His Favorites...or YOUR favorites? You Decide.
For those of you who know me, you know that I LOVE sega. I mean I LOVE Sega. I would be one of those crazy morons sitting in front of BestBuy at 2am hoping to get my hands on on of the few rare Dreamcast 2’s (Yes….a long unfulfilled dream….I know….). I also was a crazy Sega fan when it was the SNES vs the Genesis. The glory days, when gaming was an obsession shared by like minded individuals and years away from the casual “in thing” hippy waggle hobby the mass media has attempted to turn it into.
Anyways……
Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection is by far the best Sega compelation since the old 6 in one carts during the last days of the Genesis III model. All of the important Sonic games are here, including the Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and Vectorman series. With a few omissions, the collection is to me a near perfect compilation that will eventually drain hours from my life, and at times frustrate me beyond boiling points due to odd difficulty spikes.
Story: Old Blue hedgehog has a gallery of games from his companies glory days and continues to play such games as he is in denial that his own series has become utter shit. Otherwise each has its own story amd im not about to post nearly 50 story synopsis’s 
Presentation: Most of the games hold up surprisingly well, although this will all boil down to if you played any of these games, owned the console, or are even remotely old enough to remember any of them. I really like the selection screen which allows you to grade your favorites by the number of bullet points you assign it, which you can sort the list by this setting (Column’s is at the verrrry bottom). I also appreciated that each game had its release year posted on it
in the selection screen, reminds you how damn old Altered Beast really is. All of the extra artwork and videos are nice additions, and stuff ill only see once after Ive unlocked them although there’s a trophy for having viewed all of them.
When it comes to the games themselves, Backbone has done a pretty good job in emulating these classics, even though some are better than others, and some just plain suck (See image directly right). I never ran into an issue with emulation, however ive read that some have had some issues with the unlockable SEGA Arcade ports, ive yet to play those yet, and most likely wont. All of my nessisary favs are here, Sonic 1 -3, Vectorman 1 and 2….sadly no CoolSpot.
Gameplay: The controls as are as tight as they were when these games were originally released. That being said, some are better than others. When it comes down to it, Sonic feels like Sonic should, and Vectorman shoots and runs just as he did with the original controller. Some special combination attacks or selections for games have been routed to the Triangle button instead of needing to press A and B or B and C at the same time, which takes a little getting used to. I found no issue with the general controls due to emulation, if a game suffered due to control issues, that would be due to the games original control scheme and or issue in the original version.
Special: A couple of issues to note however, you cannot lock internconnect the Sonic games to Sonic and Knuckles, this is being reserved for special DLC versions of the game which currently will only be sold on the Xbox 360 and XBLA. Sony may get these versions as well, but I know im not gonna shell out more money for separate versions of Sonic to be able to interlink them. For those who don’t know or don’t remember Sonic and Knuckles was a special cartrage that was in lieu of what we know now as DLC. When plugging
Sonic 2 or 3 into the top of S&K you could unlock the ability to play as Knuckles, and in Sonic 2, you flat out played as Knuckles. This interconnectivity should have been added to the package from the start, but unfortunately it will not be.
Secondly there is no online play, or online co-op which for me was a sad omission. Gunstar Heros which was released on PSN as a standalone game (Not on this disc) had online co-op. For most it will be a trivial issue.
A neat feature is the ability to save your progress at any point in any game, which for me is one of the best abilities in emulation overall.
Conclusion: For 30 bucks brand new you really cant go wrong. if your a trophy whore like myself, its easy pickings, and if you fondly remember an number of the games on this disc its worth the buy no questions asked.
Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection (PS3) – **** out of 5
Below is a list of the games available on the Disc, thanks to Wikipedia:
Genesis Games (40 Total)
* Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
* Alien Storm
* Altered Beast
* Beyond Oasis
* Bonanza Bros.
* Columns
* Comix Zone
* Decap Attack
* Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
* Dynamite Headdy
* ESWAT: City Under Siege
* Ecco the Dolphin
* Ecco: The Tides of Time
* Fatal Labyrinth
* Flicky
* Gain Ground
* Golden Axe
* Golden Axe II
* Golden Axe III
* Kid Chameleon
* Phantasy Star II
* Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
* Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
* Ristar
* Shining Force
* Shining Force II: Ancient Sealing
* Shining in the Darkness
* Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
* Sonic & Knuckles
* Sonic 3D Blast
* Sonic Spinball
* Sonic the Hedgehog
* Sonic the Hedgehog 2
* Sonic the Hedgehog 3
* Streets of Rage
* Streets of Rage 2
* Streets of Rage 3
* Super Thunder Blade
* Vectorman
* Vectorman 2
Unlockable Extra Games
* Alien Syndrome (Arcade)
* Altered Beast (Arcade)
* Congo Bongo (Arcade)
* Fantasy Zone (Arcade)
* Golden Axe Warrior (Sega Master System)
* Phantasy Star (Sega Master System)
* Shinobi (Arcade)
* Space Harrier (Arcade)
* Zaxxon (Arcade)
