Sonic’s 25-year history is full of games that are both brilliant and otherwise lacking. If you’re a die-hard fan looking to rediscover the series’ glory days, you can. If you played Nintendo as a kid, it’s time to see what all the fuss is about. If you were born after the 16-bit era, you can play some of the series’ best games on Android.

This game is perhaps Sonic’s magnum opus. This platformer does things with time travel that few games can. Each act has a past, present, and future that you can reach, but only by going fast enough to activate the time travel. And then you have to find certain destructible objects in acts 1 and 2 to activate the good future in act 3, a boss fight. Do all that and you can get the best possible ending.

As far as Sonic games go, it's surprisingly involving, and the levels have a sense of sheer scale that the Genesis games lacked. It's a challenging game, but a great one, and perhaps the high point of the series.

And then there are the amazing soundtracks, both the original Japanese and the American soundtrack by Spencer Nilsen, that so many Sonic fans love.