Over the past 20 years or so game companies have been releasing compilations of old games left, right and centre. It makes sense since they allow the company to fill in gaps between releases whilst at the same time making money off old games, not to mention we as the consumer benefit from being given a way to legally access games that are otherwise difficult to come by. Sega is no exception having released a lot of compilations itself over the years, drawing on its massive back library of superb games from Sonic to Golden Axe. And here we have the latest in this long line of compilation releases via Backbone Entertainment: Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (or to those of us in the PAL regions Sega Ultimate MegaDrive Collection).

 

Its basically what it says on the box, a collection of 40 Genesis/Megadrive games from the good old days of gaming. It almost goes without saying a compilation “game” is only as good as the games that the developer decided to include and on that basis alone this game is well worth your time and money. There isn’t a single lousy game in the entire compilation, from the obvious choices like Sonic's 1, 2, 3 and Sonic and Knuckles and other platforming greats like the often neglected Ristar, to great RPG's like the classic Phantasy Star's, to pulse pounding action games like Altered Beast. Just about every major genre and taste has been accounted for here so there should be something for anyone looking for some good old 16 bit gaming. And every game included is a true classic rather than a cheap filler. True some are better than others but all are enjoyable.

 

 

So the games are awesome then. Of course plenty of compilations have included great games but have been rendered completely worthless by poor emulation. Fortunately Backbone Entertainment haven’t let us down. The emulation in Ultimate collection is spot on. Graphics and sound appear more or less as they would have on their native system, without so much as a pixel out of place. Nor have any graphics, sounds or even flaws been tampered with, its all here in glorious original form. If it weren’t for the fact that you’re holding a modern controller you might be forgiven for thinking you're actually playing a 16 bit system.

 

Controls are a little less spot on though. This is obviously completely unavoidable since these games were designed with totally different controllers in mind, which only had three main buttons and a D pad as opposed to the myriad of buttons and sticks on modern controllers. For the most part this doesn’t really present a problem since Backbone Entertainment have done a great job of mapping the controls to the modern controllers, but there are a few cases where this arrangement might present a problem for some people as certain games feel a bit awkward with the modern controllers. For example I personally found Comix Zone and Ecco the dolphin a tad awkward entirely because the button layout of the xbox 360 and the ps3 pads just didn’t feel right. That said it might be as much down to personal comfort as it is down to issues with translating the controls. Of the two consoles its available on whether the Xbox 360 or PS3 controller is best is down to personal choice. The 360's D pad feels much more akin to the Gensis/megadrive's D pad which might appeal to some people, but the PS3's D pad is a much better quality so it really is down to your own preference of system. Either way you cant really go wrong with either controller.

 

The feature set of Sonic's Ultimate Collection is quite impressive, with features ranging from practical to merely interesting. Of the practical features the stand out has to be the video set up options. Press select while playing one of the games and you can access a list of customisation options for your display. The options include a choice of 16:9 wide screen or 4:9 standard format and a smoothing function, as well as the ability to manually adjust the size of the picture. They're an extremely useful set of features since not every tv is the same and thus not every tv will take as kindly to certain settings as others, so its great to be able to customise this in order to get the best image for you. You also have access to other modern features of emulators like the ability to manually assign button functions, which can go some way to sorting out the previously mentioned awkward feel of controls experienced in some games and a state save feature which is especially useful to those who don’t feel like dealing with the inconvenience of playing all the way through a game that has no native save feature.