SRB2 is easily my favorite 3D Sonic game, and judging by the recent ports to stuff like the Sega 32x, it makes me wonder the “what if?” Universe where Sega had made a competent 3D Sonic game to compete with Mario 64.
The fact that the next-console's Sonic Adventure 1 still felt like an also-ran Mario 64 makes me think that it probably wouldn't have made a difference.
Much ink has been spilled and fingers pointed over the failures of Sonic Xtreme and other attempts to make a fully-3D Sonic game on the Sega Saturn, but I think it fundamentally comes down to the fact that the creators didn't know how to translate the core gameplay loop into 3D.
Well that’s what I am saying though; clearly the 32x (and probably the Saturn) were capable of running something cool like SRB2 as evidenced by the tech demos, and I feel like SRB2 really does feel like a proper translation of the 2D games to 3D.
But I broadly agree; it wasn’t a hardware thing, it was a “we don’t know how to do it” thing; SRB2 came like a full decade after the 32x’s relevance.
Much ink has been spilled and fingers pointed over the failures of Sonic Xtreme and other attempts to make a fully-3D Sonic game on the Sega Saturn, but I think it fundamentally comes down to the fact that the creators didn't know how to translate the core gameplay loop into 3D.