I am once again asking a question for the deeply philosophical.

So i was thinking to myself when playing Sonic Mania. There's many places with bottomless holes where you die, but for some reason of the 2d games only 2 zones illicit this feeling of anxiety around those holes. Wing Fortress from Sonic 2 and Flying Battery from Sonic and Knuckles. Off the bat I can see they are both airship stages thus take place in the sky, so I would guess the reason only those 2 give me that anxiety feeling is my fear of heights. But I'm not sure that's so correct, as unlike 3d games you can't really see the bottom and also in Sonic Adventure 2 you go on the outside of the ARK which is in space and you can fall to your doom there, yet it doesn't have nearly the same feeling as the previous 2 levels I mentioned.
So the point of this thread was: Why would those 2 levels give such a feeling despite fundamentally being the same as most other levels in olden day sonic games. I'm sure there is other games with this effect too but I'm sharing just what i know.
Also I suppose curious if anyone else here shares that feeling aswell. Also I always skip half of Wing Fortress because I don't really like it and yeah i don't like it.

Immersion at its best of course. You were so immersed into the game that you subconsciously feel you were involved in dropping off the sky when Sonic did. :bigsmile: