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Sonic3 & Knuckles. It's quite simply got the very best platforming elements I've ever seen in a 2D game. Pure Sonic play to the extreme. Okay, not that extreme, but possibly to the max.

Sonic advance 3 is my curent favoret, as it has the return of the Gizoid from Sonic Battle. The ablility of the second player can come in real handy (like Tails flight ability).

Well I like SA2 the best. I loved the story and game play.

Sonic Jam on the Saturn! So much better than Mega collection. Who agrees with me? I guess it's my favourite game due to being able to play any combo of the Sonic Canon games you want to from the off. Plus the 3D environment and the various different activities to do in it. I mean; after addiction to that, I was sooo disappointed with what Mega Collection turned out to be. Plus for a GC game, it had pretty crappy loading times...

Oh! And the best bit of Sonic Jam? Spinball technique in Sonic 1!!! Well.. No that's NOT the best bit.. But it is pretty amazing ^-^ heart

dude where 2 begin! ummm... hehheh.. ya i'd have to say probably either Sonic Adventure 2 Battle only because i get to play as shadow, or Sonic 3D Blast because i rock @ that game or Sonic and Knuckles because... well i don't know why.

i really didn't like sh=huffle or Mean bean. spin ball was awsome. if u r talking about the Game gear version of spinball, my dad did the music on dat game. if u have the instruction manual, look @ the credits under music designer or something with music. you should see a name "Paul Gadbois" that is my dad. i got a whole lot of stuff since my dad did a lot of sega games and he also made a few nintendo games. also! my dad talked to Mario and Wario @ a game convention and.... well. look for my dad in the credits in the instruction manual.

Sonic 3 and Knuckles.

It just seems to me to be what Sonic games're classically about: speed, not too much tactics, and just plain raw playability.

It mostly fixed the main gripes of the previous two games: the short length and the lower than average difficulty level. It looked incredibly pretty for a 2D game of the time (and the use of transitions inbetween levels was just a cute touch, that really rounded off the picaresque nature of the previous games), but it didn't use those looks at the expense of gameplay.

You could always come back to it and work on something new, whether it was hunting the hidden special stage rings (and through them the emeralds, and Super Sonic), a faster time or the time attack or the 2-player mode. There was always something to find or beat.

For me, the newer games just don't seem to have the same style.

The challenge of aiming for Super Sonic's been completely removed, by throwing him in as a piece of mandatory glory-hogging (pun intentional) on the last level only.

The 3D engines just don't have the same flexibility. There's one race track and you just dodge the obstacles along it. The bonuses're still there, but you just have to look from screen to screen along the same track, with the only replay challenge being in the "missions" of playing the same track over and over, ad nauseum.

The eye candy's come at the expense of exchanging multiple pathways through each level for linear gameplay, which makes hunting for bonuses more of a chore, through a complete lack of exploration.

To me, it's taken the franchise right up until SAdv3 to get even close to that level of making the player feel like they're having to work to achieve something.

Whilst I'm not claiming that the game's perfect (for one thing, less bottomless plummets would be nice), it's the only recent game I've seen where the landscapes really do seem to've been designed by someone who wants to make getting through the difficult, where you do have to hunt through levels to look for everything, and where you actually have to go through some sections on tippy-toes, rather than just let yourself dash from left to right in the fastest way possible.

I respect SA1's use of storyline - and the expansion of plot through the 3D games in general - but I'd respect it a whole lot better if the character developments made there'd actually been carried through into the next games. I still feel as though S3&K had a better overall package.