Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island/YMMV

Here are the various subjective (and audience reaction) tropes that are present throughout, and in response to, Sonic 3D Flickies Island.

Best Level Ever: The Special Stages from the Saturn version are a fan favorite, being a vastly improved version of the Special Stages from Sonic 2. These stages are rendered in true 3D and have more elaborate features like springs, gaps, and upper/lower paths. On top of that, they are arguably less headache inducing than the Sonic 2 Special Stages.
Broken Base: Suffers the same arguments as Sonic the Hedgehog CD over which soundtrack is the better one, the Genesis or Saturn.
Crowning Music of Awesome: Both soundtracks.
Ear Worm: Despite not being one of the most popular Sonic games, it has one of the best soundtracks.
Goddamned Bats: The snowman badniks in Diamond Dust Zone, which due to the isometric nature of the game are far more annoying than any of the badniks in Metropolis Zone.
Good Bad Bug: In addition to the Classic Cheat Code activated level select, there's a second way to trigger it. As part of a kind of safety feature, if the game's brains get sufficiently mixed up that it tries to execute out of range code, it'll automatically skip to 'CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE FOUND THE SECRET LEVEL SELECT SCREEN!'. The Genesis being fragile as it is, the easiest way to do this is to simply smack the console (especially during the prerendered 3D animation at the start of the game). It was either this, or simply crash.
- You can also trigger it in emulators by opening a savestate of any other game while you have 3D Blast/Flickies Island open.
Memetic Mutation: An unfortunate rendering of Sonic's face in a beta of this game (shown in this video) gave rise to a Running Gag on the Sonic Retro forums known as Down Syndrome Sonic, or Lazy-Eyed Sonic if you prefer. Some forum regulars even include DSS in their ROM hacks!
Scrappy Mechanic: Collecting flickies, mainly for slowing the pace of the game, as well as drawing importance to what is normally an afterthought in other Sonic games.
So Bad It's Good: The beta boss music, which got reprised in Sonic 4.
That One Level: Diamond Dust Zone, the game's Slippy-Slidey Ice World.
- Maybe that level was a little annoying but it's not really that hard, and the killer music made up for it. Volcano Valley on the other hand is a very frustarting Lethal Lava Land with a ton of treacherous jumps over lava, chances are you'll end up getting hit and losing your flickies more often then any other level in the game.
- Gene Gadget Zone act 2 is also a pain because of one section where you have to climb up a large incline by jumping between moving platforms and dodgin enemies.
- That One Boss: Most of the late game bosses can be described as this, but Volcano Valley's is the worst. Having to cross thin pipes in an isometric perspective with a rather slippery control over your character with lava and a dragon following you makes this boss a life stealer. This can be dealt with by attacking him quickly, but usually youll end up getting hit and/or dying.