Sonic Jam

A collector's review of Sonic Jam

Welcome to my very first review here on Giant Bomb. I really wish we would meet on better circumstances but I just played this game for the first time and wanted to write a review of it. I'm no writer, hell I'm from Mexico so English isn't even my native language so think of this as practice for me and purchasing information for you.

So lets get right to it, Sonic Jam is not worth it. OK review is over have a good day!

Now for those who want to know more lets go over what this game is. Sega it seems couldn't get a proper Sonic game made in time for the holidays in 1997 I guess so decided to celebrate Sonic's legacy... all six years of it. Kind of cocky of them but I guess if there ever was a time to be that it was back then.

As a bit of personal history I missed out of the Saturn and pretty much all that generation of consoles. I did play few games at friends house but never owned anything but my SNES and Genesis. So now I'm a grown man and I'm collecting games left and right till I'm broke (See here).

I had always heard about this rare game called Sonic Jam but never played it back in the day. Later came the Internet and made me see more of this game. The screenshots showed Sonic in some 3D world and only made me want this game more. Then with some time with a job and ebay later I finally held this game in my hands.

The package

I got this game for $60 I think. Came complete with everything and no scratches whatsoever. The instruction manual is very bare bones and doesn't offer much info. You could say I got lucky because as of this writing the game is no less than $100. As for the games that are inside you can look that up in the wiki all the info there is good enough.

The presentation is fine I guess gets the job done. Menus are just there and sound effects are very Sonic like.

Extra stuff

So here are a list of stuff that I wanted to check out and my thoughts on them:

• Spin dash added to Sonic 1. At first this would have blown my mind and it still kind of does. Yet After beating the first couple of stages I found out I've played this game so much I don't really need this. The game was designed without this in mind. It's not game breaking like maxing out your guns in Resident Evil 5 and stomping everything in sight so whats the point? A very dumb gimmick at the end of the day.
• Save feature to Sonic 1, 2 and Sonic & Knuckles. I guess this is cool but the games are already very short so I don't need this at all. Sonic 3 has it's own save feature so that is still there. Once again just a useless feature.
• Difficulty modes: So now there is Normal, Easy and Original. As I said before I've played these games a bunch so I can't judge this very well. But I can't think of anyone who thinks these games are hard let alone fans of these games who are likely to buy this

Sonic World...

So here is the big one. Sonic World is a small open 3D area where you control Sonic. There are few areas you can visit and view some artwork, listen to music and sound effects from old Sonic games.

The controls and feel of this is god awful. I knew it was gonna be kinda rough but man this is like sand paper to the face rough. I only have the original Saturn controller so I'm stuck with the D-pad. That actually isn't the worst thing about this mode. I'll break it down to not make this one giant ass rant:

1. Sonic is slippery as hell. Once you get momentum Sonic is pretty much out of control. This becomes a problem when you try to jump on several platforms.
2. The hit detection is bad. If you want to hit something you have to be pretty much humping it.
3. Jumping was not very responsive. I hope it's not my controller but I swear sometimes I hit the jump button and Sonic just doesn't want to jump.

So the main reason why all these problems, well, are problems to begin with is that there are missions in this mode. These missions are all time based of course. So when you are in a hurry to collect rings or touch a checkpoint placed after a few moving platforms frustration kicks in. Moving around and just checking out the extra content is fine but honestly if you want to see all that stuff there's the Internet for all that stuff.

Final Thoughts

Sonic Jam was like a unicorn I was trying to hunt down for so many years. By the time I got it I realized that it was just a damn horse with a cone glued to its forehead. The extra small tweaks Sega made to the original games are small gimmicks that are fine but nothing special. Those games play great on the Saturn and hold up very well. They are considered the best Sonic games and I agree. Sonic World's missions will drive you nuts with its poor controls so stay away from that.

For the price it really isn't worth your time if all you want is to check out Sonic World and the other extra content. If you are dead set of owning this game for collecting I would say to try to find it cheap because at the end of the day it's just a compilation of Sonic games. There are just so many other ways to play these old games at a better price and with TONS of others packed inside.

The two stars represent the fact that the older Sonic games work and play well and that they added a few extra things.

If you got this far thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed my review!