User blog comment:GunboyGuncrazy/Why is it that some people to this day see Sanic.exe as a good pasta?/@comment-1196539-20140823203627

It's kind of like saying that Dragon Ball Z is generic and stereotypical. It's a moot argument because it defined generic and stereotypical, and is thus immune to it. The shouting power ups, the spiky hair, the energy blasts... all present, and all things that had been done before DBZ, but DBZ was the one that really brought them all to the surface and became popular for them. From then on, everything that did those things was ripping off DBZ.

Same can be said for Sonic.exe and Jeff. They were reasonably original back when they were conceived. They STARTED all of the incredibly overused cliches. The only reason the content of Sonic.exe is seen as so terrible and overdone is because it became so terrible and overdone in spin-offs and wannabe pastas AFTER the original was written.

It also doesn't hurt that the actual game hack was made for the pasta. That, more than anything, contributed to its popularity, and made it grow a lot more than it ever would have in text format alone.