Games Revisited: Sonic Gems Collection

[Sk8teland85]

Last generation had it's share of Compilation disk with many old games on it. They had ones with the Mega Man games, ones with the Mega Man X games, ones with old Midway arcade games, and so on. Sega of course joined in and made Sonic Mega Collection which was a great disk which had some of the best Sonic games made on it, but there were some they missed so they released a 2nd Compilation disk called Sonic Gems Collection which had some of these games. Well I recently revisited the Compilation and here are my thoughts.

Let's start with what I think are the best games on the disk. First is of course Sonic CD, now many Sonic fans consider this to be one of the if not the best Sonic game ever made and I have to admit they are right. Sonic CD is a very well made and fun to play Sonic Platformer, it does just about everything right and is just a blast to play. There are not many Sonic games that are as good as this one that is for sure.

Sonic Platforming at it's finest

Another game I really enjoyed is Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble. Now this is Sega Game Gear title and is a sequel to an earlier Sega Master System/Game Gear game called Sonic Chaos. This is not as good as Sonic CD but still is a very solid well made Sonic Platformer. The level design is good and it is fun to play that is for sure. The last games I thought were really good were the 2 hidden games Vectorman and Vectorman 2. These may not be Sonic but are still great games that are well worth getting unlocked. They have a great art style and the gameplay is solid.

Well that is it for what I thought was good, now for the ones I thought were okay. The first of these is Sonic the Fighters. Yes it is a watered down Virtual Fighter Clone but it still is fun. Yes it may be a little Simplistic and is way to easy at points but it is not bad as a whole and will provide some nice fun. Next come Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Now this was a great game on the Sega Master System, but on the Game Gear it was just okay. This is mainly due to the screen size of the system cutting parts of the screen off. This makes the game a bit of the annoying side since it is much harder to see objects in front of you. Now it is still a decent game but not the best one out there.

It is too bad the Game Gear limitations prevents this from being more than just okay

The last of my okay games is Tails Adventure. Now this is a pretty basic platformer starring Tails. It plays okay and has some fun parts to it. But it is not the best platformer on this disk that is for sure.

Now for what I think are the worst games on this disk. First is Sonic Spinball, now Sonic Spinball on the Genesis was not that great that is for sure, but when compared to this poor Game Gear port it is Game of the year. Everything is just bad about this one, bad control, bad framerate, bad everything. Next comes Sonic Drift 2. Now this is basically a Mario Kart clone and a very bad one at that. The controls are not very responsive and it is just badly designed. This may have been somewhat fun back when it came out but it has just aged very poorly. Then we have Tails' Skypatrol, this game was originally a Japan only game and after playing it I wish it stayed that way. This game is just very badly designed. They give you very little time to react and everything kills you. It is a hard frustrating mess of a game that is for sure.

Finally of course there is Sonic R. Now I know some people who like this game for some reason or another. To be honest though there are some good parts to it. For one it looks pretty good for a Sega Saturn game. The track design is also pretty nice. But the problem is the game is almost unplayable because of really bad controls. It is just so hard to get around the track and you always are running into things and you just never feel as if you are in control of your character. Adding to that is the music, which while not bad is just out of place and not what you should have in a racing game.

Sonic R may have been an interesting idea but should not have been done the way it was

Looking back I will say Sonic Gems Collection is definitely a mixed bag. You have some really great titles there like Sonic CD and some very fun ones like Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble. But you also have crappy ones like Tails' Skypatrol and Sonic R. There were also games I wish they had like Knuckles' Chaotix but of well. I would say it is a good Compilation but not the best they could have made that is for sure. Now would I recommend this Compilation, well yes and no. Yes I would recommend it to any big Sonic fan since it is worth the price just to get Sonic CD and there are some other decent games to keep a big Sonic Fan happy. But if you are not a big Sonic fan I would say you should pass on this one, there is just not enough great games to make it worth it to anyone but a fan of the game series.