I'm a Star Light Zone stan till the day I die. Why does the zone never get referenced in the future?

It's actually wild how strong the first Sonic game stays to this day. It holds up with strong platforming and maybe the best soundtrack of any 2D Sonic game?

Both the speed based and platforming based zones are balanced well and all great (except for labyrinth zone). Not much to say with Sonic 1, they knew what they were doing here.