"Hooray for Sega!"

I bought this because I'm too lazy to take out my Genesis and hook it up. Felt like you needed to know that.

Anyway, Sonic Mega Collection Plus definitely lives up to its name by having a considerable amount of Sonic games, and then some. Right off the bat, you'll have access to the big four, as well as a couple of "side" games and six Game Gear titles. Not bad, right? Well.... let's go a little more indepth: the Game Gear games suck, Sonic Spinball was never a good game to begin with, Sonic 3D Blast is decent, and you'll probably avoid Sonic 1 like the plague since it's been added to almost every Sega collection ever made. So what good games are you actually left with? Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (Puyo Puyo with Robotnik characters), and Ristar.

Only those games? Well, erm.... at least you get Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the best of the lot. But, there's a catch! You can't play those two games together right away, it's considered a separate game you have to unlock. It's not a hard thing to achieve, however, but it is a tiring process: you have to exit Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles 20 times each. That, along with Flicky, are the easiest of the bunch to unlock, believe it or not. To get The Ooze, you have to unlock almost everything, and for Comix Zone, you have to enter and exit every non-Game Gear game 50 times each. Unbelievable. There is an alternative way to unlocking these two games, but get this..... you have to buy Sonic Heroes. It's just absurd, you'd think that if you bought a "mega" collection, that all of the games would be available to you right away. Instead, you find yourself stuck in repetitive work just to unlock half of the titles, one of which is Blue Sphere, the friggin bonus stage game that came with Sonic & Knuckles.

I swear, if it wasn't for Sonic 3 & Knuckles, I don't think I would have even bothered getting Sonic Mega Collection Plus. Sure, you get a nice amount of games for a low price, but since about 70% of the games aren't even worth playing, that's not saying much. They could have added such titles like Sonic CD or Sonic the Fighters in place of most of those games. But hey, they wanted more money, so they saved those for the next Sonic collection. So, would I have still bought this collection if I knew then what I know now? Yes. I'm a lazy bastard and Sonic 3 & Knuckles kicks ass.

Man, I'm awesome.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/06/06, Updated 09/08/09

Game Release: Sonic Mega Collection Plus (US, 11/02/04)