How do you guys play Genesis Sonic? Do you go for the fastest time? Do you go out of your way to collect rings or go to secret areas even if you don't need to? I ask because I just replayed Sonic 1, 2 and CD on Android after buying them for a dollar, and I actually find myself having more fun with CD, despite many people loathing it. I believe the reason is when I play Sonic on the Genesis it's mostly about the physics of the game for me. Sonic is just so much fun to control; the way slopes impact his running speed and jumps just feels good. I don't care about speedrunning the game, in Sonic 1, 2 and 3 my favorite thing to do is try to play the levels straight through with my momentum being interrupted as little as possible.
In CD, however, the levels are way more open in every direction, and backtracking is possible. The stages don't really have clear routes through them as they diverge twice a second, not to mention the past and futures. In this kind of environment getting to the goal is about the farthest thing from my mind. With a several variations of a huge, open level to explore, jam packed with rings, powerups, a robot generator and hologram to find, and relatively little threat of death, these levels seem more like a big playground than a series of challenging obstacles to overcome in traditional platformer fashion. It seems like a lot of people talk about the game's "random level design" like they're supposed to be the latter. They may have a lot more fun with the game if they just play at a more relaxed pace. All the crazy objects that send Sonic flying all over the place are a lot more fun when you see them coming and jump into them experimentally rather than accidentally running into them because you're trying to go fast straight to the goal.
I'm sure not everyone likes playing Sonic that way, but it's fun and relaxing collecting tons of rings by going everywhere, setting up time travel and seeing the remixed level design, graphics, and music, and hitting the goal whenever I feel done with the level. Perhaps a lot of people got thrown for a loop (ha ha) by how different CD's level design is, tried to play it like 2, and got frustrated.
By the way, the touchscreen controls work alright. Not as good as a physical d-pad, but acceptable once you're used to it. I'm having lots of crow for dinner tonight after all the shit I used to say about virtual d-pads years ago.
