I never liked S3&K-Blue Spheres stages.

I wish there was a mod for Sonic Mania to replace all the Blue Sphere stages with fun special stages instead.

Sonic 2 gets an exception, since you can easily just not play with Tails. I even parodied this moment in some song lyrics I wrote for a Sonic parody album I made for my friends:

"W- what do you mean you got hit with a bomb at the end, Tails?!"

However, Sonic 1's just the least innovative. I like them all, but I had to choose it.

Sonic 1

Sonic 2's.

Purely trial and error.

Sonic 2 easily. It looks nice, but it’s such a pain. And the fact that a bunch of later games did the half pipe infinitely better doesn’t help.

Yeah I definitely don’t like the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ones, they felt more like trial and error than anything.