Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection

by Sega Of America, Inc.

Product Features

• The Largest Collection of Classic SEGA Titles. Players will trip back in time with favorites including Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Columns, Ecco the Dolphin and four titles from the Phantasy Star series, to name a few.
• Several Unlockable Titles. Included in the collection are arcade favorites such as Congo Bongo, Altered Beast, Zaxxon and more.
• All Titles Upgraded to Hi-Def. The classic 2D style never looked so good! Each title has been converted to hi-def (720p) and will be a blast to play using the intuitive controls of the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 systems.
• Massive Multiplayer Options. Friends can play the 2-Player classics together in select games from the same console at home.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001G3AZS2
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches ; 3.8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: February 10, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,093 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Platform: Xbox 360

Amazon.com Product Description

Take a trip back in time to the heyday of the SEGA Genesis console by way of your Xbox 360 with Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. Led by six classic Sonic The Hedgehog favorites, this collection is packed with games from iconic franchises you know and love, like Ecco the Dolphin, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and Phantasy Star, but also contains many others you may have missed. The largest collection of classic SEGA titles available to date, these 40+ games bring classic single player and multiplayer action to life like never before as the best of the SEGA Genesis catalog is reborn on the Next-Gen stage of Xbox 360.

Side-scroll for rings with Sonic. View larger.

'Beat 'em up' in Streets of Rage. View larger.

Hack 'n Slash in Golden Axe. View larger.

Find your inner ninja in Shinobi III. View larger.

Classic Play Upgraded and Earning Achievements
Each title within Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection has been converted to hi-def (720p), ensuring that classic SEGA Genesis 2D style gaming never looked so good, but this collection is about more than looks. Each game will also play just as well, with original control schemes precisely matched to the intuitive and familiar controls of the Xbox 360 video gaming system. And since fun is always better when shared, multiplayer fans will enjoy the competition as they and their friends engage in 2-player classic battles in select games. Lastly all players with an Xbox LIVE membership will appreciate that their side-scrolling skill translates to the online arena via the collection's extensive set of Xbox LIVE achievements.

Games Included:

• Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
• Alien Storm
• Altered Beast
• Beyond Oasis
• Bonanza Bros.
• Columns
• Comix Zone
• Decap Attack starring Chuck D. Head
• Dr. Robotnik's MBM
• Dynamite Headdy
• Ecco the Dolphin
• Ecco II: The Tides of Time
• E-SWAT
• Fatal Labyrinth
• Flicky
• Gain Ground
• Golden Axe I
• Golden Axe II
• Golden Axe III
• Kid Chameleon
• Phantasy Star II
• Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
• Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
• Ristar
• Shining in the Darkness
• Shining Force
• Shining Force 2
• Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
• Sonic 3D Blast
• Sonic and Knuckles
• Sonic Spinball
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2
• Sonic the Hedgehog 3
• Streets of Rage
• Streets of Rage 2
• Streets of Rage 3
• Super Thunder Blade
• Vectorman
• Vectorman 2

*Additional games such as Congo Bongo, Zaxxon and others available as unlockables.

Product Description

With over 40 titles from the SEGA Genesis era, including all the Sonic The Hedgehog favorites, fans will experience these classics now in sleek HD for only $29.95. With plenty of single-player and multiplayer action, gamers will take down a huge variety of enemies, including Sonic¿s nemesis Dr. Eggman, shuriken-flinging ninjas, hordes of altered beasts and the world¿s greatest fighting champions.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb collection for retro gamers and new gamers alike, February 14, 2009

By 

Eric San Juan (Brick, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection (Video Game)

Right to the point: There is nothing not to like about this collection. I've played it for the last few days and have loved every moment.

This disc brings together a huge collection of almost all of Sega's best games from the Genesis era. All the expected titles are here -- the Sonic the Hedgehog games, the Golden Axe series, Space Harrier, Shinobi and much more -- plus some awesome stuff you might not expect. (Presumably we'll see games like Afterburner and the lock-on version of Sonic 3 + S&Knuckles in a second installment.)

Two of the biggest reasons to be wowed by this set are:

Phantasy Star series -- With the four games included here (1-4), you get some of the best RPGs of the era and dozens upon dozens of hours of gameplay. The ahead-of-its-time Phantasy Star, the stunning Phantasy Star II (which influenced the direction of Final Fantasy in a big way), the amazing epic Phantasy Star IV. Just these four games alone are worth the $30. Heck, DOUBLE that. No fan of JRPG's should go without playing these.

