Score: 85%

Version Reviewed: Xbox 360, also available for the Sony PS3

In short:

With over 40 games, this is the largest batch of Sega Genesis games ever thrown into a legal compilation. Don’t worry, I’ll separate the wheat from the chaff for you.

In a whole lot more detail:

Let’s get right to the point. In order to decide if you should spend $30 on this disc, you need to ask yourself a few questions.

1. Do I demand the latest in cutting edge graphics and gameplay? If your answer is yes, you can leave now.

2. Do I long for the gaming days of my youth, or do I love games so much that I want a history lesson? If yes, stick around.

3. Do I think that the sun rises and sets with Golden Axe? If yes, you rock. Stick around.

Marketing people…. they are idiots. How many people will instantly dismiss this collection, assuming it’s just a bunch of Sonic games? It’s SO much more. In fact, this collection is broad enough that, unless you only like sports games (of which there are curiously none), you are bound to find several games to enjoy.

When you load the disc, you are treated to an interface intended to replicate an actual Sega Genesis. You can sort the game list in a few ways, and can even apply your own ratings so that you can quickly find your favorites. One thing I didn’t like here: some of the games are unlockables, and do not appear in this list, even after you’ve unlocked them. You must always go to the bonus features section to play them. Speaking of the bonus features, you can also unlock video interviews with creators. Of the ones I’ve watched, they were less than entertaining, sadly.

You can also view very nice high resolution artwork for each game, as well as get a brief history lesson about each game.

I’ll run down the entire list of games in the collection later. First I’d like to touch on a few high and low points of the emulation system they’ve put together.

The audio, and maybe this was just my system, was LOUD. I had to reduce the volume on my receiver by half just so I wasn’t blown out of the room. Volume aside, some of these games feature very nice music (any time the splash screen says Yuzo Koshiro, you are in for a treat). Others have grating music and effects, but your mileage may vary.

On the video side, they made the appealing move to allow you to display games in 4:3 or 16:9 ratios. You can manually adjust the screen borders, which you will likely have to do when using wide-screen because the image just won’t fit properly. You can also turn on smoothing, which gives games a “painterly” look. Generally it looks nice, but it can make text look a bit weird. In particular I found Beyond Oasis to really benefit from the smoothing. Your display choices are saved on a per game basis and will be restored the next time you load a game. Sadly, there is no global video configuration. If you like smoothing and wide-screen, you will be applying it for every game the first time you load it. Speaking of loading, once you get to the game selection screen, there isn’t any. You can jump in and out of games very quickly, which is great.

One final note before I go over the games in the collection- you can now save at any time, in any game. Each game is given three save slots. This is an excellent move on Sega’s part, and makes working through these games all that more fun. I remember beating Shinobi III in one sitting years ago. I don’t remember how long it took, but that was not a short game.

On to the games list. I’ll be adding comments on each game, and keep in mind that I am not the platform genre’s biggest fan. It’s also worth noting that while you can use the analog stick for movement, I found the D-Pad to be preferable in almost every case. All the Genesis titles are unlocked from the start. There are a few Sega Master System and arcade titles that must be unlocked by completing certain objectives within the other games.

Click the page link below to go to the next page. To buy this game, or check out a video, click here.

Pages: 1 2 3

Tags: collection, emulation, genesis, review, sonic, ultimate

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 7:50 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.