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• Awesome Music: This is Sonic The Hedgehog. What did you expect?
• Best Boss Ever: The Nega-Wisp Armor, if a bit easy (once you know what you're doing, that is). Also counts as a Best Boss Beating Ever.
• Best Level Ever: Two of them; Starlight Carnival (mostly for visuals) and Planet Wisp (mostly for gameplay and music). The latter was chosen as the game's representative in Sonic Generations.
• Base Breaker: The game's writing. Fans are very split on whether the script is genuinely funny, and a step in the right direction for the series, or annoying, overdone and immature.
• Breather Level: The final stage is just Sonic running for 30 seconds. There are floor gaps to avoid, but there are no enemies.
• Broken Base/Contested Sequel: While considered to be wholesale better than Sonic Unleashed, fans are somewhat broken on whether Unleashed's daytime levels or Colors' levels are better.
• Casting Gag: Not voice casting, but writer casting. At one point, Sonic says "Nobody said there'd be math", which was a Running Gag in MadWorld. Guess which writing team they brought on to make Colours?
• Character Rerailment: Sonic the Hedgehog returns to being a snarky Mascot with Attitude like he was supposed to be from the start.
  • Dr. Eggman isn't relying on an Eldritch Abomination, a Sealed Evil in a Can, or anything that becomes The Man Behind the Man or The Starscream to stop Sonic. No, Dr. Eggman is back to just using his robots, as well as the Wisps. That's it. And the Final Boss is none other than the good doctor himself.
• Counterpart Comparison: The game's writing has started a lot of debate about how its humor matches up to the 1993 cartoon show.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Robotnik's PA announcements.
  Robotnik: In case of emergency, would everyone please make their way to the escape pods. For anyone not named Eggman, your pods are back down on the planet being constructed in a factory.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Sonic's sprint back down the Hyper-Accelarating Space Elevator.
• Ear Worm:
  • Sweet Mountain Zone seems to have this type of music.
  • I'm gonna reach for the staaaaars!
  • Planet Wisp Act 1.
  • Everything in this game is gonna embed itself into your brain. It is Sonic after all.
• Eight Point Five: IGN's score on Colors. Complaints rose, of course, mainly due to the fact the major flaw cited was certain difficult spikes, and difficulty is mostly a subjective concept. On the other hand, considering the scores IGN has handed out to other 3D Sonic games, 8.5 is amazing.
  • Then there's Gametrailers' 6.4 score for the Wii version.
  • Destructoid's Jim Sterling gave the Wii version a 4.5 out of 10. Sega of America didn't let them get away with it.
• Epic Riff: Just about every song in the game has these, but most notably Planet Wisp and its Piano line.
• Fridge Brilliance: Eggman turning planets into Amusement Parks of Doom might seem a little bit random, but remembering Sonic Unleashed's Eggmanland, it makes perfect sense as an extension of his goals.
  • Also, SA-55 Orbot (the robot nicknamed "Ergo" by fans), in the final cutscene that had Eggman in Sonic Unleashed, suggested that Eggman simply begin his plans anew. Bringing planets together is basically the opposite of what Eggman did in Sonic Unleashed by cracking the Earth into pieces, so maybe Eggman decided to use the same plan but backwards... and in space?
  • Some people are calling bull on Sonic not being able to outrun the black hole in Terminal Velocity Act 2. However, it should be noted that nothing — not even light — escapes a black hole when sucked in. Thus, not even the fastest thing alive, who can only break the sound barrier, would be able to resist its pull.
  • A lot of people might think that the disclaimer "Now with FISH!" referring to a sushi restaurant was a joke about Eggman's terrible restaurant planning. But "sushi" actually refers to a type of vinegared rice, which is SOMETIMES served with raw fish among other ingredients. So a sushi restaurant without fish actually makes perfect sense.
• Game Breaker: Super Sonic. He makes the powerups useless, since he can basically do everything they can (and when he can't, the levels actually change to help him out). It may seem like a Bragging Rights Reward once you realize that you have to collect all the Red Rings in all the levels, but it makes getting 100% Completion by getting S Rank on all the levels easy, since it even gives you a bonus every few seconds just for being Super Sonic. But unless you actively try to get points, you'll end up with A Rank.
• Hype Backlash: The game has gotten quite a bit of Sonic fans calling it overrated due to it getting much more critical acclaim than a lot of the other previous 3D Sonic games (noticably about where most people say it was "the game that saved Sonic's reputation". This caused yet another Broken Base where, despite the better much ratings compared to 06 and Unleashed, fans still question on whether it's a good game on its own or not, or how it compares to the likes of Sonic Adventure 2 (which is also suffering Hype Backlash now for similar and different reasons).
• It's Short, so It Sucks : Well, not that it sucks, but Nintendo Power gave the DS version a lower score simply because it's over too fast. They did say that it was great while it lasted, though.
