When I was in middle school, this was very rapidly becoming one of my favorite games, and I would play the mobile port any chance I got. Eventually it got to a point where every day after school I would do one no save run of the game. Most days I wouldn’t finish. I only ever made it to the end of the game one time, and I remember vividly how great it felt.

But even then, I was aware of how much easier the mobile port was due to things like widescreen support, smoother framerate, no pit of death, etc. I always wondered how people playing on Genesis ever made it through the game with no save files.

Well tonight I booted up Sonic 2 through the Mega Collection on GameCube to see how 16-bit games look on a CRT, and I was just having so much fun with the game that test run quickly evolved into a full playthrough. I still get really tense around the final levels. But I did it: all on the original version, no save states.

This probably isn’t impressive to most people reading this, but I wanted to leave this accomplishment here as a monument to all the time I sunk into this game as a kid. I love this game so much.