Sonic Mega Collection Plus

"A good collection that could have been awesome if it weren't for some stupid decisions."

Sonic has long been the icon of Sega so naturally he is going to get a collection of his past games to cash in on his populari- I mean please his older fans. So in 2002 Sonic Mega Collection was released on Gamecube, bringing 14-ish classic Sega games to older fans. Then in 2004 PS2 and Xbox finally got some lovin' from Sega and got Sonic Heroes and Sonic Mega Collection Plus. The "Plus" refers to a few Game Gear games the Gamecube collection didn't get, several of which are crap and all of which are vastly inferior to the other games since their main strength, portability, is lost on the consoles. So if you already own the Gamecube version don't bother with this one, it isn't worth it. If you don't own the Gamecube version then, well... keep reading. =)

SMC+ sports a pretty solid selection of games. Unfortunately some of the better ones have to be unlocked in a horribly lame manner but we'll get to that in a bit. The main series is here and Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles all still rule. You also have Sonic Spinball and Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine which are both decent games and are a nice change of pace after a few hours of traditional Sonic gaming. The Game Gear Sonic titles are just blah. Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Chaos, and Sonic Labyrinth are okay things to have after playing the other games but Sonic Drift and Sonic Blast feel near unplayable and Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is pointless as it is just a crapped down version of the Genesis game - which is also included in this collection. What were they thinking? The unlockable games if/when you get around to unlocking them are mostly other cool Sega titles and Knuckles appearing in Sonic's place in older Sonic games. Oh and... I'm just pretending Sonic 3D Blast isn't in here.

The controls for all of the games are pretty good, especially since most of them only require the joystick and the jump button. R1 is the menu for all of them, which lets you exit to the main menu or save/load your game data, besides that it is pretty simple figuring out the controls. My only complaint is that in Sonic Spinball the square button operates the left flipper while the X button operates the right flipper. Personally I think this is stupid and confusing and the O button should operate the right flipper but whatever, it is only a minor complaint.

Music is pretty awesome in all of the non Game Gear games, I firmly believe that the Sonic series has some of the best music in a platformer ever. Graphics are also very pretty if you can appreciate old school gaming, although the Game Gear games are again an exception. The main menu of the collection is pretty cool as well with some light hearted music playing in the background and gameplay footage of the different games playing as you navigate through the menus. Overall it is all pretty awesome.

So SMC+ has some awesome games but does it also come with some cool extras you might be asking? Well... opinions vary from person to person. I personally love the extras, by far the coolest thing is the 27 page Sonic comic book that you can read all of the way through. You can also view original Sonic game manuals, other Sonic comic book covers, and watch a couple crappy Sonic Heroes movies. Pretty decent all around.

Unfortunately, one of the employees at Sega must have pulled out a bottle of whiskey and passed it around at some point during the making of this collection which led to their horrible system for unlocking games. Now you would think a good idea to unlock other games is simply beating the ones provided right? Nope. Instead they expect you to play the games (play as in enter them and then exit back to the menu) a large number of times in order to unlock most of the unlockables. This works in theory except that whenever I play I almost always just pause the game and turn the PS2 off, not going back to the main menu and thus that doesn't count as me playing the it. And the amount of times you have to play them is rather ridiculous, for example to unlock Blue Sphere you have to play Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic 3d Blast 20 times each. That is loading and exiting FORTY times just to unlock one game. This is perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever seen or heard of and is a major annoyance in an otherwise nearly flawless collection.

So should you buy SMC+? Yes, I would definitely recommend it. Its a great collection marred by a few stupid mistakes that Sega made because of seemingly no reason besides laziness. If they had replaced Sonic Drift with Sonic Drift 2, replaced the Game Gear version of Mean Bean Machine with pretty much anything, and done something different to unlock games this would be a 10/10 for sure. As it is though it is just a slightly above average collection. Us Sonic fans all love it though, so I guess that is all that matters.

Final Scores
Gameplay - 9/10
Story - 6/10
Controls - 9/10
Graphics - 8/10
Extras - 8/10
Unlocking Method - negative 100/10
Total - 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/19/05