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Robotnik Can't Stand The Reign

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 25 / 28
Date: November 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It always does show that older games can relly be much more fun than highly visual games with overused graphics and outrageous detail sometimes. Largely, because of the influence classic games brought to the table. For Sega, nothing says that theory very well other than their legendary mascot, Sonic The Hedgehog. Even though Sega isn't making any new video game systems, they are still showcasing that the classic never ever dies. In 2002, Sega unveiled the Sonic Mega Collection for the Nintendo Gamecube. The move proved to be a success and one of Nintendo's most popular video games for their Gamecube. Now, the collection has expanded, and finally landed on the Xbox game system.

The Sonic Mega Collection Plus is a collection of 7 legandary Sonic series games from the classic Genesis system era, and 6 games from Sega's handheld Game Gear era as well. The games here all have been reissued very well here, and the games are just like they are new here. All the classics have been restored graciously including Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, and Sonic 3D Blast. The games here are just as fast, furious and comelling here, without a single flaw missing. The collection also includes Game Gear versions of Sonic 1 & 2, as well as Game Gear classics like the compelling and challenging Sonic Chaos, Sonic Triple Trouble, and the Mario Kart like themed racing game Sonic Drift 2. The collection also includes copies of The Sonic comic collection series here from the mid 90's, as well as extra unlockable games like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Knuckles In Sonic 2, Ristar and Flicky, a classic from Sega's 1980's master system.

All in all, Sonic Mega Collection Plus is a very exciting multipack of some of the greatest games from a definitive landmark hedgehog. If you have the Gamecube as well as the Xbox, and purchased Sonic Mega Collection for the Gamecube, than this really may not be worth the money. But, for Xbox gamers, Sonic Mega Collection Plus stands very well and extremely fast on its own. This should be one fox Xboxers in their libraries.

Graphics: B+

Packaging: A-

Controls: B

Overall: B+

Good outweighs the bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 19 / 22
Date: November 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This collection includes some of the best Sonic games (Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Chaos), as well as some of the worst (Sonic Drift, 3D Blast). Overall, for the price, this is a great collection and lots of fun, especially for kids who maybe haven't played the older games. Some of them hold up real well and the Xbox adaptation works well in most cases. At this price, it's a good purchase, given how few kid-friendly games Xbox has.

An almost perfect time capsule.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: November 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I won't review every single game in this collection mostly because that'd take too long, and probably bore all of you. So I'll just give a brief summary of each game as I go along.

A few years ago, the GameCube saw a Mega Collection of most of the older Sonic games after Sonic Adventure 2 Battle did great in sales. It was just missing a lot of the hedgehog's other system adventures, mostly the Game Gear titles. So here we go with the recent Xbox/ps2 version in Sonic Mega Collection Plus. Though the "Plus" is mostly for all of the cool additional content like comic covers and other art pieces, but also 4 other "classic" Genesis games. While not all the games featured are equally good, most of them will give you something to do at least one playthrough each. Here's what you get in this version:

The Genesis titles: Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Sonic The Hedgehog 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Knuckles (the Sonic 2/S&K lock-on version), Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic The Hedgehog Spinball, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, The Ooze, Comix Zone, Flicky, Ristar. The Game Gear titles: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Chaos, Sonic Drift, Sonic Labyrinth, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, Sonic Blast.

Lookit all those games for this low price. I'd say it's worth buying even before you know what you're getting. Now it's time for the memories. First there was Sonic the Hedgehog. Simply put, you were a hedgehog that ran around collecting rings and destroying robots to free the animals trapped inside them. The game focused more on speed than exploration unlike Mario, and was something new at the time. Then came Sonic 2, which introduced us to Tails. There wasn't a whole lot of point to that because he never really helped you (he couldn't carry Sonic by flying until 3) unless controlled by a second player. But it was still fun, and has the best ending sequence of all the Genesis games. They made it dramatic with the simple use of still-frames showing what was going on once Sonic took out Robotnik. The game also introduced us to Super Sonic. After collecting all the Chaos Emeralds, once Sonic got 50 rings and jumped in the air, he'd turn golden and be invincible until he ran out of rings. But that wasn't a problem thanks to the huge speed boost when in this form. The music in the game is also my favorite. With Sonic 3, the series went in a new direction. Now when you play as Tails, he can fly around until he got tired. He could also swim, making for easier underwater navigation. Plus like I mentioned, he could carry Sonic around and reach new heights. The graphics were also given a new look: Sonic himself didn't look as cartoony. He also got a new shield that could protect him for a split second when you hit any button in mid-air. There were 3 other shields: fire, water and lightning. Each had their own unique uses. Fire guarded you against various attacks and do an air dash at the enemy like a comet. Water let you bounce around in a bubble, and caused underwater breathing. So no worrying about drowning there. And the best of the 3 probably was the electric one. It allowed for a small double jump, caused sparks, and attracted rings to you. The music got even better here, especially in the Icecap Zone where Sonic could snowboard. Now that was action back in the day. And of course, Knuckles was thrown into the mix as an annoying (at the time) rival. He constantly screwed over Sonic here, but he wasn't quite the bad guy.

