Sega Does What Nintendon't
As SEGA told me while growing up, Genesis Does what Nintendon't. That much was true for some of their older games, and this collection has most of the games that helped mold that campaign.
The graphic smoothing option is really nice, and anyone familiar with emulators (not that I am) will remember the Super-Eagle modes in emulation. It basically takes the pixels and smooths them out, making it look like a flash game rather than a 16-bit pixel game. A good example is that of Double Dragon for Live Arcade. This feature is eye candy for some, but others may want to just leave this option off. I prefer it in some games, and some I'd rather have the graphics a little pixelated because the feature smooths things to a point were it just looks to different. No sound enhancements, thank goodness!
The games all have individual options. For instance, if you like the graphic smoothing for Golden Axe but would prefer to have Sonic in his true graphic format, you don't have to swap manually between the two. Another nice thing is each game has a save file, not a built-in save slot. So if I'm late for work and I'm on the end boss of Streets of Rage, I can save, quit, and load later.
While there's several really terrific games, including most of the Sonic games, the one thing that should have been added is the Toe Jam & Earl series, as well as a few others. SEGA has some of 16-bits finest games, and there were certainly a lot more than 49 exclusives. Also, given the fact that the PS3 supports Blu-Ray and even the Xbox 360 has a disc capacity of 8GB or more, I'd have loved to see some 32x games or even some of SEGA CD's really good games (Night Trap, anyone?). Anyway you shake it though, this is a terrific collection, and thank goodness for Trophies! The Trophies in the game are pretty easy to get and there's only one per game, but those are just added bonuses to a killer collection. I just hope they have some DLC soon.
My only big complaint is the lack of online play. Sure, lacking this feature keeps the games true to tradition, but c'mon! It's the 21st century!
This is the SEGA collection to get, although I'd have loved to see a "Collection, Vol. 1" so I could expect to see another one in this same category. There's a few things missing from this library to call it perfect, but overall, 49 games for $30 is a killer deal. Add that to your trophy collection. Now, where's the "Beat-em-Up Arcade Collection" featuring The Simpsons Arcade, X-Men, and the many, many other great co-op beat-em-ups of the 90s?
Verdict: Buy
