SEGA Mega Drive Ultimate Collection Comments by Simon Parkin

I really want this, and yes it is only £25 but with SFIV and Halo Wars this month and a slew of Xmas purchases that are still on a to do list. I am affraid they will have to wait for a little while, although seeing as they have waited 15 years + for me to play I don't suppose another month will matter too much.

7/10 seems a bit stingy for what is on offer, even at XBLA cheapest 400 point price this lot would cost far more than £25...Unless every game is broken I do not need to have played the package to know what I am getting.

Digs out rose tinted glasses

I'll repeat what I said in the general gaming thread:

No Gunstar Heroes.

No Castle of Illusion.

No World of Illusion.

No Alien Soldier.

But Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles and Streets of Rage 2 and 3 are in there.

I'm currently oscillating between GTFO to ZOMG! GIEF NOW!

:|

Castle of Illusion, omg so long ago, do want

Bought this yesterday and spent much of the afternoon playing Sonic 2 and Streets of Rage with my eldest son who has been brought up on a diet of X360 and PS3. Really nice to see the games hold his attention despite being a gamer who has only really known HD gaming. And he's pretty decent at Super Thunderblade. Value for money is great and the extras menu has a fair few features. And the games look pretty great on my 46inch HD screen despite there age. You can't expect miracles but this is a package well worth the asking price.

Oh and Comix Zone is awesome on this....

khaz: Erm this is SEGA's Mega Drive Collection, not Treasure's Mega Drive collection or Disney/Capcom's.

I'd rent this just for the achievements. They're REALLY easy, and made even easier by the quick save and quick load slots that work at any time. This is like a regular emulator! The only achievements that I found hard were getting 20.000 points on Columns and finishing Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.

I really wish people would stop complaining that great NON-SEGA games they remember playing aren't in this collection! I haven't played it but the selection looks pretty good considering they were limited to SEGA titles.

However, I'll agree with khaz that the Illusion games were great and I'd love to see them on XBLA with Live co-op : )

As has been said many many times, opening a huge can of licensing worms if we are ever to see some of the titles people badly want to see.

Some of the Disney titles were published directly by Sega, some had Virgin Interactive tied up in them. No idea how that all sits today, I guess the only hope would be that Disney could sort something from their end and release a compilation.

More surprising is that EA haven't done anything similar, they have a superb 16-bit back catalogue which has never seen the light of day since the original releases.

No Gunstar Heroes was the killer. Best game ever.

No Sonic 3 & Knuckles lockon mode:

FAIL

/plays Sonic Jam on the Saturn

What a terrible, and needlessly rambling+preachy, review. I haven't read the ten or so comments before me, because all I have to say is, when it comes to 'retrogaming,' all you need to do is read the list of games on the disc. That decides whether you buy or not. End of.

Anyone bitching about game choice or emulation quality will already have their own emulators and roms set up how they want, so shut the hell up. In a year or two - or more - I might build a retro arcade cabinet. For now, this is more than enough; all anyone in the market for buying collections like these needs is a list of the roms on the disc.

I hated this review, and I hope I've slammed it, but of course, since Mr Simon Parkin put his name on it, I want to stress I don't hate him! Although I think it's a bit cheeky if he got paid to write that...

/ hugs megadrive emulator puts on Castle of Illusion (I'm not a pirate BTW - I already bought all my MD games when the thing was out!)

Anyway anyone who didn't buy Megadrive first time around should get this, some cracking MD games in that compilation and a great price.

What I'd like to see though is a SEGA arcade compilation, surely with the size of a blu SEGA could put something together for PS3.....

@twinberettas: Oooooooooooh buuuuurn. lol.

I thought it was quite a good review actually. The only thing it lacks - and is something which I would consider essential - is a list of all the games in the collection. I just can't believe someone would forget something so obvious. Unless I'm mistaken, that is :S

Burn? Burning Rangers!

Sega Saturn Ultimate Collection please! *Colbert hand-grab*

Segata Sanshiro, Segata Sanshiro, Sega Saturn shiro!

List of games is one thing, but it would be also cool if the review mentioned what platforms/systems this is available on. Mention of trophies/achievements points to ps3/x360, but as someone who'd never even heard about this before, I'd like to have been enlightened if it at all pertains to me.

Dominalien, the link to get to the review has the icons of the consoles its being reviewed on. Its a PS3 and Xbox360 review

A saturn collection with nights, panza dragoon games, and the odd game like burning rangers, fighting vipers and last bronx would be great.

Who or what is this Matt Hazard?

I love this collection, it lets me play a lot of games I've been holding off buying on the Wii VC, such as the Shining series.

