set of saves stuck here at one point. Eventually, someone managed to get through, and that save slot became inviolate forevermore.
Lmao.
I never beat this game because of that barrel. I remember spending hours and going back many times to try and get passed it but never could. It's funny seeing a video about this topic and instantly feeling the same dispare I felt as a child until the explanation was revealed. I may go back and beat this game now as an adult.
All you gotta do is…up down you don’t even have to jump
Use the d pad..
@@codename96 The problem is that the barrel responds to you jumping, which made me think if you timed it JUST right with Sonic and Tails, you could overcome it that way. Me and my brother tried for so long, before we just accepted we could only beat the game as Knuckles.
I beat the game and I’m a kid
@@riniabraham5579 At least you admit that you're a kid, but unless you like, don't use the internet (which you clearly do), it doesn't mean much to get past the barrel as a kid anymore. It hasn't meant much to beat it as a kid in like, the last 20 years, because you can just easily find out what to do online.
Before the internet was a thing (or at least widely accessable), nothing told you what to do with the barrel. I'm sure some kids figured it out on their own back then, but some clearly didn't. It's just a really dumb feature of the game.
6:20 honestly, the reason I personally never experimented with the other buttons is because the barrel drops you just barely out of reach of the gap, just so much to give you hope, but not too much to give you an actual opening.
This, exactly. Most of the people struggling with it encountered it as kids, and didn't have the excellent timing needed to bypass it with the jumping method, but many of us probably got so close with that method that we assumed that was the intended way...we just needed to be a little better. It threw us off the scent of other methods (a combination of that and there being no reason to expect the "press up and down" method to work, since the only other thing in the game that responds to that are the Ice Cap springy platforms...one zone AFTER this).
I got Sonic 3 as a kid when it first released in Feb 94, and like most I ran into complete confusion and frustration with the B.O.D. section in Carnival Night. After reaching the point of total rage and tears, I convinced my mom who reluctantly agreed to let me call the SEGA game tip hotline (1-900-USA-SEGA) which charged like $1.50 per min at the time. As soon as I called the listed the menu options and one of the options was something along the lines of "if you are calling about the barrel in Carnival Night on Sonic 3 press 5", which then lead to an automated message explaining the d-pad method. Clearly they were getting hammered with a TON of calls from frustrated players about the subject that they felt they had to pre-empt the question on their hotline. Fun times.
Haha that's amazing! I can't believe they had an option just for the barrel. Thanks for sharing.
Changing Sonic's animation/pose while pressing up/down would have helped a bit. The fact that people struggled, confirms it is a usability issue.
Sonic Origins actually did that
I just experienced it for the first time in sonic origins. After jumping on it for some time I hit restart, hoping to get back to the last checkpoint and find another path. It sent me back to the beginning of zone 2. I then looked up the solution out of curiosity and found this video. Now in my annoyance of trying to get back there it's like all the other barrels want to kill me even more. I hate this zone, I'll never complain about Metropolis zone again.
Haha, glad you managed to get past it eventually
Yeah, there was zero chance of me figuring this out as a kid. It offers no feedback when you use up and down vs. jumping, which directly results in a momentum change in a momentum-based platformer.
The barrel just shouldn't have been put in the game even if u figure it out its never fun like wow just wow, things like this and big the cat made me dislike those respective games for a long time which is a dang shame because sonic 3k is pretty good
@@elibonham4388 wth does big have to do with s3k
@@voltricity1942 it doesn't I'm just saying stupid fucking gimmicks like those heavily hinder my opinion of a sonic game
@@elibonham4388 ah ok, what are your opinions on the wisps?
@@voltricity1942 very good question the only game they should have been in was sonic colours and ig..generations but that's only because they have to have a stage from that game. Sonic colours level design I feel as if is meant to be explored for red wings and the whisps do a great job of creating challenge for the player they were a decent addition to sonic colours not without a few problems but every other game besides that had botched it
12:46 so a mustachioed man with the last name "Marxio" is responsible for the Barrel of Doom in at least one canon. And what did Mario "Jumpman" Mario famously jump over in his first video game outing? Barrels. It all makes sense.
Mario knew that Sonic was his competitor. He had to find a way to make people hate him,
3 days until Mario steals your chances of completing Sonic 3! Woohoo!
