While Sega has released official collections like Sonic Origins , many fans prefer Sonic 3 A.I.R. because it offers features the official releases sometimes lack:
The project used the same lock‑on architecture, but swapped the upper 2 MiB (the lock‑on chip) for a custom‑written program. The resulting binary is what you see as sonic_knuckles_wsonic3.bin . sonic_knuckles_wsonic3.bin
When the lock‑on is not present, these addresses are used directly by a stand‑alone Sonic 3 cartridge. While Sega has released official collections like Sonic