Sonic anniversaries thread!

When I was a kid I ended up getting Sonic & Knuckles from toys r us. I never owned Sonic 3 until I was a teen much later. I would However, rent the hell out of Sonic 3. So much so, I probably just should have bought the game.

It's not my first Sonic game but Sonic 3 & knuckles is my all time favorite game. I play and beat it at least once a year with all 3 characters.

 

This day 10 years ago the Sonic Boom redesigns were revealed. It sure did exist.

 

In 3 years, Sonic Forces and Sonic Mania will be 10 years old

 

I played Sonic Lost World 10 years after its release. The game is fun and it has wall run. Music is wonderful. Ah, those violins...

 

Sonic and the Black Knight turns 15 today. And man, I've said it before and I'll say it again but this is my favorite game in the entire series. I love every aspect about it, the writing and the music are what's generally agreed upon as great. However the gameplay is often criticized, which I don't always agree with but I'll get into that later. And the graphics get so overlooked but this game is beautiful for the Wii, the level themes are so perfect from the ruins of Misty Lake being reclaimed by nature, the flora of Deep Woods and the massive tree by the gazebo where Nimue resides, and the chaos and narrow ledges of Molten Mines get you so tense, and the hot springs that make a quick appearance in the revisit called The Cauldron made for great contrast with the greens of it's waters! The worn paper and faded ink aesthetic is also great, and even though Secret Rings also had this design I think Black Knight executed it better somehow?
The writing in this game feels like a sendoff to the whole series, and in a way it is. This was the end of serious adventures, morals that you can actually take away from with Black Knight teaching you to live life in the moment, we all die, but that's not now, so don't worry about it. Sonic at this point has faced death itself and had matured so much up to this point and it shows. It's just all so good.
The music is an awesome combination of the regular rock as well as Celtic (I think?) and is exactly what you'd imagine when someone says "Sonic is in Arthurian legend". Unfortunately the songs for Molten Mine and The Cauldron were "written" by Tommy Tallarico, supposedly the first ever American to work on the Sonic series (false) and the songs were stolen from some PS1 military game if I recall. Now the gameplay, despite what most say is fun, I don't care that it's waggle to win, shredding through enemies at mach 1 is FUN. And when you learn about the homing chain sawblade attack its so satisfying. Yes the level design is still linear like Secret Rings, but the levels in Black Knight at least make you feel like you're moving through wide open places spaces whereas Secret Rings is pretty obviously closed off hallways. My only wish was that the bosses had more polish. Clashing with Lancelot, Gawain, and Percival is downright impossible, meanwhile Dark Queen is embarassingly easy. There's also a kicking mechanic that is literally used for 1 mission, which is weird, either use it more or don't have that?
I wish Sega and Sonic Team would remaster it and bring it to modern consoles with button only controls, but I know they fear doing anything with this era of games as they had mixed reviews initially. This game has a special place in my heart.

 

Happy birthday, Black Knight! I never got to play you, my mom got me Secret Rings instead. So for years I've yearned for you, what with people saying Secret Rings is the worse of the two.

Not much I have to say about a game I've never played, it looks fun, though. I like the writing, I like the music, I think Sonic having a talking sword who makes fun of him is funny, and so on and so forth.