But, I do feel like it's just a rushed collection of games whipped up in five minutes and thrown out of the door to make some quick money. Even the videos that are unlocked on the disc are probably as old as 2006, since one of them was talking about the 360/PS3 Sonic game as if it was just being released. The 'museum' section is also utterly pointless and more of an after thought.

That said, I know a lot of people on my game design course at Uni that have never played a MegaDrive before, and thus compilations like these are a must have for those that are really into game design and history but haven't touched the console before. There is certainly a huge chunk of Sega history here!

No Flashback = no sale

That and Castle of Illusion

"Nobody talks of retro films or retro music. Read a novel by Tolstoy or a passage from the Bible and you aren't retro-reading, just as sitting down to a DVD of Citizen Kane or Lost in Translation would never be referred to as retro-viewing."

Surely Kane was produced far farther into the life of cinema than we've even got in the life of games? We're about thirty five years in now - if we take the zoetrope and Stanford's horse as the Magnavox Odyssey of the time? I reckon we do talk about retro film - nobody goes into HMV to get hold of A Trip To The Moon or Roundhay Garden Scene, any more than gamers go in to buy Night Driver for their 2600 anymore. Tolstoy and the Bible were written when writing had already been around for a millenium, in this argument Space Harrier is a cave painting. That's why we can't get the old games as easily, you are comparing something which proportionally is a relic with somehting that is just slightly old.

Retro Gaming is entirely reliant on brand fetishism for success - never mind the bargain bins are always fuill of retro compilations - they cost nothing beyond the manufacture and shipping. I am a fan of old games, I buy a UK mag dedicated to retro gaming (the name of which escapes me) every months to remenisce, but to buy up all the games we bought two decades ago? I've already paid Sega for most things on here once!

Sega owes me for Football Manager 2009 anyhow - I'll help myself to roms, ta very much.

@ Secombe EA did make this.
Also with regards to 'retro' or not, gaming is a pastime that is so reliant on cutting edge technology, that anything that isn't at the bleeding edge will always be 'retro' by definition. Like my vinyl collection I guess. I don't see that changing until technical progress ceases to make much difference.

If Madonna and Tchaikovsky CDs are separated by metres in the local music store, mere inches on iTunes, why is it nearly impossible to buy a new copy of any videogame released anytime before yesterday?

The answer to this is incredibly simple - it's a matter of medium, format, standardisation.

Let's think about cinema first. No matter what advances there've been in camera technology over the past 75 years, at the end process you are still only ever seeing a captured image reproduced on a rectangular box. With all other things being equal, if you'd shot Citizen Kane with a modern digital camera or the one they used at the same time, it'd be the same film. It's still the same experience you get up on screen as the viewer.

The same goes for music. You'll get people who tell you that listening to the White Album on CD just isn't the same as on an LP, but ultimately you still hear the same album. If a few barely audible scratches on a turntable are that important to you then yes, it matters, but otherwise what you pump into your two ears is the same music.

Both of those have been standardised for some time. Even though we play games using those rectangular boxes and listen to the audio with those two ears, there's an extra element which is processed largely in realtime. We may end up with an all-powerful console/PC which no longer needs to be upgraded, and when that's fully established you'll be able to look at gaming in terms of eras by looking at it retrospectively.

Until then, while the base hardware is changing every 4-6 years, games which you could play on your system become obsolete as soon as your system does, assuming you don't have backwards compatibility. You can't load up the first Metal Gear and compare it to MGS4 on the same system (at least without having to think about it) and assess those titles purely on gameplay.

For as long as we have competing consoles which are advancing at such a rate and don't have 100% backwards compatability with every game ever released, we'll still be talking of things in terms of retrogaming. PSN and XBLA are getting us closer to it, but we're not there yet.

In short - we won't be able define boundaries on the medium until the goalposts have actually stopped moving.

would have been a lot better if they had kept say 8 or 10 of the really good titles and redone them in 1080p, as it is all these games are free on PC and xbox and proberly PSP too, can't see the point in spending money on them again when nothing has changed.

On the same note, its about time we have some decent 1080p 2D platformers.. come on team sonic, you have shown the world your hopeless at making 3D games theres nothing to loose! :)

@ twinberettas

I'm with you. The review is bad by default since there is no list of games, and to make matters worse, it's needlesly pretentious. EG reviews are always hit and miss. I think they should stick with the lighthearted ''whitty'' jokes and stop being so goddamn elitist.