Sonic & Knuckles was really new. When it was released, the cartridge allowed lock-on technology (I still remember the commercial saying that) and made for a new experience with Sonic 2 and 3. If you slapped either one of those on top of the S&K cart, Knuckles would be playable. With Sonic 2, it was all Knuckles and he could use his abilities like gliding and climbing walls to make for an entirely new game. With Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it made the game more "complete" as some people put it since a lot of the areas in there had Knuckles in mind. Like the first stage had a rock blocking a passage, but couldn't be destroyed unless Knuckles bashed through. As for the game itself, I didn't like it that much. Knuckles, while he was great to play as, couldn't jump as high as Sonic, making some levels very frustrating. And a lot of the level placement seemed off. The first Zone in particular. That just isn't very first-levelish for a Sonic game. A lot of people still liked it, and it's worthy of being in the line of games. Then there was Sonic Spinball, a game I was addicted to for a long time. As you can guess, it's pinball, but Sonic's the ball. There's not much more to say about it. All the usual Sonic elements are in there like rings, Chaos Emeralds, freeing animals, etc. I would spend hours trying to outdo my high score. I really wish I still had my cart for that to see how high it was. Sonic 3D Blast is actually a good game, the camera just ruins it (it constantly moves around). It's in pseudo-3D and you run around freeing animals from their prisons. Finally, there's Mean Bean Machine which is just Puyo Pop with the Sonic characters.

The Game Gear ports are mostly the same as the Genesis games, only with lesser graphics and sound. Sonic Drift is essentially Hang-On only with karts. Everything from the controls to the look of the tracks is almost identical to Hang-On. I hated Labyrinth though, and couldn't put up with it. Most of these games are pretty fun though, and I was impressed with how they made Knuckles control almost exactly like he did in the 16-bit versions.

My favorites from the bunch include Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic Spinball, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Sonic Drift. And of course, yes, there are a few games missing. It's getting annoying at this point. Everyone's demanding to know where Sonic CD (what most regard as the best Sonic game) is. The only thing I can think of is that the name says it all: it was cd based. The Xbox runs on dvd discs. I'm no technical expert, but from what I've read, that could cause problems. But then again, I've seen Sonic CD appear on ROM/Emulator discs back in the Dreamcast days. So I have no clue what's going on there. The other one that's a big disappointment is the lack of Sonic Triple Trouble for Game Gear. I used to always want to play that, and they decided not to include it for some reason...yet Sonic Drift manages to sneak in here, along with the bonus games like Ristar. Another problem with the collection itself is the menu layout and quality. Loading times are pretty sad for a collection of older ports. Plus, being able to save whenever you want kind of spoils the experience. I found myself going for saves all the time, which has become a habbit over the years. It's funny how I never even thought about saving back when the games first came out, and had no problem breezing through Sonic 2 in 50 minutes in one sitting. The graphics look identical to how they did on their systems, including the black "box" around the screen. This can be taken care of by clicking in the right thumbstick. But the sound just doesn't work. There'd often be times where the audio just plain sucked and had a lot of fuzz and static going on. Yeah, I guess these are perfect ports since I remember that from the Genesis days. But it'd be nice if they cleaned it up for this release.

Has its flaws but deffinitly worth it

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: January 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a former Sonic the Hedgehog fanatic growing up on these games I went out first thing to get this for Xbox when I found out about it. Overall, I am not disappointed. I do have several, small complaints.

The first would be the hidden games. It was kind of annoying to have to sit there and open/close each game somewhere around 20 to 30 times each to unlock the hidden games. Now I don't really care for Ooze or Comix Zone, and I don't even think Ristar should be included as its a Sonic collection, and many Sonic games were omitted from this collection in favor of these other Sega games. However, it was frustrating to have to unlock Sonic 3 & knuckles, which is basically the only way to play sonic 3 OR sonic and knuckles (at least ever since they've both been out.)

