Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Old-school"

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, the Sega Genesis. Sega's only true moment of glory in the video game console realm. The competitor of the Super Nintendo, it started a console war that lasted for several years. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection can allow you to go back to the days of the console wars whenever you were waving that Sega flag going up against Nintendo.

The game menu features all the Genesis games on the collection. They can be sorted using three methods: Alphabetical Order, Genre, Year and Favorites. The games can be ranked from 1-5, and the highest rank appears first for the Favorites tab. The other three are self explanitory. The history of the game and scans of the cartridge and box can be seen by pushing the "B" button. Pushing the "Y" button brings up the "Extras" menu which has the unlockable Master System and Arcade games and interviews. All extras must be unlocked, but fortunately the game tells you how they are be unlocked which helps tremendously. Overall the menus are pretty easy to navigate.

There's a total of 49 games on this compilation, and they range from platformers like Sonic the Hedgehog to RPG's like Shining Force. The games overall are emulated very well. One exception though is Space Harrier, because the sound doesn't sound much like the arcade version. Like practically every game collection out there, there's games that are pretty bad (e.g. Super Thunder Blade), and games that should've been on there (e.g. Gunstar Heroes). One thing that's strange is the fact that none of the Sonic lock-on games are featured, which is rather strange and disappointing. Despite those complaints though, the game collection overall is very good.

Pressing the "Back" button on the controller while playing a game brings up a list of options. The game screen can be stretched or shrunk to whatever your preference is using the "Video" option. Every game has three save files which acts as a suspend point so you can pick up where you left off if you get tired of playing a game (if the game originally supported saving, that works too). The controls can be changed too.

Despite the complaints mentioned earlier, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis turns out to be a very good video game compliation. In the end, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection is a collection that any Sega fan or fans of retro games should have.