So yeah, this was my favorite video game of all time until Mass Effect 2 and later Undertale came along, and honestly it regained its throne on this replay. There's just SO MUCH here, and so much replay value. And it's so rewarding to get better at the game with practice.

I played with me & Sonic first, then Knuckles, neither of which really had anything new content other than Hyper Sonic and Hyper Knuckles, but were still a lot of fun to play through in their complete forms and it was nice having me with Sonic for the Sonic & Knuckles levels.

But saving my playthrough as myself for last was absolutely the right decision. Being able to fly, even just in a video game, is so satisfying, especially after playing through literally the same stuff as other characters who can't fly. It felt so good! Probably a fraction of what it would feel like to suddenly be able to fly in real life.

Oh, and yeah, I don't know why I need all the Chaos Emeralds and Super Emeralds to go Super? I have joked that I was being pedantic like "Wait why do the Chaos Emeralds make you go Super? Wouldn't the Super Emeralds make more sense?" and the Emeralds were like, "You know what, you little know-it-all? FINE. That's how it works for you. Happy???" But yeah. My Super form is pretty great!

I also love that all of us have different final bosses, even though mine is just a truncated version of Sonic's playthrough. But even that makes sense, right? Because I was fighting by his side the whole time.

I love this game so much.

for lthe longest time if you asked me to name my favorite video game of all time it was a dead heat between this & ocarina of time. and it's not really that they were ever surpassed. (well... i think wind waker surpassed ocarina of time, actually, but that's another conversation.) it's just that our understanding of what a video game can be changed drastically.

but like... in terms of what we understood video games to be in the 90s, this is still (and always will be) the absolute pinacle to me.