The other main problem I have with it, which I've already touched on a bit, is that some of the sonic games are missing. Now I'll admit that I'm a little bit of a completionist, but even then, would it have hurt to add Sonic CD, Sonic Triple Trouble, or even some of the offshoot games with Sonic characters like Knuckles Chaotix, etc. I mean honestly, don't tell me there wasn't space for the extra games when they can manage to fit a monument to video gaming like Halo on a single disc.

Sonic CD and Triple Trouble especially would be important since they introduce important characters that have been used in games and the comics since. Amy has been used extensively in more recent sonic adventure and sonic advance games and mecha sonic was an important character in the comics. Nack didn't get a lot of development as a character but it could have been a great start, and even though it wasn't, Triple Trouble was still probably the least shallow game gear sonic game, as well as the most playable. From what I've seen, Sega has also started re-using the characters from Chaotix. These are all solid Sonic games that should have been included, instead of two versions of spinball/mean bean machine, etc. Also, on a final note, Sonic Drift was a piece of crap. However, Sonic Drift 2 made a lot of improvements on the idea. I haven't the slightest idea why they included the first one instead of the second one

Overall, I was glad to add this game to my collection. Don't let my criticisms deter you from buying it because it's a good purchase (and for so little money I feel like I'm practically STEALING.) It's just that as a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fanatic growing up, I feel Sega could have gone the whole way with very little to no extra effort. Maybe I have a sonic mega collection plus 2 to look forward to on a future system.

Good, but definitely not perfect.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

In 2002, Sonic Mega Collection was released for the Nintendo GameCube. It featured Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Spinball, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, and the lackluster Sonic 3D Blast. It also included extra games such as Knuckles in Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Blue Sphere, Flicky, and Ristar.

If you weren't gaming back in the Sega Genesis days, Sonic & Knuckles featured a lock-on technology. If you plugged Sonic 2 into Sonic & Knuckles, and put Sonic & Knuckles into the Genesis, you could play as Knuckles in Sonic 2. If you did the same thing using Sonic 3 instead, you could play Sonic 3 with Knuckles and play the two games as if they were one big game. If you plugged any other game into Sonic & Knuckles, you would get Blue Sphere, a game compiled of chaos emerald levels like those in Sonic 3.

Now, the X-Box and PS2 have also gotten similar treatment with Sonic Mega Collection Plus. Sonic Mega Collection Plus includes all the previous games that were included in Sonic Mega Collection for GameCube, and some additional games. This package also includes 6 Game Gear Sonic games including Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Chaos, Sonic Drift, Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Blast, and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. The Game Gear titles are playable right off, but the lock-on Genesis Sonic games as well as Flicky and Ristar must be unlocked. There are two additional games to unlock as well. These games are Comix Zone and The Ooze.

The collection also features some nifty extras like comic book scans, movies from Sonic Heroes, other illustrations, and a complete set of instruction manuals for the games on this collection. Another feature added to the game is the ability to save anywhere on any game. Originally, there was no save feature in Sonic 1 or 2. Now, you may save anywhere in the game that you wish.

There is a bit of a downside. The collection of games is somewhat incomplete. I would've liked to see more Game Gear Sonic titles included such as Sonic 2, Sonic & Tails Triple Trouble, Sonic Drift 2, Sonic Spinball, and Tails Adventure.

I would've also liked to see some other games in this collection such as the Sega CD's Sonic CD as well as Sonic R from the Sega Saturn, and the often forgotten Knuckles Chaotix from the 32X. Another oddity is the fact the games don't take up the whole screen. Whether you are playing Sonic 1, Sonic 3, or even Sonic Spinball, all the games have a small border around them.

Overall, this is a good collection of classic Sonic titles. And for the bargin price, anyone with a PS2 or X-Box should definitely consider this title. If you already own the collection for the GameCube, you may still want to consider this for the additional titles, save feature, and extras. However, if you are a purist and want to play the classic Genesis titles full screen and without being able to save, you'd be better off hanging onto Sonic Mega Collection for GameCube.

Sonic Mega Collection Plus

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: November 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This has to be one of the best video games I've played on Xbox. For only $20, you get about 13 games + unlockable games + bonuses. All the games come in one disc. The games come from the Sega Genesis and Sega Game Gear. The bonus features consists of Comics, Movies, and more!

If you own Xbox (or PS2), this game is a must have!

