Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection Review PS3

I am a big fan of retro gaming and unfortunately in the past, in their quest for profit game companies packaged anorexic retro game bundles that were hardly worth purchasing. Many gamers turned to illegal emulators and ROMs to get their retro gaming fix and with good reason. Finally, Sega released a bundle that although is not complete or even the greatest collection of games, it does have a good portion of classic Sega gaming such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Altered Beast, and Phantasy Star.

Graphic and sound:

The graphics in Sonic’s Ultimate Sega Collection game have been updated to 720p resolution. Unfortunately, upscaling 16-bit graphics gets ugly at times. Games like Streets of Rage look horrendous and remind me why I would rather whip out my old Sega Genesis that is sitting in my bedroom closet and play the game on an old CRT TV. On the other hand, games such as Sonic the Hedgehog look great when playing on an HDTV. Most of the included games will look good on an HDTV, but there are some games that have just not aged well.

Sound effects and background music are in their 16-bit glory and bring back fond memories of my childhood gaming. Just as in the graphics, some of the games have horrible background music and I have to again point out Streets of Rage with its 80′s techno beats.

Gameplay and controls:

All the games in Sonic’s Ultimate Sega Collection can be saved at any time, which is a big plus in RPGs such as Shining Force and Phantasy Star, where save points are limited to towns or other special areas. Now a player can save at the boss fights in any game and reload the game if death occurs. There is a minor setback to saving and loading, which is that the process is slow and may lead some to avoid saving a game altogether. Saving the games is not necessary for most games, as they were originally meant to be beaten in one sitting except the obvious RPGs. Controls are easy to setup, but six-button controlled games are awkward to play with the PS3 controller. Sonic’s Ultimate Sega Collection has over 40 games including series such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Vectorman, Shinobi, Ecco, and Goldenaxe. There are 9 unlockable games as well such as Altered Beast and Shinobi arcade versions.

Overall thoughts:

I wish Sega and other game publishers would satisfy retro gamers once and for all with a huge Blu-Ray disc full of every single game for the Sega Genesis/Sega CD and do the same for the Nintendo Wii with a huge DVD full of NES, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 games instead of milking fans each year with half-empty compilations for the price of a next-gen game or close to it. There are so many emulators and ROMs on the Internet, that honestly you would think Sega and others would try to stem that activity by issuing one large compilation. At least Sonic’s Ultimate Sega Collection is a start in the right direction. Highly recommend this compilation to any retro gamers looking for something on the consoles for a budget price.