My favorite video game series, despite the hate it generates nowadays. I always find myself going back to playing the old 2D games every now and then, trying to find secret paths that I never knew existed before, like in Hydrocity Zone, and finding a second secret ring in Flying Battery's first act about two weeks ago. I even make a mini-game out of it, such as finding the seven checkpoints in Emerald Hill Zone in Sonic 2, and finding the seven Secret Super Rings in Sonic 3 and Knuckles's version of Mushroom Hill Zone.
Aside from Sonic 06, which I haven't played yet, the only recent game I can say has disappointed me is Black Knight, and that's mostly because of the length of the game. It took me 4 hours to beat it. But the other games, like Heroes and ShTH, I have enjoyed to a great extent (in ShTH's case, I don't think of it as a Sonic game + violence, I just treat it as a choose-a-path generic shooter with a well-made storyline, lol)
I'm looking forward for Project Needlemouse, because none of the 2D games are terrible, as Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure demonstrate. But I'm curious as to what the storyline will be like, or if they'll take a page from the Genesis games, and not even mention a plot in-game, and just save it for the manual.