Game:

Sonic Gems Collection (2005)

Duration: 9:31

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Original Air Date: October 12th, 2009

Sonic Gems Collection... there's a number of misleading things about this game. I love how Sega included Sonic CD and Sonic R in this compilation, claiming them to be the Sega CD and Sega Saturn games... but anyone who has owned either system can tell you easily that they are NOT ports of those versions. If anything, they're ports of the PC games, or ports clearly superior to either of the originals. Now that you know that, you can expect a "better" Sonic CD and Sonic R.

You know what else grinds my gears? The U.S. and European versions come with two hidden games: Vectorman and Vectorman 2. They're cool games... except the Japanese version also comes with Bonanza Bros. and all the Bare Knuckle (Streets of Rage) games. The excuse later was that they wanted to keep the game rated for everyone, but then how do they explain the exclusion of Bonanza Bros.? Also, this game comes with several Game Gear Sonic titles, but is missing one of my favorites, Sonic Chaos... the missing GG Sonic games are in Sonic Mega Collection Plus, though the games are said to oddly run at 50Hz even in the U.S. "Sonic the Hedgehog" is also based off of the final Japanese revision.

*Ahem*

But, if you don't have the time or patience to get a Game Gear and you don't care about all those things, then you get a nice collection of Sonic games with cool extras. It's one of the only ways to play Sonic the Fighters and one of the only ways to play a few Game Gear games on the big screen, even Tails' Sky Patrol (even if it's kinda lame). Playing them full screen though makes them very difficult to play and in some cases, rather ugly. This collection contains a lot of the more obscure Sonic games but used the "major 3" as a way to sell the game. It's more for hardcore Sonic fans.

Sonic R: This game is of a love/hate nature. I personally think it's rough around the edges, but there is a somewhat fun game beyond the hard to control characters and limited race tracks. The music is beautiful (some call it cheesy) and the stages are pretty well-designed, with this version of Sonic R being sharper and cleaner than the Saturn version. I also like the weather effects like rain and snow, but they make already hard to control characters even harder to control. You can unlock a few racers and race on the great Radiant Emerald stage too. The number of tracks is akin to many old 3D racers during the early-mid 90s.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2: It's really strange that they put this here and not the first GG Sonic, as the general consensus is that it's better than this game. They should have reserved that for this compilation. Still, this is a pretty good GG Sonic game. If you've played a Sonic game before, you should mostly know what to expect from this, though almost all the GG Sonic titles are... peculiar.

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