Especially since they lack even rudimentary equipment to produce the actual words needed to support the outlook they pretend to convey. Quoting a movie masterpiece doesn't add any value to a review. It's just a painful process to read stinkers like this. I should start looking at Authors of the articles, so I can avoid more suffering in future visits.

Very poor intro.

Gamers get annoyed when companies are always trying to emulate blockbuster films in their action and narrative, because gaming is it's own medium and should find its own way.

This intro once again sets the different mediums against each other in a comparison that just doesn't work or fit.

Goatboy wirtes: "I buy a UK mag dedicated to retro gaming (the name of which escapes me)"

Is that you, Sarah Palin?

These 40 games are too close to the last SEGA collection fro 2 years ago. Not sure why someone would want this one when you can buy the last release for cheap.

@justanotherdave

+1

An HD remake of the original Sonics and Streets of Rages series would have been more welcome than this.

And new HD 2D Sonic could be great.

Heh, Matt Hazard surrounding this review is rather fitting, given his retro origins!

Comix Zone, Gunstar Heroes, Altered Beast, Phantasy Star II, Shinobi III & Sonic The Hedgehog 3 are set to come to XBLA, just for people's information....

@secombe

'More surprising is that EA haven't done anything similar, they have a superb 16-bit back catalogue which has never seen the light of day since the original releases. '

EA replay is available on PSP. It's missing a ton of content but some of their gems are on there, along with some absolute shite:)

I got this for £20, making each of the 40 games 50p. That makes all the bitching here as worthless as the paper it's printed on.

@dryden555

I bought the last collection for PSP and bought this one because I don't use my PSP or DS much any more and would rather have it on my TV ... and I like trophies :(

Where's Toe Jam & Earl? :(

@Chrispynutt: this is the SEGA Mega Drive ultimate collection and all the games I mentioned were on the MD. The games in the collection are not all Sega developed either.

Sega will either give the remainder of the MD gems in a different collection or never at all. The point is, its not quite the ultimate collection when its missing some crucial games. :)

Has anybody who got this already bought sonic2 from xbox live. Just want to know if its the same upscaled graphic on the disk thats provided in that xbox live game. If the games are all done at that level then this game becomes a must have title for me.

@ khaz

It's pretty obvious that rights are going to be an issue with masses of titles though, an original IP published by Sega that has never been used again (or stayed firmly in the Sega ranks) is likely to be ok.

Anything with licensed characters (Disney ones being the most obvious going) or where the developers are still going strong but are under somebody elses wing these days is probably going to be more hassle than it's worth.

"One oversight bound to work up Mega Drive fanatics is the lack of an option to link up Sonic and Knuckles and Sonic 3"

Poor show, poor show indeed. This feature is enabled on the old Sonic Mega Collection Plus game on the original X-Box, so the lack of it in this game is disappointing.

Once again, the lack of Sonic CD is another concern... why SEGA are reluctant to just put all the games people want on the disc is beyond me. I'll give this one a miss.

Altered Beast, a terrible dud?

Wtf.

I haven't played Altered Beast yet, but I remember it getting awful scores back when it was first released too.

@firm3d

If it weren't for the achievement, they would have to pay me for playing such outrageous crap as Alex Kidd or Alien Invasion. Not that I think that the collection is not worth buying - I have it and I'm enjoying Shining Force quite a bit. Just that it's not fair to divide the price by the sheer number of games there.

Has anybody who got this already bought sonic2 from xbox live. Just want to know if its the same upscaled graphic on the disk thats provided in that xbox live game. If the games are all done at that level then this game becomes a must have title for me.

Yes, it's the same. Full-screen stretching with smoothing filter.

I desperately want Sonic 3 & Knuckles on my 360! I don't know why I want this, as I have the original and my old Mega Drive, but not putting it on here (they cited 'development costs' apparently) is bloody bizarre to say the least. Looks like my only hope now is the LIVE Marketplace!

You also have the chance to buy many of these titles on the Wii for just £5.60 each!

Man I just download the Jenesis emulator for my NDS and play the whole Genesis/Megadrive back catalogue on the go via my R4.

I've downloaded over 60 meagdrive roms imcluding all the streets of rage, all the sonics , all the Thunderforce games etc. I've even got all tehshinobi games including Shadow dancer and Revenge of Shinobi.

Makes this seem a waste of money to be honest.

@Gastrian

Thank you. I got to the article through the RSS, so I wasn't clicking no links.

I'll stick with my pristine Mega Drive console thanks.

Any decent game is available on eBay.

I can get GTA IV off the internet. Kinda makes the game seem like a waste of money.... oh, I see what I did there.

Are these emulators legal? Specifically, is downloading ROMs legal?