MARIO CANT HIDE FROM HIS CRIMES
That barrel was the bane of my existence for 15 years, before someone in college told me how to beat it properly. Before that, I had only gotten past it twice. The first time my uncle got past it for me, and he did it by jumping. The second time I did the super sonic glitch on accident, but I was low on time remaining, so I panicked toward a star post as fast as I could. There may have been a time I did it by jumping myself too, but I'm not 100%. It's not a very intuitive way to pass it. You see the barrel sink when you jump on it, so that method would make the most sense to work. Why would anyone think to use the up and down buttons? Nothing else in the series used that to move an obstacle. Mushroom Hill has the one contraption that uses the up and down to move it, but that one was a little more obvious since jumping onto it didn't do anything.
yeah, that is really bad design on the devs....
I had no idea the creator of the zone apologized for it. That's all I wanted to hear. 😢
This is like when they find god's message in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 😅
I once got that strategy to work with Sonic and Tails both jumping on it to make it go lower, only time I ever made it through until I learned how to do it years later from the internet
Same! …But then I died to running out of time.
Dude just made a 14 minute long video on a video game obstacle. Mad respect!
But this obstacle is a phenomenon for many Sonic fans/players
This "obstacle" has cost us so much time from our childhood, it earned a 14 minute video talking about it.
The reality that I’m not the only victim to go through this during my childhood is actually a huge relief. I felt like I was the only one
Glad how origins made it visible that you are looking up and down, actually helps.
I walked halfway across town to the blockbuster to rent the game and could not get past this part before I had to return it. The pain is real.
OMG 😳 the same loo
I would have done unhinged actions to the game if I had to rent it lol I played this years later on the zsnes emulator and even then I always got stuck on the barrel for years until I finally googled it
Not gonna lie, I didn't know the barrel was ever an issue until I started using the Internet and learned that others struggled with it. I was able to get through it as a kid in the 90s and early 2000s just fine and don't remember having any trouble with it.
Same.
Maybe you forgot the confusion?
Yea some people are just able to get it I wish I could've I was like what the heck is this design in a sonic game
It worked me for the first try. I literally used the up and down button to get through it and never complained about this pity barrel but this guy made a video about it centuries after. LMAO
@@Tibor0803 It ain't that deep.
I like how on the thumbnail tails is just playing a game but sonics just sitting there with depression
I appreciate the contextualization, because I figured it out pretty quickly; having come straight off of sonic 2 and its spinning nuts, my next thought after jumping was a spindash, which happened to guide me towards the correct solution quickly
Good thinking trying the spindash
I didn’t play sonic 3 and knuckles until maybe 2009 or so but even being a kid knowing of online forums and stuff I still couldn’t get passed the barrel on my first attempt. Luckily youtube existed by then and people did let’s plays so when I realized how easy it was I felt stupid. Glad I was able to complete it because it’s one of my favorite games of all time
I used sonic retro.
That barrel was a nightmare when I was a kid
Thank you for giving me my new fav quote from you.
"The nuts are a small addition, but they're a little stroke of genius"
Haha! I didn't even notice that wordplay
I never thought about looking up anything about this on the internet until looking up the original music for the stage because the Sonic Origins version has something awful replacing it. I then see all these comments about the "barrel of doom". My eyes soon stumble upon this video thumbnail. Oh. My. God. I wasn't the only one... Mind Blown... As a 90's kid I never owned Sonic 3, but the parental units rented it for me many weekends. This damned barrel truly was, as you accurately remark, the most difficult enemy. I distinctly remember getting past it at least once, by jumping and using the bubble shield like you show in the video. (Mashing the buttons and d-pad probably did help too) I vaguely remember Sonic snowboarding down a mountain afterwards, but I have no memory of beating the game, and I haven't played it since way back when. The realization that this small childhood memory was shared by so many others has filled me with the purest nostalgia I've felt in years. Thank you for this video. It's given me some strange feeling of satisfaction.
As someone who loves barrels so much,i can confirm the barrel of doom is one of my fan favourite things about sonic
I appreciate the enthusiasm! I've not heard anyone declare their love for the barrel before haha
Barrels of fun!!
