We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

You know, a point you bring up should be put on a higher blast. Sonic Team consistently takes things that work in their original environment and run it into the ground regardless of its individual merit. The Knuckles Treasure Hunting was novel in Adventure but its novelty wears off easy, and the fact that its a 1000% worse in Adventure 2 (Because you can't choose which Emerald piece to go after) doesn't help. Also in Adventure, Gamma's gameplay was never good, but he had a neat narrative to save him, while the Tails and Eggman walker bits later on are horrible. Boarding started out as a gimmick open to Ice Cap and ended up getting three games dedicated to it. However, probably the best example of what I'm talking about has to be Grinding. It was pretty neat in Adventure 2, but that neatness was IMMEDIATELY destroyed in Heroes, mostly because of how laughably (Ragingly?) bad it is, and its never really recovered.

The more modern games have the SPEED LEVELS I already mentioned, which has roots in 3D blast's bonus stage, if not Sonic 2's, and there's also the aggravating and recurring portions of the games where Sonic is just doing things on his own and you're just watching.