YMMV / Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit)

• Anti-Climax Boss: Robo Sonic, the penultimate boss (and, if you haven't gotten all of the Chaos Emeralds, the final boss) is probably the second easiest boss next to the seal boss. He mainly just jumps around, and if you jump into him, you just both go flying back without harm. His only other attacks include simply charging at you (at which point he is completely vulnerable to hits) and attacking with a claw like appendage (which may kill you if you're unlucky or haven't fought him before, but is still pretty easy to avoid, as its reach is very short).
• Awesome Music: The themes for the Gimmick Mountain and Scrambled Egg zones. The music from Green Hills Zone would be adapted into "Sonic - You Can Do Anything," the opening theme from the Japanese and European versions of Sonic CD.
• Breather Boss: The Mecha Sea Lion of Aqua Lake is almost completely incapable of harming Sonic, and his only method of attack is inflating an explosive ball to throw at you, which can be very quickly popped before he can even launch it — it can be taken down in mere seconds.
• Breather Level:
  • The first two acts of Green Hills Zone, which is the stereotypical "peaceful grasslands" setting and very easy compared to the rest of the game despite being around the middle. They have the most 1UPs and Rings out of any zone in the entire game, with the very first act alone having a whopping four 1UPs and well over 200 rings. This makes (re)stocking on lives insanely easy, especially if you repeatedly grind the stage by dying at the end. Oddly, Green Hills' third act is considered to be That One Level instead.
  • Crystal Egg Zone (the final zone), of all things, is this. The only badniks are these slow moving flying pirahna things, there's only a couple bottomless pits, and there are a ton of extra life monitors (some of which aren't even hidden!). The boss, on the other hand..
• Common Knowledge: No, Tails does not actually die in the Bad Ending. Despite this being one of the most popular "facts" shared about the game, it's left ambiguous what his fate was, but it is never suggested by the game he ended up being killed by Robotnik, and the Good Ending shows both Tails and Sonic in the sky despite Tails being physically present in it. This mostly stems from a piece of fanon from WhoIsThisGit, and people then taking it as truth.
• Condemned by History: The game received positive reviews on release for expanding the mechanics and challenge of Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit), aided by the fact the game released a few weeks before the 16-bit version in certain territories. While the flaws would be highlighted more with the passage of time, the game still has fans... on the Sega Master System that is. While the Game Gear version was once considered an excellent way to play Sonic on the go, it's now seen as a giant Porting Disaster that heightens the flaws of the Master System version. The Game Gear version features Screen Crunch amping up the difficulty significantly and not in a good way, the poor visibility turns even the smallest challenge into Trial-and-Error Gameplay, requiring the player to inch across slowly to have any chance of survival, which defeats the purpose of being a Sonic game. Even its handheld novelty no longer matters with several Sonic games designed specifically for handhelds coming out since, with far better difficulty balance and level design, not to mention ports of the Genesis games coming out on said handhelds as well. To make matters worse, while the Game Gear version has received numerous rereleases, the Master System version's only rerelease was on the now-defunct Wii Virtual Console.
• Contested Sequel: In contrast to the near-universally beloved 16-bit entry, this one's a lot more divisive, with opinions ranging anywhere from it being a Sophomore Slump to being the best of the 8-bit entries.
• Fanon:
  • There's no canon indication that the 8-bit Robo Sonic is the same Mecha Sonic from the Genesis game, but the fandom generally treated them as the same robot out of simplicity. This has shifted a bit with the bot's surprise cameo in Sonic Mania, however, which depicts it at the same height as its 8-bit sprite (and thus, much smaller than the Genesis Mecha Sonic); with this in mind, this game's Robo Sonic is now often treated as a "younger brother" to Mania's Metal Sonic.
  • There's no official word from Sonic Team or Sega that Tails actually dies in the Bad Ending (or that Eggman was ever going to kill him), yet it's been a very popular piece of fanon for a long time. The theory is contradicted by the good ending, which shows the same image of Tails in the sky (accompanied by Sonic), even though he's been rescued.
• Heartwarming Moments: A sorta reversed version of the Genesis ending, where Sonic saves Tails.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The 8-bit version actually predates the Mega Drive/Genesis game by two months, and was Tails' first true appearance in the Sonic series.
  • This was the first game to lock the true final zone and boss behind the Chaos Emeralds, several years before it became a staple in later games starting with Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
  • The Green Hill Zone theme here is the basis for "You Can Do Anything", the Japanese/European Sonic CD theme.
• Porting Disaster: The Game Gear port is much more difficult than the Master System version for the wrong reasons:
  • The port suffers from the camera being zoomed in on Sonic too much, but, unlike Sonic 1, Sonic doesn't have a new set of smaller sprites and the levels aren't compacted in order to compensate, leading to a lot of cheap deaths and leaps of faith required on behalf of the player.