“Press X to doubt”
As someone who has not played a Sonic game before ( but loves Sonic nonetheless ), they look really fun to play around with, both as a game mechanic and an actual object ! Just seems very unintuitive is all !
@@corruptedteka You should play a Sonic game!
Watching this reminds me so much of the excellent and often overlooked Ratchet and Clank Developer Commentary youtube series. It's one of the most interesting, raw and insightful looks into game development for 'early 2000's Triple A kids games'.
One thing they talk about a lot of the focus groups, which became integral for game development in the PS2 era. Sony were obviously worried about games becoming more complex during the post-PS1 era and wanted to make sure that kids weren't flummoxed.
One of the hardest things to do, when you are a developer is play a level you designed; as if you never designed it.
When you brought up about how the natural thing to do is "jump" on it, this is exactly the kind of thing they talk about when trying to design puzzles. Because kids will do two things: A: Jump on it and B: Hit it with the wrench. If the puzzle is anymore complicated than those two things; and isn't clearly explained; the playtesters wouldn't have any idea what to do. They talk about how they would be shocked how the simplest thing, like missing a door on the right if it was put at a 45 degree angle, would drive the playtesters nuts.
Focus testing games in the 16 Bit era was just not done and even Game Hut mentions this in some of his videos when people told him how hard they found Mickey Mania, because obviously when they were making it, they were experts at it and didn't realise how hard it was.
The barrel of doom would never be made today, it would either be patched or just never got passed focus testing.
In fact, in the Ross Game Dungeon episode "Puzzle Agent" he even mentions a puzzle that got patched, because the original puzzle was so hard for some people to see that they felt it was just better to make it easy as hell. It's such a simple puzzle, but for some people, their brains just didn't work how the game designers had imaged.
And yes, when I first played Sonic 3 (on GENS, on a school computer in the early 2000's, in between playing Elasto Mania) I remember, jumping on the barrel and pressing up and down as I did it, purely because my brain was telling me "MAKE IT GO DOWN, FOR GODS SAKE GO DOWN!".
It was a nightmare.
where can I find this series?
@@NoahNCopeland OK, I'm glad you asked this question because it made me go to their RUclips page where apparently they have started playing Rift Apart. I cant watch it yet as I havent played Rift yet (not for a want of trying but you know how PS5 shopping goes...)
There is something so lovely knowing I will get to listen to them after nearly 9 years and hopefully find out what they have been up to. Anyway, here is the link:
ruclips.net/user/uselesspodcasts
@@NoahNCopelandComing back to this comment only now realising that you are Noah Copeland.
Dude, your fan games are incredible. I hope one day you make your own because you are clearly talented and deserve to sell a game
As a very experienced player recently playing Sonic 3 for the first time, This stumped me for about 4 minutes. You're absolutely right - this is a TEXTBOOK example of forcing the player to interact with a new mechanic in an unforgiving environment (you're locked in this room). If I were designing this room and barrel, I would make it so the barrel uses entirely trampoline-like physics or no bounciness at all. That would cut down on the amount of time wasted trying to figure out the mechanic.
Stumped me for years. I managed to pass this as a kid by holding down spin dash with my big toe and using the 2nd controller to control Tails and do the jump method you described. I barely made it and was only able to do it once. I can't even put into words the anxiety I had trying to beat the level boss with nearly no time left on the clock so I could save and finally see the next level... that did not disappoint.
I could get past this barrel after years of being stuck here, but only when I was using Sonic or Knuckles, not Tails. I got so good at the levels leading up to this point that I could unlock super forms from getting all of the chaos emeralds, and so I would jump on this barrel until I was very low, then quickly double jump to transform. The barrel would pass up through Sonic or Knuckles during their super transformation, and I could finally play the rest of the game. Since he has no super form, Tails was soft locked there until years later when I finally discovered the actual solution. After what I went through, I just ignore anyone who says it was obvious to press up and down. If it was obvious, I would never have had my experience. There should have been a neon sign with an up and down arrow on it in this spot.
The fact that a glitch was easier to figure out than the actual solution really demonstrates how non-obvious it really was. As a kid, I was absolutely able to unlock Super Sonic before Carnival Night, but I'd never even considered clipping the barrel with the transformation.
