Dunno how much you played of the franchise, but if you got stuck early on (e.g. the dreaded Marble Zone in the punishing first game), maybe you could abuse save states? The franchise got several emulated releases, and I imagine it's not uncommon for them to allow such a function natively. And at least to me, Sonic 2 plays much better and I remember kid me finding Sonic 3 even sharper.
Iirc there are also cheat codes. I definitely remember reading about them in a magazine back then and having the best time flying around this zone as super sonic.