I definitely agree with your point, though I'd recast it slightly away from "twitchy"/"speedrun"/map memorization and towards the thrill of things being fast and disorienting. [1] Sonic involved lots of bright lights, fast animation, and noises. It was fun because everything ran out of control sometimes, or at least seemed to, and I think this, aside from considerations of wanting to optimize for efficiency of solution, was a large part of its joy. (I say "seemed to" because I remember elements of levels that blasted you through loops and walls at dizzying speed, but in practice served as just a rail that took you from point A to B.)

I didn't realize before I read this article that the design of Sonic (even excluding Sonic Spinball) was driven by pinball, though it makes tons of sense in retrospect. Pinball's got the same thrills; you're constantly in an unstable state, not really learning a puzzle so much as trying to manage a high-degree of chaos before you inevitably get thrown off the horse. It's a different brand of fun than the article's "correct" game design, less/more appealing to different people and less/more appealing when you're in the wrong/right mood.

[1] "Ilinx" in the taxonomy of Roger Callois's "Man, Play, and Games," though a personal caveat that I didn't really enjoy that book.