Tails has a Super Form, it's just after you complete Sonic 3 and move on to Sonic & Knuckles while still playing S3&K. You have to get all of the Super Emeralds to unlock Tails's super form.
@@saltendo2177 I think what he meant was, as Tails doesn't get a super form from the Chaos Emeralds, he gets softlocked there for the rest of the game (again, assuming you don't know to just press Up and Down). As he couldn't use the super transformation to clip through the floor, there was no way for him to get to the S&K levels to collect the Super Eneralds, so he essentially was stuck there. I'm certain he knows of Super Tails by now.
@@DTX0217 Yeah, I'm saying that Tails doesn't get a Super Form from the Chaos Emeralds, so he can't get to Sonic & Knuckles to unlock said Super Form, because the Hyper Emeralds are found only after beating the Sonic 3 portion of S3&K.
knuckles has an entirly diffrent route so avoids the barrel
I remember me and my cousin trying to figure out how to get past this damn thing, eventually we did through trial and error.
When revisiting the classics recently, I discovered this barrel is likely what prevented me from completing the game as a kid. Surprisingly I don't have specific memories of it, but my recognition of the various zones did stop after that point of Carnival Night.
All it would need is less feedback for jumping on it, and for Sonic (and Tails and Knuckles) to make any sort of pose when using the d-pad on it; even simply looking up and crouching would suffice. At least the designers "knew" that everyone would figure it out instantly since it's so obvious. :)
well, they added crouching and looking up sprites on the barrels for sonic origins so you weren't far off!
@@itsprodigit Oh nice! That's actually really cool to hear.
You probably was so traumatized by the barrel that your brain locked the memory away lmao
I remember being a victim of the Barrel of Doom. It wasn't until I met up with a long distance friend one summer that the topic came up and he told me how to solve it.
I remember looking for a solution in guides, including the "official Mega Drive" one you showed, but never saw it myself. The guide was in a local library and by the time I got my own copy of Sonic 3, they no longer had it available. I recall the map in the guide outlining an optimal path through the stage, but it involved going through a wall only Knuckles could break. I don't think I ever considered reading any of the paragraphs associated with Carnival Night due to the route the map showed me, or if I did, I didn't notice it mention the D-Pad trick.
I played so, so much S3&K as a kid and I always relied on debug mode to skip it. When I found out what the solution was I felt both angry and like an idiot.
I would LOVE to see a mod in which jumping on that barrel specifically causes it to shatter, opening the path forwards easily.
Or a Mod that literally turns it into a mini-boss that you have to fight 🤣 . Like the animal container with eyes in Flying Battery Zone, lol!
Thats hilarious. I hope they do that for Sonic Mania 2 if it's ever made
@@JunkieSama The Barrel of Doomsday
Or a mod that makes jumping on the barrel just as efficacious as pressing Up and Down (if not more so). 😏
Should've been done in Mania to poke fun at it
The part where you talk about guide magazines/books is interesting because I remember quite well reading a Sonic 3 guide at school and that was the moment I learned how to get passed the barrel. I guess I was lucky and had the 1 magazine that provided the solution. I was ecstatic to finally get passed it.
Thank you so much you helped me get passed this zone. I will share this tip with my peeps. God I hate that barrel room.
This timed out for me the first time I got to this part of the level. I was so angry.
My friend who had already finished Sonic 3 told me how to do it.
As a child, I had loads and loads of frustration with the Barrel of Doom. Jumping up and down on the barrel seems like the obvious answer since it responds to that interaction so easily. I remember having fits of rage and tears as a child as I timed out over and over trying to figure out the puzzle. Eventually I think I either managed the jump and spin dash method that Razor and Xenon demonstrated, or just through sheer rage, mashed the down button hard enough trying to literally push my way "down" through the barrel that the input, combined with my jumping momentum, got me through the puzzle. Thank goodness those Sega Genesis controllers were sturdy plastic. 😂
Do I just discovered this channel yesterday and ive already watched like 15 of your videos lol. This topic in particular I find quite interesting because when I wad a kid I could never get past this without debug mode until years later when I figured it out on accident. And then of coarse many years later when I got a smart phone and started watching loads of RUclips I found this was actually common knowledge, at least now it definitely is lol. Great work btw
Holy hell. I literally had no idea you could control the barrels that way. That spot stumped me my whole life. I even went back as a teenager to play it again and searched on gamefaqs in the early 2000s to find out how to get past and none of the guides actually explained how to control the barrels or at least I missed it. I never bothered pressing up or down because up and down didn’t really do anything else in the game except look up or crouch. You’re absolutely right about the lack of visual feedback from the barrel. If I did try up and down (and maybe I did), it wouldn’t initially show me anything different.
