The strategy that made me win races was to get the "item change" gadget, hang in the back to get a catch up item, then play the game until lap 3. Hoarding great items is insanely powerful in this.
I'd swear, this is intentionally designed to outsell Mario Kart, at this point.
Yeah, but both of the Adventure games didn't really waste any time at killing off his credibility. Even when the first one was nice enough to give him a backstory
And then we had to wait for the movie(s) for him to get back that credibility... I think. Idk, does he do anything stupid in those too?
He kind of acts like an goofy idiot, in that one. But to be fair, he was kind of levelheaded in the handful of games where he's an background character... But that's basically just Heroes, at this point. Everything else had him act like an violent retard, which was hilarious when it happened in Sonic Battle. Or he's just there to punch something
He had the backstory as far back as Sonic 3. Adventure just elaborated on what destroyed his ancestors. (trying to use the emeralds for evil and trampling the googoo gaagaa critters to death which angered the local demigod)
Honestly, both of the SA games hasn't aged well, at all. But the mech levels were an mild improvement over Gamma's levels.
I wouldn't consider them being constantly ported over the year in buggier states "not aging well". That's a negligence thing. I think a lot of things are less aging and more a matter of taste with these. The mech levels aren't the same as gammas levels despite having similarities, but the entire deal with SA2's gameplay was honing in on what made the first game's gameplay fun and building on it. Big reason why the emerald radar is weird in 2 is because the stages are bigger and it gives newer players more time to explore instead of just tickboxing every emerald shard their first go around. Maybe I'm just weird but over the years I've kind of understood/speculated more of the logic behind choices in video game mechanics.
There's also the question of how many mutant hedgehogs had been seen before this point, if we narrow it down to the games? Just Sonic and Amy, right?
It's never really stated how common or rare the weird little 3 foot tall animal goblin people are hedgehogs or otherwise, though they're clearly common enough that npcs in SA1 talk to the ones you play as like they're just random passerbys or neighbors(LITERALLY NEIGHBOR in amy's case), and one of them is a fed from a 3 letter agency in SA2. With the amy mistaking shadow for sonic thing It's blatantly meant to be an instance of that kind of phenomenon where you accidentally mistake someone from behind for someone they kinda look like. (Once again the super sonic thing mentioned earlier). Immediately after he turns around she goes "wait shit" sorry wrong guy" more or less. A big aspect of the game in general is how similar the two of them are despite having severely different backgrounds and being two different people. That brief gag adds to it a little bit that sets up for later stuff.
Was this a recent video too? Pointing out that shadow looks nothing like Sonic in 2025 is like pointing out how Sonic 06 was le bad game. People will just parrot the same shit over and over again simply because they heard it before, despite the fact its been like 20+ years and we have new information to go off from. And in terms of changes being made during development and not fitting with the current context, SA2 was certainly not the worst offender of this at the time. For example, the last level of Halo Combat Evolved is infamous for being a mess of non sequitur dialog as a result of last minute changes being made. A weird comparison to make, but it's a good example of how people will tend to nit pick anything Sonic related to death but other franchises who done it worse get left alone. I'm pretty sure the main reason for that is because people find Sonic weird.
I'm thankful the movies of all things restored his popularity and "coolness" to a good extent, indeed!