Fired this up to distract me from the misery of my beloved football team getting an absolute piping and ended up playing through the entire thing - all objectives and gold medals - in a couple of hours. It's a bit like the original Sonic game in that there's mechanics that get added in later games that are now standards of the series but when stripped back to the basics, there's no surprise that a core of this quality was able to provide the base for countless sequels.

Also: best soundtrack in the whole series, no question. I understand the love for 2 and 3 but there's too much of what was the current popular punk and metal of the time in them and some of that is pretty garbage. When you hear that first delay-drenched chord of Police Truck by The Dead Kennedys you know you're playing a real one.