It always reminded me of that one part in Batman Forever where you have to grapple up. Like, how the hell am I supposed to know that?! I found out you had to grapple up to the next floor from AVGN 15 years later.
It would have been way less egregious if there was *some* visual feedback to holding up and down -- animations of Sonic moving his weight up and down, or 'up and down' arrows lighting up when you hold the buttons.
In fairness, Sonic 3 was developed under massive time crunch, so it likely just didn't get enough play testing for anyone to see how unintuitive it was.
I think they were working on S&K before releasing Sonic 3, because Sonic 3 has 6 zones, and Sonic 2 was finished within 1 year, with 12 zones, and half of the dev team being English and half being Japanese. The dev team probably knew how to pass it, since the person coding the barrel probably would have explained it to everyone.
@@saltendo2177 Sonic 3 may have fewer zones than Sonic 2, but the ones it does have are about three times the size of the ones in the previous game.
You're correct that S&K was already in production, however, as S3 and S&K were originally intended to be a single game. The level select on Sonic 3 even has icons for three levels that wouldn't appear until S&K, and its sound test includes all the music from S&K too. And of course there are whole areas of S3 that only Knuckles can reach, even though he wasn't yet playable.
I feel like the Barrel of Doom would have been better introduced if it visually looked more like arrows or visually showed the D-Pad input while on the barrel, but that's just me.
Or you saw how it was being done in some manner before being subjected to it.
Especially if they didn't want to give any visual animation to imply you were doing something.
@@Redblaze27 Oh god imagine if the door is closed at first, then it scrolls over and you see knuckles on it looking up and down, no jumping, to leave the room. Then the door opens, you go in, and get locked in
That would have been perfect!
@@Icalasari Perfectly stupid.
I remember the first time I came across this quite clearly. It was around December 2009.
As a child, I only played the first and second Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Sega Megadrive, so I had never played 3/& Knuckles at this point. I was not very good at the games as a child anyway, so I probably wouldn't have even got this far if I did have Sonic 3. The only mega drive game I ever completed was the first streets of rage, two player with my sister.
So, at this point in 2009, myself and my house mate at the time were spending our spare time getting high and playing old game ROMs, (or watching Yu-Gi-Oh, South Park, and Dora the Explorer).
I remember getting to this point in the game, and we ended up just handing the laptop back and forth to each other getting stressed out, with neither of us being able to figure out how to do it. Luckily as it was a rom and emulator, we could just save state and load state at the barrel to not worry about the time out. We were at it for hours before deciding to just Google it and see what the hell was going on.
It really is not an intuitive feature in the game.
Or we were just too high to figure it out
It held us up at first as kids for sure. I figured it out when I was 6 maybe by accident but none the less. A little outside the box thinking is all it took.
the worst is the one time I figured out the D-pad method by accident while jumping... and then lost the rest of my lives to the boss and therefore had to restart Carnival Night
I have quite a bit of nastolga for that red and white bastard. I remember I would get past the first barrel puzzle by getting my sister (who plays as tails) to fly me up to the top platform you need to reach. but when I got to the second barrel puzzle that locks you in.... I thought I was screwed. But a few days later I accidentally found a RUclips video that tells you how to use the barrel and after watching that I had finally got past the stupid barrel puzzles and i felt so damn accomplished!
I always used the jumping method & occasionally I would get past it. Up + Down sounds so simple yet it never occurred to me & this explains it pretty well as to why!
I struggled with this barrel quite a bit in my childhood. My best method was using the Bubble Shield and then sneak under it like in the example in the video, but it still wasn't that easy and could take up a few valuable minutes in a level that already took quite long to complete. Also, thanks for competent gameplay footage for these games. That's something that's rare to find in RUclips videos covering the original games.
