lolz:
Also, I completely agree with Ryan's assessment of Sonic Adventure. If you were to present 1999 Barry with the concept of both Sonic Adventure and Sonic Colors, I would have totally chose Sonic Adventure because that is exactly what we craved at the time. A fully 3D Sonic world, all of our favorite characters (well, Tails, Knuckles and Amy at least), the floating island, chaos emeralds, a deep plot.
However, now I would go with Colors, no question. It is simply much more of a pure game. No boring secondary characters, no lengthy cutscenes (seriously, I replayed the final story of SA1 last week and did the dishes as the cutscenes played out, came back to the TV and they were still going!), no out of place mini-games.
Basically, both Sonic Adventure and Colors are products of their respective times. They were fulfilling what we wanted then and now. That's why I think they're deemed as successful games. Sonic Adventure 2 even more so, as it trimmed a lot of the fat from SA1. An SA2 with adventure fields would have been a real drag, as the "wow factor" was gone by that point.
I do find it extremely laughable that some people (I hesitate to use the word "fans") plead for a Sonic Adventure 3. I really do think these are the people who played the first two when they released, and moved on, never really following the series since the Dreamcast days. Had they stuck with the series, they would have experienced both Sonic '06 and Unleashed, both games that share a TON of Adventure series traits. Large focus on plot ('06 especially), multiple characters, alternate gameplay modes, mini-games, side missions, Tornado shooting stages, adventure fields, big Super Sonic finale. That's pretty damn close to a Sonic Adventure 3&4 if you ask me.
And what would an SA3 bring to the table, exactly? It can't continue the plot of the first two games (that being Chaos) as Shadow the Hedgehog and Heroes continued and concluded that thread. It can't introduce even more characters, as we have more than enough as it is. It can't introduce more gameplay styles, as SEGA learned the hard way that this is not what the series needs. So really, all it would be is a Sonic Adventure 3 by name, nothing else. The ship for SA3 sailed with Heroes and Shadow. It ain't gonna happen.