• Memetic Mutation: GOOD! GREAT! AWESOME! OUTSTANDING! AMAZING!
  • Just about anything regarding the Final Color Blaster. Sometimes, it gets coupled with the already-memetic line of "TASTE THE RAINBOW, MOTHERFUCKER!"
  • Baldy McNosehair.
  • The Aquarium Act music sounding like an existing meme, Gentlementlemen.
  • "No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me!"
• Most Wonderful Sound: The stock bowling pin sound with "SLAM!".
  • The sound of the goal ring in the more platformy acts, indicating you're nearly at the end of the level.
• Narm Charm: The cutscenes and dialogue are pretty juvenile and Saturday-morning cheesy, but that may be exactly why so many players find them entertaining.
  • This is all intentional, though. The English script was written by the guys who did MadWorld and Happy Tree Friends (both of which have more adult writing though).
  • The sky with stars so briiiight, the colors feel so riiiight...
• Nightmare Fuel: The Purple◊ and Violet◊ Wisps. Yes, that is Sonic.
  • The Purple and Violet Wisps themselves. They were once regular Wisps, but they were abducted by Eggman, forced to do his bidding, and transformed into violent, Slasher Smile-wearing, eyeless creatures that look like this◊ and this.◊ And then there's their motives for helping Sonic. Are they still good-natured Wisps, trying to use their new powers to aid Sonic, or did Eggman's tinkerings cause a permanent Face Heel Turn and they're simply using Sonic to get back at Eggman? Will they even be able to return to their original forms? (The answer: Yes.) Just thinking about it is so terrifying, it's depressing.
  • Oh, and the drowning music returns, this time fully orchestrated, albeit a bit less scary in the "Whoa, I'm scared" sense, and more scary in the "I'm gonna lose a life here and have to start this section over" sense.
    • Even scarier: making Sonic stand still when the countdown begins will actually show him struggling for air this time.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The previous Sonic games were not very well-received. This one, however, is getting nearly universally good, if not great, scores.
• Tear Jerker: Sonic and Tails finding the machine that converts Wisps into Frenzy Wisps, but especially Tails' reaction. He seems really shaken up about it, and then mentions in an upset tone that he hasn't seen Yacker for a while. It just makes you remember that despite Tails' mechanical genius and banter with Sonic, he's still one of the youngest characters in the series.
• That One Level: Planet Wisp, Act 3. Seems simple enough, but it is FAR too easy to just BARELY miss those TINY platforms that you have to cross and plummet to your death... The Cube power-up also has an annoying tendency to run out when you're standing on the blue blocks, which revert to rings, and — you guessed it — cause you to plummet to your death.
  • The levels with the yellow moving springs can also give grief, as you have to both keep up with the spring and not overpace it, as well as having to stomp on it to gain more height, which is very finicky and sometimes likes to not bounce you high enough to reach platforms. Best not let it tempt you to your death with its hard to reach rings. Asteroid Coaster Act 3 makes it even harder with pushy things that instantly kill you if you don't stomp on the spring at just the right moment.
• That One Side Quest: The DS version brings us Mission 2 in Sweet Mountain. Now, normally, rescuing the 25 Wisps isn't so hard if all you're trying to do is simply pass it or collect the mission's red rings; however, it becomes a total nightmare when trying to S rank the mission, mostly due to the fact that when you get to the robot that tosses you up into the air and you have to float down while trying to dodge bomb balloons and land on the hot dog it's holding and then go into its mouth, the problem is that you move at a very sluggish pace when floating down and have no way to land on the hot dog and into the robot's mouth faster, so that section of the mission winds up wasting a lot of your time, and since it's a rescue the Wisps mission, that means there are no extra time capsules to pick up to give you extra time on the mission's countdown timer. By the time you're past the giant robot with the hot dog part, you probably won't have enough time left to earn an S rank for the mission.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks: When the game was initially revealed, some people, going by just a couple short CG trailers, are comparing it to Super Mario Galaxy. Funny, when you consider there's a level in Sonic Adventure 2, a game from 2001, that is very reminiscent of Super Mario Galaxy and gravity gimmicks as such were already present in Genesis-era Sonic games. As more information was revealed, the comparison was further extended by the presence of the Luma-like Wisps, Sweet Mountain Zone and the drill power.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A mind-controlled Tails would have made an awesome boss for this game, especially considering that Tails had been becoming a Non-Action Guy lately. Unfortunately, Eggman's mind-control ray ran out of power.
• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Not only do levels include a tropical resort IN SPACE, an underwater Asian city, and a military base made out of food, Sonic gets power-ups by fusing with magic squids. Seriously, this game is going to give Super Mario Bros. a run for its money in the "pure weirdness" department.
  • Lampshaded by Tails when Sonic first uses the Wisps' powers.
  Tails: I find that hard to believe.
• Win Back The Crowd: Sonic finally broke through the Polygon Ceiling!