Nostalgia is a powerful thing, I freaking ADORED this game as a kid, it, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, Glover, Crash Bandicoot, Bugs and Taz: Time Busters, the first three Spyro games(fuck you activision), Crash Team Racing, and Ape Escape (British voice edition, the voice actors were SO much better than the American version) pretty much WERE my childhood.

Replaying them, a few hold up really well (ape escape, spyro, B&T, and CTR are still fucking gems and I will brutally eviscerate anyone who says otherwise), and a few of them (sonic, glover, crash bandicoot, croc to a lesser extent), not so much

As for why I enjoyed it as a kid, Dan summed it up in the first Zelda playthrough, when you're a kid, you have a limited amount of games to play, so length and ability to hold your attention are key. SA had about 6 storylines, each decently long, and all with greatly varying play styles and stories that overlapped just enough to make you always feel like you're doing SOMETHING important to the plot, so if you got bored of treasure hunting or running, you could go fishing instead.

It's very much rose tinted glasses, for example, I don't remember the graphics ever being THIS bad, although looking back, I realise I've been mentally updating the graphics to match the newer sonics.

I do have to say though: I played the game to death as a kid, never once did I encounter a glitch that I wasn't specifically trying to cause (eg, arin trying to stop on the loop in this video), and I personally think arin has the problem that he is looking through jade tinted glasses, he's decided he already hates the game and is purposely going to try to not enjoy it