Oh no Sonic is trapped inside the shop’s window and you betta help him so he can get out of that shop easily

@Background Human  
They may be adding this precaution, but realistically bugs like this are not likely to happen when you play. I played Sonic 3 and Knuckles for years and I don’t remember ever getting permanently stuck anywhere on a normal playthrough. Only when I messed around with cheats and maybe a few times when abusing Super forms and stuff. The game is solid and doesn’t have any more bugs than a typical platformer of the era.

@Persona  
That was my first Sega Genesis game. (along with Sonic 2…both came with the Genesis my mom bought)

@HighRollerHydra  
From the picture, I’m guessing Shining Force. Tails has good taste in gaming.

@Background Human  
That’s what happens when you don’t have time to finish a full game. (Sonic 3 and Knuckles WAS going to be one game instead of split in two)

@Sorait  
So much for their fancy BLAST PROCESSING.

@PrincessFutamoon  
Apparently, there are some very hidden spots in the game, where Sonic can get stuck and can’t move. The only ways to get out of them is to either run out of time, or reset the console. Most likely an oversight by the bug-checking people, so Sega hand-waved this by saying that the glitches are just traps that Robotnik made to stop him.

@PrincessFutamoon  
Mostly just buggy collision detection that caused Sonic to get stuck in walls whenever he ended up going too fast for the camera to keep up

@HighRollerHydra  
wait, what traps

@HighRollerHydra  

@Sorait  
What’s Tails playing?

@The Twelfth Doctor Whoof  
Come to think of it, the manual in the US said that Robotnik has planted some traps in the game that would make it impossible for Sonic to escape from, and that you must reset. The traps are all glitches.

It’s been 19 years, but I remember having a little bit of trouble with the Barrel of Doom. Didn’t take long to figure it out though - just press Up & Down. I can understand why the strategy guides of the day didn’t mention it. It is obvious when you think about it.
 
On the other hand, the stationary barrel is the only object in the game that works like that.
 
FUN FACT 1: It is possible to phase through the Barrel by going Super Sonic about a pixel or two above it during one of its upswings. I haven’t done it but others have.
 
FUN FACT 2: There are many things about Sonic 3 that got explained in the Japanese manual but not in the Western ones. That you can mess with the physics of the stationary barrels using the D-pad was one of them. Another was surrounding blue spheres with red to turn all of ’em into rings. We had to figure that out through sheer dumb luck.

My way around it was playing the Sonic/Tails combo with two controllers and having Tails jump on the barrel to make the gap wide enough for Sonic to get through. Until I found out how to do it right.

“Up and down? You have to press UP and DOWN!? What the fu– [TIME OVER]”

@EHAN  
Nope! It’s possible you may be the only one here to do it properly the first time, though.

It’s even worse when you find out that several strategy guides completely ignored this obstacle under the notion that it was so “obvious”
 

@Crayv  
It wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been any indication of what you were supposed to do with it. Either a simple visual hint or a cutscene of Knuckles escaping on one.

So I guess I’m the only person here who passed this on my first try.

@Zennistrad  
Right, nevermind. I was thinking of a different place.

@Background Pony #95E2
 
Except the only way forwards is through the barrel.

She could just fly.. Just like any player who didn’t know how to go about it used Tails.

when you thought there can’t be something worse than labyrinth zone…

@HighRollerHydra  
Forgot about that.

I only got stuck on that part for a while (I can’t remember, maybe half an hour) before figuring out you had to press up & down for it to work.
 
In “Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest” on the other hand, (my favorite DKC game BTW) I got stuck in that one lava level with the blue hot air balloons.  
It took me an entire week to figure out you could move the balloons with left/right, without falling off of them, (even the manual didn’t specify you could do this…) and needed them to get through the level.
 
For some reason my favorite games are always the ones I get stuck in, but eventually figure out. (Maybe that’s why I love Zelda games so much.)