How can you not love this?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Its great to see this out on all of the major consoles, I fell bad for the Game Cube owners that don't get to play the Game Gear games that are on the Xbox and PS2 versions. If you grew up in "Nintendo" generation like I did this a definite must have, if only to take you back to simpler times when systems only had a d-pad and 2 or 3 buttons, and we couldn't save our games. You little kids don't have any idea how good you have it with your built in hard drives, memory cards and photo realistic graphics. This has all the great Sonic games you remember from the past and some of the not so good ones too. Really only Sonic 3d Blast, it was definitely a cool idea in its day, but I dare you to play that game and not get an upset stomach. The controls are well adapted to the Xbox; you can use the analog stick, although it just doesn't fell right if you played these on the Genesis. The graphics and sound are just as you will remember and the ability to save your progress makes it worth every penny. All said and done this is a must have for any one who has been playing video games for the past decade or more, and might even be enough to keep the younger ones entertained for a while.

Tha King of Sonic Collections

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I amit it's tight. Thou it's messed up that the other game gear games is in sonic Gems.

This game includes Sonic's "Golden Years"

Sonic the hedgehog
Sonic the hedgehog 2
Sonic the hedgehog 3
Sonic & Knuckles
Sonic 3 & Knuckles*
Knuckles In Sonic 2*
Blue Spere*
Flicky*
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Sonic 3D Blast
Sonic Spinball
Ristar the shooting Star*
Comix Zone (Yea!)*
The Ooze*
Sonic the hedgehog (Game Gear)
Sonic labrinyth (Game Gear)
Sonic Drift (Game Gear)
Sonic Blast (Game Gear)
Sonic Spinball (Game Gear)
Dr. Robotniks Mean Bean Machine (Game Gear)
*=Unlockable Games
If you didn't Know Comix Zone was a fighting game (Kinda Hard), The Ooze is some wierd but injoyable game, Ristar I don't know much about (Sorry), Flicky is the bird found in sonic games, Blue Spere is a game you get when you hook on a non sonic game on the Sonic & Knuckles Lock-On Cartridge (Genises), You get Sonic 3 & Knuckles When you hook it on the Sonic & Knuckles Lock-On Cartridge, Knuckles in Sonic 2 is what you get when you hook Sonic the hedgehog 2 on the sonic & Knuckles Lock-On Cartridge

Note that The Japan Version has more features
If your a old gamer junkie this is perfect for you or new comers of sonic and want to get used to the gameplay could do this

This game is great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you loved the old soinc games you will love this! The older sonic games are better than the the newer ones like sonic heros!
I love this game. It also has a great priceonly //////]bought
''it!Get this game!

a good collection missing afew rare gems

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This collection is a must have if your feeling abit nostalgic. It contains some of the best games of all time inparticular the four Mega Drive classics (Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles) and the fantastic Sonic & Knuckles lock-on mini games. You also get the Mega Drive versions of Dr Robotnick's Mean Bean Machine and Sonic Spinball and the dull Sonic 3D: Blast, the last Sonic game made for Sega's 16 bit console. This collection also includes a selection of rare Game Gear games. Some of these are quite fun others are not so good.

Here are all games included in this collection:

Mega Drive:
Sonic The Hedgehog ****
The first Sonic game released for the Mega Drive.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 *****
The second Sonic game introduced us to Sonic's new sidkick Miles 'Tails' Prower, a two tailed flying fox. The game was also a much larger affair, with 10 levels intead of 6.

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 ****
The third outing for Sonic and Tails introduced us to Kunckles and the mysterious Angel Island.

Sonic & Knuckles ****
The fourth game in the series was the last great Sonic game ever made in my opinion. It featured a special lock-on capability which allowed you to plug all the previous games in the series into the top of the cartrige and unlock special games.

Sonic Spinball **
Not much to say about this game. It's simply a pinball game, and a bad one at that.

Sonic 3D ***
The last Sonic released for the Mega Drive. The pointless attemt at 3D made this a dull and slow affair when compared to the other four games in the series.

Dr Robotnick's Mean Bean Machine ***
A puzzle game featuring Dr Robonick from the animated series 'The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog'.

Sonic & Knuckles lock-on games:

Sonic 3 special stage game (Sonic 1) ***
Knuckles in Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sonic 2) *****
Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Sonic 3) *****

Game Gear Games:
Sonic The Hedgehog ***
Sonic Chaos ***
Sonic Drift **
Sonic Labyrinth *
Dr Robotnick's Mean Bean Machine ***
Sonic Blast *

There are also four non-sonic unlockable games, their nothing special but worth a look.

The Ooze **
Comix Zone***
Flicky *
Ristar ***

This is a great collection, however i still can't understand why Sega felt the need not to include rare titles such as Sonic CD, Sonic R and Sonic The Fighters. Even though they have released them together in the Sonic Gems Colletion, i still feel it would have been much better to have released them all in one big collectors package instead.

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