REVIEW
By Jeremy Parish � 11/29/2004
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The good news for them is that there's no reason for anyone to get their knickers in a bind. The PS2 port does include a bit more content than 2002's Sonic Mega Collection, it's true. But it's hardly anything to get worked up about -- and certainly nothing that would have been worth waiting two years for. Anyone who has owned the GC collection for the past two years has the satisfaction of having been able to play a handful of classic games for all this time; those who pick up the PS2 version can brag about owning a few extra titles of approximately no merit whatsoever. Advantage: long-time owners.
The bulk of the new material which accounts for this collection's "Plus" consists of Game Gear ports -- which were primarily scaled-down ports or reworks of the Genesis games already present in the collection to begin with. Unlike the standard Genesis titles, which have nearly-flawless emulation (barring a touch of letterboxing), the Game Gear titles are pretty awful. They feel sluggish and imprecise next to the games upon which they were based, and due to differences in resolution they don't occupy the full screen. It also seems as though pixel sizes have been doubled with interpolation on, so the visuals are blurry, much like GBA games running on the GameCube Player. There's no option to choose between "blurry" and "blocky," so those like myself who prefer a crisp pixellated look are out of luck. You can play the GG Sonics through Cataract-O-Vision, or not at all.
Frankly, it's a pretty easy choice: "not at all" definitely has the upper hand. The Game Gear titles were impressive in their time, on their original system -- I remember being deeply impressed by the difference in power between Sega's handheld system and Nintendo's Game Boy when I first played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on a friend's GG, years ago. But given a choice between a clumsy, fuzzy-looking take on the GG's version of Sonic 2 or a crisp, precise version of the actual classic a mere button-press or two apart, who would pick the inferior version? Surely no one could be that nostalgia-addled.
The other additions are mostly-forgotten Genesis semi-classics like Ristar, Flicky, The Ooze and Comix Zone. Of these, Ristar is definitely the most entertaining; Flicky and Ooze are forgettable; and Comix Zone... well, it was cool in 1993, but as anyone who has played Sewer Shark lately knows, "cool in 1993" doesn't necessarily translate to "fun in 2004." In fairness, though, it is more fun than Sewer Shark. Mostly.
Annoyingly, many of the games on the disc have to be unlocked before they can be played. The requirements for accessing many of the "hidden" games are given in the instruction manual, which makes it less of a crap shoot than it might be otherwise, but even so it's annoying to be forced to earn games you've paid for. Who's actually going to play Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine 30 times? And there's absolutely no way I'd ever put the horribly broken PS2 version of last year's Sonic Heroes into my system just to create the save file necessary to open Comix Zone. And to play the excellent Ristar, you have to play no less than four games 30 times apiece. Come on, Sega. Games are supposed to be good fun, not laborious drudgery.
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Hedging Your Bets The old Sonics can feel a little shallow and limited at times, but they serve as a pointed reminder that this kind of gameplay worked so much better in two dimensions than three. |
(For the sake of disclosure, and since people tend to care about inherent biases: I've always been more of a Mario fan, since his games reward exploration and thoroughness while Sonic's often punish it. Admittedly, playing through as Knuckles does alleviate some of this problem, but of course you have to unlock the lock-on versions of Sonic 1-3 in this collection. D'oh! If you still dig Sonic's breakneck speeds and don't mind being forced to give over your fate to blind luck on occasion, adjust the review score accordingly.)
Stripped of the context of time and expectations, some of the non-platformers turn out to be pretty awful, while others are more fun than many people were willing to give them credit for at the time. Case in point: Sonic Spinball makes a fellow long for a real pinball table. Meanwhile, Sonic 3D Blast is much better than you might be led to believe by the negative reviews it garned back in the day. And then there's Mean Bean Machine, which mostly just seems strange now that America has been introduced to its original incarnation, Puyo Puyo.
Disappointingly, Sonic MC Plus still isn't a complete Sonic compilation -- once again, it lacks the superlative Sonic CD. Apparently no one has ever bothered to whip up a Sega CD emulator. Sonic Jam for Saturn left it out, too. Maybe the next console generation's Sonic shovelware package will get around to porting it.
Even without Sonic CD, Sonic MC Plus is a must for fans of the series who don't already own the GC version. (Presumably, that would be the seriously dyed-in-the-wool Sega faithful who still couldn't bring themselves to buy a Nintendo system long after the rival companies declared detente.) On the other hand, anyone who bought this game a few years ago should think long and hard before they drop another $30 on the same basic thing. The GG titles are more a tease to entice completists than an actual bonus, and the non-Sonic games are a mixed bag. Still, you'll find far more fun here than in any of the recent Sonic titles: at their best, old-school Sonic is all about pure, straightforward action with no pretenses, lame helper characters or iffy minigames. Even with its shortcomings, it's still one of the most value-packed classic compilations available for any system -- as long as you like Sonic.