As soon as I saw the title I knew what this video was about and I was not disappointed. And yes, I vividly remember timing out as a kid
It didn't help that as I primarily played sonic games, I only discovered one of my controllers' up button didn't work when S&K came out and I tried to climb a wall lol
I remember playing as Sonic and Tails, where a friend and I just spammed jumps until Sonic glitched through it. I was so excited to get to the next level, and even more excited to be able to level select from the file screen after you beat it!
If u havent uploaded this video i would have never completed carnival night zon thx ur the best!
Man its so reassuring to know many people struggled with this
Glad I'm not the only victim of this damn barrel 😭
This damn barrel took me years to get past. Though I did eventually figure it out on my own, so at least I have that.
"The nuts are a small addition, but they're a little stroke of genius"
......yeah, no, the jokes are too easy lol
I was one of the people who never struggled with this, but thanks for explaining the viewpoints of those who did 👍
"WHAT? All I had to do is move up and down? UP AND DOWN..?! WHAT THE FU- [death by Time Over]"
-Sonic (Sonic Shorts 2010)
Not me getting lost before I could get to the barrel 💀💀
0:31 "The nuts were a small addition, but they're a little stroke of genius."
~Johnny Vector, 2022
I remember somehow passing the barrel on my first try, probably pressing up and down while trying to get it to go through momentum. The big issue i have with carnival night zone is that Long spinny candycane like thing that went down. I kept running out of time trying to get up it with well timed spindashes, only to finally realize that it was actually supposed to go down and getting up there was a total waste of time
Hey, so did me and my brother back then.
I always figured the trick was to bounce it high enough, jump off and go under it. I started that thin,ING when playing as Sonic and Tails and found that Tails would get under it, leaving the Sonic player behind. It was why for many years, I played as just Tails, as he could get under the barrel easier than Sonic could.
Eventually, I did the bounce trick to get Sonic under the barrel and went on with the game. But man, did the kid version of me lose time here a lot before getting the timing right.
As a kid, when I first played Sonic 3 I lost count how many times I timed out trying to figure out how to get past that damn barrel and then out of frustration I was able to move it mashing up and down. My mind was blown...lol
Oh gosh, thank you! lol You saved me from frustration. XD
I remember getting stuck on this too when it first came out. Had no idea how to get past it. I thought it may have been a dead end and played the game countless times up to that point for a few months I think. By complete chance I realised you had to press up/down to build momentum. It was confusing as a kid because there wasn't anything with similar mechanics in a Sonic game so you wouldn't have expected it
I also remember replaying the game over and over again hoping I'd maybe end up on a different level without the dead end or something. In the end, I never figured it out on my own, and just beat it with Knuckles, who had no barrel room on his route.
This is such a good video. It is so precise, you talked about EVERYTHING about that barrel. Congrats.
Man this is so funny I know exactly what you are on about even before the video began
Count me as another one who somehow beat this in the 1990's, but just recently while playing through 'Sonic 3 & Knuckles' on my modded SNES Classic, I couldn't figure it out. Turns out thanks to your *thoroughly* informative video, I'm one of the few who played this for the first time in the mid/late 90's on Sonic Jam... I'm now certain that had something to do with it. Thank you!
Awesome as always! I really enjoy your content Johnny!
Thanks a lot, glad you're enjoying it
As a kid I worked out how to use it because I tried spindashing and saw that moved the barrel down a bit. I definitely understand how people have gotten confused but to be honest I am a little bewildered how it could take so long to find out. With the fact it stops you moving and that always means that you have to control something else in classic Sonic games and the fact that you get some noticeable movement if trying to spindash which is used in a lot of puzzles I feel like people would just work it out eventually. This isn't trying to be an own or a 'Haha I'm better than you' or anything, I sucked at pretty much everything other than the barrel in classic Sonic, I'm just genuinely confused.
Well you have to understand that the barrel gives no visual feedback that spindashing would work for that object. Sonic doesn't crouch like he would if you were supposed to spindash, so all it really takes is one attempt at spin dashing to rule out that as a solution, and with as little as the barrel moves when you start pressing up and down, compared to how much it moved when you jump on it, the former is easily overlooked. It's definitely possible to discover on your own, like you said, but it's definitely not effective in teaching players, especially those very familiar with Sonic.