  • It also edits the first boss to throw the bouncing balls at random heights rather than at a consistent height from the Master System version. This, plus the cramped arena, makes the boss very difficult to beat.
  • The hang glider, already a Scrappy Mechanic, is made even worse for those going after the Golden Ending: in Sky High Zone act 2, it is possible to make use of the wind to soar to the very top of the zone. In the Master System version, Sonic simply stops ascending after hitting the top of the screen, then continues gliding, allowing him to easily grab the Zone's Chaos Emerald. In the Game Gear version, once Sonic hits the top of the screen, he immediately lets go of the hang glider and falls.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The infamous hang gliding sections from Sky High Zone, panned for the hang glider controls taking a great deal of time to get used to (keeping altitude is done by repeatedly tapping left, but not too quickly or else Sonic will lose speed). This is made even worse by the per-recorded advice given by the Sega Help Line, a phone number printed on the top of the game cartridge in some regions. The advice for Sky High Zone Act 1: "use the hang glider to fly across the gap". Thanks.
  • The loop-de-loops in Aqua Lake Zone and Green Hills Zone are very obviously scripted, making them one-way (trying to go left makes them act as solid walls) , causing Sonic to automatically uncurl while traversing them and, if Sonic hits a loop-de-loop at a certain speed, blocking him entirely after going through a third of it, forcing the player to wait until the time limit expires.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Due in part to the lack of checkpoints or shields and the increased length of the still-ringless boss Acts, this game is generally regarded as significantly harder than its predecessor, as well as harder than most other Sonic games from the same era. The Game Gear version adds some difficulty due to the screen displaying a smaller area, but even the Master System version is widely considered to be difficult by the series' standards.
• Signature Scene: The bad ending is what's most likely to come to mind when fans think of the 8-bit game, especially in contrast to its 16-bit counterpart.
• Sophomore Slump: While not a hated game outright, it's considered far less remarkable than its 16-bit counterpart, largely being a Mission-Pack Sequel for the first 8-bit game, with Sonic's third 8-bit platformer Sonic Chaos being a better translation of 16-bit Sonic 2's new innovations and gameplay.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The boss theme of the Game Gear version sounds almost exactly like "Cubik" by 808 State.
• Tear Jerker: The bad ending. Even if you don't subscribe to the theory that Tails dies in the bad ending, it still leaves the fact that Sonic went on the journey just to save him from the clutches of Dr. Eggman… and he didn't. The music doesn't help matters that much.
• That One Boss: The Mecha Antlion, specifically on the Game Gear. It's considered tougher due to the Screen Crunch, making it harder to avoid the bouncing balls (you're also on a 90 degree slope that leads to the boss, and falling into the actual boss on the right of the screen is also easy to do). Making matters worse, some bombs fall low and others bounce high, whereas in the Master System version they all bounce low and are easily jumped over. Finally, after throwing the last bomb, Eggman does a fast ground-sweep charge along the ground that you barely have any time to jump over, plus it's possible for a bouncing bomb to still be coming down the slope when Eggman comes down. This is only the first boss of the game, but every boss afterward is a pushover by comparison, though you don't get rings for any of them.
• That One Level:
  • Sky High Zone. It's the second Zone in the game, and the obtuse hang glider controls caused many players to run out of lives before they could master it and progress. Press the wrong button and you perish.
  • Aqua Lake Zone Act 2. For starters, it's completely underwater, and any Sonic fan would know what underwater means in this context: drowning. To make matters worse, it has patches of fake walls in rather nasty spots that you can accidentally fall in, and at least four big bubble dispensers you climb into to float upwards. The worst of these is near the end, which can fortunately be avoided by going through a fake wall, but if your speed is not maintained, you fall down and have to do that horrible "dodge the spikes + enemies hoping your bubble doesn't pop" section. While you can jump right through the fake wall to get to the exit, you must take the pipe under it to be able to reach the zone's Chaos Emerald, which is required to reach the final level, and being unable to go back up the pipe after the Emerald will force you to deal with the final shaft with the spikes, spears, and Badniks. Doesn't help that it's an enormous level compared to most of the others.
  • Green Hills Zone Act 3 takes a step way up in difficulty from the other two acts; it forces the player to bounce across a mountain range of springs without landing in spikes at the bottom of the level, which will kill them due to the lack of Rings. The final three hills require near-perfect timing to get past, and losing to the Master Robot after these last three hills sends the player back to the beginning.
  • Scrambled Egg Zone, thanks to the very elaborate and very confusing transportation pipe system, full of Trial-and-Error Gameplay as one wrong move can mean inescapable spike pits. There's only one pipe maze with spikes that you can climb out of near the end of Act 1, but Act 2 has several spike pipe puzzles, and the last one requires timing with no room for error, or it's a spike pit that is effectively a bottomless pit for Sonic.