Nah m8 sonic has always been a mixture of platforming and time-trial action and the generations/colours/unleashed style matches that far better than the dodgy gameplay of adventure.
The classic Sonic games have a broadly complimentary design and physics system that allows players of different gaming styles to place an emphasis on exploration and casual play, or on actual skillful speed-running by taking advantage of the physics and intentionally-placed platforms and slopes. The pacing of the games is more variable from moment-to-moment and from stage-to-stage, leading to one stage that can focus on more straightforward rolling and dashing while the next focuses more on timing jumps and more claustrophobic design, all within a physics system that can be most easily described as adhering to the animation principle of ease-in and ease-out. Level gimmicks also had the leeway to be unique per stage and could range from see-saws, ziplines, boost pads, magnets, centrifugal obstacles, and other things you could think of that fit within the physics system and the level's theme.
The boost games on the other hand leave the exploration part to the wayside (with the arguable exception of Unleashed due to its themes but different argument for a different day) by creating a rigid gameplay style and narrow physics system where speedrunning is
the entire point, allowing most people to perform visually flashy feats of skill and feel like a badass through nothing more than rote memorization and twitch gameplay. The pacing of these games (at least the good ones because, again, fuck Colors) is more of a binary state: Sonic reaches top speed immediately, the slopes that exist have little discernible impact on acceleration and speed, and he moves at a constant until he is stopped by a platforming segment (smartly telegraphed most of the time with camera switches). As a result of how narrow the gameplay style is, level gimmicks tend to be more conservative and used throughout each stage to prevent any sort of confusion that would muddy the point of speed running- dash pads, rainbow rings, rails, and poles to swing from are in most levels regardless of whether or not they make sense to be there or are unique enough to the level's theme. You occasionally get something like Rooftop Run's balloons.
Classic and boosting gameplay are fun in their own ways but they're nowhere near close analogues to one another be worth comparing to, especially not compared to Sonic's actual gameplay in Adventure where the rolling and Spin Dash, ease-in and ease-out, a believable sense of gravity, and more contextualized design and level gimmicks like in the classic games actually still exist. You might as well say that Burnout and Forza are the basically the same because you can drive cars fast.
It also understands what setting sonic belongs in rather than trying to shove him awkwardly in the real world.
First, Sonic has always taken place in an analogue of Earth in the Japanese canon, which the Japanese Sonic Team was always going to favor. Second, the settings of the classics are disparate islands and statistically cannot be considered representative of the rest of the planet anyway. Third, the detail and realism of the classic games actually increased as time went on; Angel Island looks more like a real island than Green Hill does by placing a higher emphasis on detail and rendering versus sticking straight to abstract geometric stand-ins of real world locations and flora. Fourth,
a human city is the third level in Sonic 1. And fifth, Sonic Adventure, despite its push for realism, nonetheless maintains a generally lighthearted color scheme and fantastic use of scale, set pieces, and otherwise nonsensical design that keeps the world from being perfectly representative of ours. SA1 is in ways a natural conclusion of what Sonic Team had always envisioned in the first place.
There's two weak points in your argument.
One, what sold well and had good reception at launch? Matrix bloody 2. And what a classic that was!
Two, don't use age to excuse SA's shoddiness. Crazy Taxi, Chu Chu Rocket and JSR all came out on the dreamcast and they all hold up to this day whereas SA1 is still fucking garbage.
What is your point? GoldenEye was fucking amazing back in the day but it's a piece of garbage now with modern FPS standards having supplanted it. So this doesn't serve to refute anything. The majority of games- nay, the majority of all media is nothing but a product of its time. For every decent-ish 3D game from 1997, I can find 15 more that would be outright unacceptable today regardless of their initial receptions. So what matters then in a reasonable conversation that takes history into account is comparing initial performance and cultural fallout when gauging the meaning and impact that any particular work had. And the fact remains that SA1 did far better than what "classic diehards" (and I put this in serious air quotes because you've displayed no reasonable working knowledge of how the classic games actually played) remember it did.
I'm not revising anything, SA was and always will be an absolute mess.
K.
I don't want to say you have bad taste,
Fuck this patronizing bullshit with a rusty fork?