Because if you attempt a spindash, Sonic doesn't even crouch, which is a requirement for a spindash. So idk why anyone WOULD keep trying that long enough to see results. Meanwhile, tons of gimmicks DO require momentum and physics, so the fact that the barrel reacts to your jumps is just a unfairly bad source of misleading feedback.
It's true it shouldn't have been in a SONIC game, not EVEN in a hard mode for slightly intermediary players.
There's "no" feedback because it responds so quickly there is no time for feedback, if you push down on it you can see with your eyeballs it IMMEDIATELY goes down with all the majesty of a rubber duck. It's very obvious that people became presumptious and ONLY tried jumping, even in the definition of insanity, and try to pass it off "the game already taught us that jumping always works and nothing else does". It's like finding your 4th color in a rubik's cube for the first time and getting utterly confused, how the first colors are in the way now.
If you actually play games to SOLVE them, you WRITE the tutorials, not read them. You PREFER reading the GAME MECHANICS, not tutorials at the first obstacle. "I guess it was too difficult for you babies" is in no way suggestive it was a bad mechanic, it was just placed in the wrong wooden block puzzle for ages 3 and up, before the age mommy can let you in a swing set without a pusher.
The barrel, if you want to break it down, is like the opposite of the nut and bolt, like it was designed to COUNTER how they work. Even its buoyancy as opposed to rigid structure signals this. As Sonic starts a spinning ANIMATION (no feedback?), you can figure out that the solution as well is the opposite to running in place, like on the nut. Hold steady and press to the direction of the gravity, LIKE IN SPINDASHING. A spinning object should introduce torque and bring your bodyweight to disturb the equilibrium. Maybe ONE little problem is the miseducation given by the fact you don't have Castlevania dedicated jump arcs. Because you CAN magically shift your body weight in the air without leverage, you MUST also actually press down and up, not just wait for the barrel to go off balance by itself.
@@SoIstice pfp sauce please
@@SoIstice I need it
I remember reaching this point back in the day when I had to hire the games.
It took many hours during a summer to pass it the first time, by timing the jump bubble method but without rolling under it.
I was so annoyed and remember fighting hard to not die until after the level was over just so I'd never have to deal with the obstacle again.
Sadly, I didn't finish the game until many years later when I received it and a very worn manual as a birthday present sometime around 2000.
As I had always enjoyed the lore and renditions of the enemies in the Sonic 1 manual I actually took the time to read through the whole thing and found out that the solution to the barrel obstacle had its own little section explaining the up & down solution.
This is probably part of why it was rarely mentioned as it was literally in the manual of the game.
Holy Sh*t!!! I am 34 years old now... and this is the first time listening about this technik...
I played this way back when it released and had the same issue as you and got a thousand of timeouts! I was finally able to get through by using the second player controler and alternating jumps with tales and sonic, but who knows, maybe i was also using the dpad unknowingly xD
Thank you for sharing this piece of ancient knowledge. I will tackle sonic 3 again now, and crush that stupid barrel :D
I called the Sega tip hotline that was listed in the manual, and the Sega rep told me how to get past it. Said they got a lot of calls because of the doombarrel.
Your videos are consistently excellent.
Thanks a lot for the nice comment
I remember back in 1995 I was downtown with my mom, and I saw a Magazine on a shop that said in a very expicit spanish: "WE TELLYOU HOW TO GET THROUGH CARNIVAL NIGHT ACT 2" my eyes growed in shine.
11:57 Omega, you've cemented yourself in place as one of my favorite robot heroes just for this simple act of destruction. 😆
When you realise some of the gimmicks are bigger highlights than the rest of the level or it’s design
0:17
There are no seesaws in spring yard, only star light.
anyways the barrel of doom fits it's name
D'oh! Showed the correct footage but messed up the voice-over haha
Barrel of Doom? No, barrel of Doomsday. Haha, GOTEM!
Barrel of doom eternal
Great Video! I remember not being able to pass this bloody barrel as a kid in the 90s until a buddy in my school told me what to do.
