SEGA missed an opportunity here.
With Sonic the Hedgehog 4 around the corner it makes sense for them to release Sonic Classic Collection, a Nintendo DS compilation of the original Sonic trilogy and its lock-on add-on, Sonic & Knuckles. What doesn’t make sense is the slapdash job SEGA did bringing these games to the system that’s home to the Mario & Sonic Olympic games, Sonic Chronicles, Sonic Rush and its sequel — the Sonic games that today’s kids know.
Kids barely know the original Sonic games, they’re all about werehogs and Shadow and downhill skiing now. They don’t know SEGA and Sonic used to be rivals with Nintendo and Mario! Ideally, this would be the compilation to educate them, so shouldn’t a collection like this have a little more, I dunno, pizazz to it? Maybe some kind of marketing push?
Rather, we get a barebones set of ROMs glued together by a cheap-looking hub menu. You just scroll through JPGs of the games’ box art and select the game you want to play. That’s that. The only other extras are official art, which is nice to see how Sonic used to look back in the day, but one can’t help but wonder “…That’s it?” There is the new option to save in Sonic and Sonic 2, but… that’s it?
DS carts can hold a lot of info, right? What about a sound test mode with music from all the games? Maybe a gallery of all the enemies and bosses from the games? How about Sonic Spinball or Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine to round out the rest of Sonic’s output from the Genesis days? Oh my god, why not give Sonic CD, the best Sonic game no one’s played, another chance in the sun?
I’m just pulling ideas out of the air here, but this is the latest in a long line of Sonic collection ports that have been out on GameCube, PS2 and Xbox for years already. These games are on Virtual Console and XBLA too, so it’s not exactly like these are rare or unavailable. There needs to be some justification for this new DS collection and besides portability there isn’t any. What could have been the definitive portable edition of a classic series of great games looks, feels and sounds like a slapped-together budget title despite the non-budget price its going for. It’s an odd, flimsy way to treat your former mascot.
Actually playing the games makes it apparent this was rushed out the door. The image feels way too cramped, which makes blind hazards like spikes and cruelly-placed enemies an even bigger frustration than they already are. Graphics glitch in and out at points as well.
The most egregious problem occurs in the Special Stages of Sonic 3 (and Sonic 3 & Knuckles), where the player must traverse a checkered globe to run into blue orbs to get rewarded with a Chaos Emerald. Yeah, it makes no sense. These stages are notoriously frustrating already, but Sonic Classic Collection exacerbates them further with bizarre flashing and clipping issues that make them nigh unplayable on such a tiny screen. I gave up on getting Super Sonic after my fourth epileptic aneurysm.
The games themselves are largely unchanged for better or worse.
Sonic 1 has not aged as well as its sequels. Its three act structure for each zone slows the pace down to a crawl, and the years have not been kind to its tricky, uneven level design either. Every level after Green Hill Zone has Sonic plod along through stop-and-go platforming and aggravating water sections. There’s some nice spotty hit detection, too — killing robot caterpillars should not be this hard. The music’s still fantastic, and the art deco look holds up very well, but Sonic 1 doesn’t hold a candle to its successors.
Sonic 2 introduces a new character, better graphics, better music and streamlined, better gameplay. The spin dash move, which gives Sonic an instant burst of speed after a nifty rev-up animation, is a god send. Each zone now consists of only two acts for a brisk and breezy pace, and levels are designed with constant forward momentum in mind, unlike Sonic 1 where you ended up just going stop, go, stop, go, stop, go. Sonic 2 keeps you moving constantly. If you want the perfectly balanced Sonic experience this would be it.
Despite the massive hype Sega churned back in 1994, they gave us an unfinished game in Sonic 3. Around Christmastime that year its conclusion, Sonic & Knuckles came out, with “lock-on” technology that allowed you to plug in your Sonic 3 cart on top of the S&K cart to turn Sonic 3 into the game it was meant to be: Sonic 3 & Knuckles, though for some reason it’s labeled Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in the Classic Collection menu.
In any case, Sonic 3 and Knuckles refines what Sonic 2 added to the series by adding another new character, all-new shield power-ups (fire, water, electric) that are actually useful and a ton of new levels that transition seamlessly from one into the next. For the first time in the series it feels like each level is connected. Sonic 1 and 2 hinted at this – Sonic starts off in green hills then gradually makes his way to an industrial complex. Similar to Super Metroid, the transitions and story segments are brief in-game scenes acted out by the character sprites. It’s charming. The soundtrack, rumored (some say confirmed) to have been produced by Michael Jackson, clasps onto the brain like a crawdad and doesn’t let go. It’s great.
I flipflop between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles as the best of the series. Sonic 2 for its intimate and focused feel, or Sonic 3 & Knuckles for its smörgåsbord of quality content. But wait, if Sonic CD was included in Sonic Classic Collection then we’d have a clear winner for sure…
It was nice to revisit the best Sonic games on the go, even though that’s the only plausible reason for Classic Collection‘s existence. Unless you absolutely need to play these on your DS there are much better ways to play the Sonic series, and you should. Playing them through again for the first time in over a decade I was pleased, and admittedly surprised, to find how well the series remains fun. SEGA just needs to treat it better when it comes to releases like this, especially if they want to garner good faith in time for Sonic 4.
