This was Geometry Dash's canon event

In retrospect, I think a lot of the GD community at large kinda recognizes that even though Zobros' levels were super influential, they weren't really that good?? Even if visually novel at first, a lot of them kinda just do the same thing for the whole level or maybe two things if you're lucky, and even more of them just aren't fun to attempt to play in any capacity.

The former statement somewhat rings true for Zobros' inaugural level. (Atlas v2 doesn't count, SHUT UP.) Nine Circles mostly lacks air deco and there are really only two and a half distinct parts. But on the flipside, I could make the argument that that's what gave Nine Circles so much staying power - there are very few bells and/or whistles to distract from the sweet, succulent meat of the level - the simple, yet effective, tastefully colored block designs, and of course, the headliner of the level, the unarguably iconic flashing diamond effect.

Nine Circles is also somewhat of a black sheep in Zobros' catalog. This is for one simple reason - it doesn't suck total monkey nuts to play. In fact, it's very good. The entire level is enjoyable and consistent with no egregious chokepoints. The long, extended wave part was somewhat of an oddity for its time - quicker gamemode switches were becoming more and more present in contemporary gameplay as custom songs became available to use and more gamemodes were added - no one was making wave parts that long before Zobros. Of course, this would change rather quickly as the level spawned slews of imitators, some approaching the same level of recognizability - in spite of that, nothing can really beat the original. At least in my opinion.