An excellent collection that every Sonic fan should have in their library.
I haven't always been a huge fan of the Sonic titles. I was more of a Mario guy myself. I really liked the first Sonic and kind of got into the second one. After that, I didn't really play much Sonic until I got my Dreamcast. After playing throught this collection, I think I should have been paying more attention to this franchise when I was younger.
Sonic The Hedgehog: This is a great game to start the series off. Sure it's way too easy and too short, but it's still a blast to play even to this day.
Sonic 2: I have never been a big fan of this game, even though many people think this is the best game in the series. I felt the developers figured out the first game was too easy so they ramped up the difficulty. That is not a bad thing, most of the time. When you just add in a bunch of automatic cheap hits, however, it just becomes unnecessarily frustrating. It's a good game, but I don't feel it's as good as people say.
Sonic 3/Sonic & Knuckles: Sonic 3 really improved on the graphics and the gameplay. Sonic & Knuckles was really more of an expansion pack to Sonic 3 when it came out. It is fun to use Knuckles and it gives you the ability to use him in Sonic 2 & 3.
Sonic Spinball: Fun and a nice twist on the original Sonic gameplay.
Sonic 3-D: This is universally known as the worst Sonic title, at least if you are talking about the older titles. I didn't find it as bad as some say, but I lossed interest in it after a very short time. The graphics aren't bad to look at, but the view just makes it impossible to feel the sense of speed that the other games have.
Dr. Robotik's Bean Machine: Ok, this game just frustrated the heck out of me and I stopped playing it. It's annoyingly difficult and isn't much fun.
The game gear games are pretty good, but they look funky on a TV screen. Not only that, the sound is terrible with them. I will commend Sega for including them, though. The rest of the games are ok. Comix Zone is especially interesting and was way ahead of it's time.
If you like the old Sonic titles and like getting these collections, then this is one of the ones to get. It's got a nice amount of extra features, most of the games you want from the series, and even some you wouldn't expect to be here. And for the low price of twenty bucks, you can't go wrong.