Marble Garden Zone


 * You may also be looking for Marble Zone.

Marble Garden Zone is the third zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The first act contains the most rings of any act in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, with 636 in total. A Lightning Shield will prove useful if the player wishes to gain as many of these rings as possible.

In this level, the sinking pools from Oil Ocean in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 return, albeit much smaller. Other hazards include large spike-balls that swing round in circles and stone walls that smash into the ground.

The mini-boss at the end of Act 1 uses a pair of drills to attack the player, both directly and by drilling into the ceiling causing debris to rain down on the player's head. This is reminiscent of Dr. Robotnik's own vehicle from the Mystic Cave Zone in Sonic 2.

Sub-boss
The sub-boss of this level is called Tunnelbot in English and Gakin in Japan, and the player confronts it at the end of Act 1. It is one of the easiest sub-bosses in the game. Just like Drill Eggman 2 from Sonic 2, the machine burrows into the ceiling (causing debris to fall down) and returns to the ground, giving the player an opportunity to damage it. While playing as Knuckles, there is a rotating platform that the player can stand on to compensate for Knuckles' lower jump height.

Boss
The boss of this level is the Drill Mobile, which is fought in an aerial battle over the grassy plains of the zone, or in a tunnel when playing as Knuckles in Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

This boss fight is actually the last of a trio of encounters with the Drill Mobile: the first encounter causes a ramp leading up to a shortcut through a breakable pillar to collapse, while the second encounter causes the ground to rise, forcing the player to race through to avoid getting crushed against the ceiling. Knuckles has a somewhat more difficult version of this section&mdash;his path contains crushing traps, walls that must be opened by Spin Dashing against blue wheels, and Reliefs, all of which are found throughout other parts of the zone when playing as Sonic or Tails.

Trivia

 * When playing as Sonic and Tails, Sonic can stay at the very left of the boss arena while the second player defeats the boss using Tails. When this is done in Sonic 3 alone, it locks up the game. This was fixed in Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
 * This is the only zone in Sonic 3 that does not feature water. Instead, there are mud pits which are far more lethal&mdash;sinking all the way to the bottom causes the player to instantly die.
 * Marble Garden holds the game's largest amount of Special Stage rings, with eight rings to be found in Act 1 alone. A good player can obtain all seven Chaos Emeralds in one Act by exploring this stage. However, in order to explore every corner of the stage, it is necessary to lose a couple of lives.
 * When playing as Knuckles in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it's possible to take the route normally reserved for Sonic and/or Tails in Act 2 (without using debug mode). This can be accomplished by staying on the moving blue platform shortly before the fork in the road and using it to climb on the indestructible portion of the wall to the left of the Relief (the badniks and destructible wall portions should be destroyed first). By attacking the Relief from the wall and re-attaching to the wall after each hit, Knuckles can defeat the Relief and access the other route. An interesting side-effect of this is that Knuckles gets to face off against Sonic's version of the Drill Mobile boss at the end of the act and is assisted by Tails (who can be controlled by the second player as when playing as Sonic). This is the only way to play as Tails and Knuckles at the same time. After defeating the boss, Tails will airlift Knuckles into the Carnival Night Zone and he will start from his normal location.
 * Marble Garden is the largest stage in the game.
 * The floating blue disks appear in the classic portion of Sky Sanctuary in Sonic Generations.
 * The spinning blue wheels that activate rising platforms once spin-dashed return in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2. They appear in Sylvania Castle Zone, opening other routes in the stage.