batson

The final levels, absolutely.

One thing: some of the levels are way too long to be expected to be cleared in a mere 10 minutes. I never had problems with the time limit in the classic games, but I sure as heck did in Mania.

One of the only things from other continuities that I wish were canon to the games is Tails' history with Cosmo. Tails' having once had to kill his loved one in order to save the world is something that brings so much depth to his character. It turns him from simply being a smart and cute fuzzball into being a character with a faschinating tragic side.

Tails in the anime is much more of an actual little kid than Tails in the games. Personally I really like both versions, but I can easily see why some would prefer the anime version.

Personally, I never liked Cream back during her heyday. I just thought she was bland and boring, and I didn't even find her cute. Over the years though I've warmed up to her. I think part of it is simply that as I've gotten older I can't help but be charmed by cute little kids. I think my subconscious is telling me that it's due time to start having some wee ones of my own, lol.

So does anyone else still remember how Cream was for a while pretty much promoted as the fifth member of Sonic's innermost circle of friends? Like if the main group of protagonists consisted of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Cream? Well ol' batson here remembers, that's for sure. Seriously, from the time Cream first showed up in Sonic Advance 2 there followed a period of several years where she showed up in ALL games in the series, both main titles and spin-off's, and she was all over the merchandise, and she had more screen-time in the first two seasons of Sonic X than any other anthro sans Sonic, Tails and Amy. In a way, I'd say Cream has had the highest fall from grace of any character in the series, since she went from being ubiquitous to probably ranking among the least prominent of the reccurring characters (she didn't show up in Forces, for one thing. And even freaking Charmy showed up in Forces). In retrospective, there exists a distinct era of Cream in the franchise's history, one that happened but is quite easy to forget.

Tails is fat.

That's a good point. Colors story was an attempt to listen to the the criticism from certain parts of the older fanbase (in fact, probably the oldest part of the older fanbase) who disliked the edgy and serious stories of the late 90's to late 00's era. With that said, I personally don't think they did a very good job at it. Scaling back convulted storylines and semi-mature content is NOT the same as turning the series to a farce...

Yeah, it's true that we live in a time when, unless something is specifically aimed solely at very young children (I'm talking things like Dora the Explorer), we can nowadays generally expect just about any childrens media to also aim at entertaining adults. The days of the 1980's when something like He-man or Ninja Turtles, which were genuinly written on an 8-year old's level, were the standard are long gone. Even something seemingly idiotic like Teen Titans Go actually contain tons and tons of jokes that are solely aimed at adults watching since no children would get the references. But even so, one could ask the question; does children's media have to aim an being entertaining to adults? Just because most childrens media do aim at entertaining adults as well, is this the same as saying that they are required to? If something choses to go the way of He-man or Ninja Turtles and leave out adult audiences completely, is that somehow wrong? After all, many of the most popular childrens media of previous decades, such as for instance the two aforementioned shows, were some of the biggest hits among child audinces that the world has ever seen, so it's objectively true that something can entertaining for children despite not being the slightest entertaining for adults.

Yeah. This is just a personal preference, but I too tend to prefer badly executed action/adventure/drama to badly executed comedy, especially in a series like Sonic.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; one thing I personally don't believe that Sonic should be is a comedy. By which I mean primarily a comedy. Primarily, the narratives in the series should be adventure narratives, that makes the player pumped to overcome obstacles and defeat the bad guy. There can be jokes, but I don't believe that something like Sonic Colors, where the jokes become the main focus of the cutscenes, is the right way to go for this franchise.

Now that would probably bring interesting results!

Yes, they would be examples of the people in tune with current nerd culture that I mentioned. Youtuber's such as the Game Grumps would fall into the same category. But once you movie past those kinds of people and unto, well, "normies" (people with a more passing interest in games, comics, ect) you'll find that most people between the ages of 30 and 40 have a positive outlook on Sonic due to his extreme prominence in early 90's kid culture.

So in another thread, the young member by the name of Rowesh mentioned something that really captured my interest. He said that whereas people of his generation often consider Sonic to be a "joke franchise", people belonging to his parents generation often has respect for it. This got me thinking about Sonic's reputation among different generations. Since this forum features a wide variety of ages among it's members, I would like to ask you all; based on your personal experience, how do people of your generation tend to perceive the series? And I'm not talking specifically about Sonic fans, but rather just people in general (I'm asuming most people of any generation born after maybe the 1950's or so at least knows what Sonic is). Do they tend to think of Sonic as something worthy of respect or as something to ridicule? Which specific games or other properties of the franchise (shows, ect) are most well known among them? As for my generation, me being born in 86, I would say this; Sonic is a nostalgic and generally respected franchise due to the fact that everyone of my generation remembers the golden age of the franchise when Sonic was inescapable. In my experience, even those that stood firmly in the Nintendo corner during the fabled console wars tend to have a respect for the series. Basically everyone of male gender is at least passingly familiar with the Mega Drive games. I specify "male gender" because to be blunt, a lot of females of my generation didn't grow up playing video games. Back then, video games were seen as a boys toy just as much as Barbie was seen as a girls toy. But of course, even females knows who Sonic is and they probably saw the cartoons and remembers the avalance of merchandise, so Sonic is very much an icon even to them. I rarely find that people of my generation have gotten their view of Sonic tainted by the tanked reputation of the series or the memes ridiculing it. The only people of my age who tends to be familiar with the "Sonic sucks and his fans are weirdos" narrative are hardcore nerds who keeps up with current nerd internet culture.