Wow! All the classic 16-bit classics put on a handheld system! ... wait a minute... something's wrong with this...
Although there is some historical value in this happening, with it being Sega's first foray into third party development since the 80's or so, (not counting the PC ports) most of the historical value for this game is all for the wrong reasons. Sure, the idea is quite simple, and sounds good. Send out Sonic 2, 3, and Sonic and Knuckles (Sonic 1 was not included into the Game.com version) onto a portable system.
The problem with this is that it is for the wrong system. The Game.com's hardware obviously couldn't support Sonic the Hedgehog's needs, and this comes in both gameplay and graphical senses. Gameplay-wise, the game suffers from the fact that the system can't put together all the level designs and the speed that the original games had with it's weak hardware. So what does Sega do to make up for this? They make entirely NEW levels for each game! Now, not only does this make it NOT a compilation, but it also makes the level designs some of the worst you'll ever see in any Sonic game. The speed in the games that the "compilation" is referring to have no speed in these new level designs, and some are just flat plains where you jump over holes in the ground, and have the speed of a Mario game, at the quickest. There is special stages in the game, which for Sonic 3, look and feel like the original ones, but are way too sluggish and choppy to even be called playable. Tails can still fly, and Knuckles can glide, but since the level designs are so simple, there is almost no use for the moves.
Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that the Game.com is a MONOCHROME system? What does this mean for Sonic? It means that the colorful levels and characters from the original games are now a mucky looking gray-scale mess. Granted, even gray-scale games can look clean, but Sonic Jam just doesn't look clean in any way or form. Every movement you make makes the background blur into a bunch of gray muck, and when you're running at "high speeds" it becomes unplayable, since all you can see is a gray Sonic (or Tails or Knuckles) running in the middle of the screen. It would be almost more bearable to see Sonic on a normal Gameboy than this.
The sound is hardly notable, with the Game.com trying to mimic the same music ending in a horrible disaster of bleeps and bloops. With what happened to the rest of the game, this was to be expected.
So what does this mean looking back at Sonic Jam for Game.com? Well, I hope you don't look back at this piece of trash, but it did finally teach Sega to leave Sonic in Sonic Team's hands alone, because after this game, I don't think many Sonic fans could stand another trashy Sonic game. If anyone is to make a crappy Sonic game, it should only be Sonic Team, correct?