I didn't know if I remembered getting stuck here until I saw you jump up and down on the barrel for 10 minutes and then all those horrible repressed memories came pouring out of me
You,cybershell, and the game apologist are definitely my favorite people to talk about sonic by far
These 3 and Chaomix are the best in the community. Nearly all their uploads are enjoyable as a sonic fan
Wow thank you. That's amazing to hear because I'm a big fan of those guys
@@JohnnyVector it’s my pleasure I could hear you talk about sonic for hours
same
Just found out this is how you beat it, it took me 20 YEARS to find out it was this
I remember when I first came across this barrel obstacle it took me ages to get past it. I never thought I was going to get any further and complete the game!
I remember getting stuck on this part for a weekend after renting the game from Blockbuster. Didn't figure out how to get past this until years later.
I remember when I finally stumbled into the solution to this. I was playing Sonic 3 on the Classic Collection for DS. I was so frustrated on how to make this stupid thing work, that I decided to look up a video to see how to do it.
It had no commentary, or on screen explanations. It was just a gameplay video. And for me, that was enough (which was a stupid choice, in retrospect).
Watching the video, I concluded the solution was to "get at it extremely fast!"
As you probably guessing, I had set myself up for faliure.
So, thankfully, I got lucky.
On my way to the "Barrel of Doom", I just so happened to hit a different barrel, and somehow, someway, I noticed that it was responding to my up and down inputs. I don't remember how I noticed. Maybe, using my false conclusion, I hit it fast enough that it got enough momentum that when I put in the directional inputs, I actually briefly noticed the difference. ...Or, I was doing the look-up-and-down dance that I sometimes do to amusse myself in these games from time to time while on a barrel, despite me knowing that Sonic's sprite wouldn't change. I was in my early teens, and that was a long time ago (I'm 23 now).
But after notice this, I expiremnted further (didn't take me long), and I found out how the barrels really worked. I was both relieved, and annoyed.
Again, I had set myself up for failure, but got extremely lucky to find the real solution before needing to test my hypothesis and taking that failure and furstation.
But here's something that I do not get at all. In Sonic 2's manual, they tell you the controls for Casino Night's springs, or the Metropolis nuts. But for Sonic 3, they've NEVER explained the controls to the barrel, you have to figure it out on your own. And the Classic Colection game I had... it also explained the gimmick controls for Sonic 2 in the game itself, but NOT Sonic 3! At this point, the DS collection is by no means new, but it wasn't an early collection either. The Barrel was so infamous at even THAT point, that I can not fathom why they didn't realize that they need to explain how the barrel works in someway for new players.
And I bet you that they still don't do that for their most recent collection, ...especially given the Zavok fight in Forces. It's the same issue, they have one expected way to complete the objective, but they don't explain or demonstrate how to do in any intuitive way, so everyone naturally assumes something else, and thus, gets no where, because that's not the intended solution. It's not he only time this happens in Forces, I remember trying to complete a mission with Classic Sonic where I had to beat three enemies with the "Spin Attack". Given every action Classic has can be despicred as spinning attack, but these moves have names, I thought they meant the roll (which with the broken phsics, was pain to complete that way). My mistake, assuming that jump would be called "jump", ...like in every. Freaking. Other. Game. (By the way, I now know they do explain the jump name in the tutorials, but I had them turned off, because you'd think a dedicated Sonic fan would know how to play a Sonic game.)
These are all cases of they come with something clever, which, for the most part... is fine, but it goes against common gaming mechanics that are universal;y known, but don't bother to explain that their different, leading to people getting stuck for the wrong reasons.
Getting back to Sonic 3, I'm glad I figured out the barrel, because that meant that I could finally beat the game, and now it's one of my favorites. But that is something you have to recon with: This is one of the best games of all time, and this statement is recognized by millions of gamers. But there may be, and probably are, people who hate the game, and maybe games in general, because of this one... barrel... baring their progress. And thinking about that, it's kind of a shame
I've never heard anyone say the barrel was easy. I didn't have the internet, so i only found the correct way by chance in the mega collection version. Guides were around, but guides for older games were hard to find.
Yes, I was stuck for many a time out here back as a little gamer. A little like your self I managed to sneak past it a hand full of times. Brought back many memories watching this video thank you.
“The giant screws and NUTS”