Shining series -- Two predecessors of the popular Final Fantasy Tactics series (Shining paved the way for this sort of game) as well as a first-person dungeon crawler, these are fan favorites for a reason. They're great. Ahead of their time and they hold up great.

And SO many more. Shinobi. The difficult roguelike Fatal Labyrinth. Fun platformer Alex Kidd. Tetris clone Columns. Even coin-op classic Zaxxon! A HUGE collection!

All games allow you to save at any time, in any game, anywhere. This is a GREAT feature. Plus it saves high scores, has full 16:9 support for widescreen TVs, and you can toggle on graphics smoothing to make the games look even better than they did upon release. It's a dynamite feature. (The "museum" and interview extras are a nice bonus, too.)

All in all this is one of the best retro gaming bargains of the year. Got my copy a few days ago and already have loads of hours under my belt. The inclusion of not one but TWO fan favorite RPG series gives this disc an enormous amount of play value.

If you have any interest at all in retro gaming, ESPECIALLY if you were a fan of the Genesis era or if you missed out on the Genesis because you had a SNES, you owe it to yourself to grab this collection.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of gaming for your bucks, March 25, 2009

By 

Cloud "..." (Canada) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection (Video Game)

Late last year, Sonic Team over at Sega released "Sonic Unleashed" which did have its problems, mind you, but didn't really do anything stellar the entire way through. Reviewers pointed out that Sonic's previous games were miles ahead better and I find nostalgia can help make a game's success. After all, that one game that critics hated at the time might've been one of your favorites but looking at it now you go "wow did that game have issues". Therein lies the major issue/fun with the Ultimate Genesis Collection: does the bulk of these games stand the test of time? Some definately do while others will probably get barely a few minutes before you decide it's awful but there's a lot of work to be done here if you get this.

One of the most important and influential game series that kickstarted the Sega Genesis was Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega's answer to Nintendo's Mario and included is a truckload of Sonic games: 1, 2, 3, Sonic and Knuckles, 3D Blast, Pinball and to a degree, Dr. Beatnik's Mean Bean Machine, a puzzle game akin to Dr. Wario, Yoshi's Cookie and Super Puzzle Fighter II. The first 4 are great and well worth the purchase while 3D Blast controls awkwardly, Pinball is decent but not stellar and Mean Bean Machine is good though later stages work a bit too damn fast for my tastes.

Another group featured is the side scroller platformer which run the gamut from Ristar to Kid Chameleon (woo!) to Decap Attack to E-Swat (big eh) to 2 Vectorman games. Beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage and Golden Axe are included and for RPG fans: all 4 Phantasy Stars. It's safe to say that nearly every kind of game is available on here from long drawn-out games to quicker arcade-y stuff but be warned: some of these games are...kind of hard. Not in that underpowered "everyone's better than you" way like a Ninja Gaiden but rather many times in the games you won't even get continues so if you die, boom, Game Over and you're sent back to the title screen which is really disheartening and I'm surprised I don't remember getting more furious when I was younger.

Now of course any collection from greatest hits to game collections is bound to have some stuff missing or curious additions. Fatal Labyrinth well...sucks, the Ecco games are familiar but playing through them, they're surprisingly boring and Super Thunder Blade is too easy to die in. But then, most likely because of dual releases on the Super Nintendo we're missing some other favorites: Battletoads, Toe Jam and Earl, the awesome WWF games, Maximum Carnage, any of the Road Rashes and to be honest, I quite liked the Aero the Acro-Bat games. Most of these games you probably wouldn't give the time of day too while other ones like Ristar and Comix Zone actually surprised me.

Naturally like all Xbox 360 games, there's achievements and these aren't just simply beat game, beat game kind but rather objective based so for example one of Golden Axe's achievements is to use magic a certain amount of times. Easy right? Every time you get a magic ability, use it and eventually, there we go. And thanks to the ability to save games anywhere you want but pressing the Back button, some achievements like the ones for Mean Bean Machine, Columns or Sonic Pinball can be done just by saving states after a certain time and loading save if you die. There's a couple like "Yatta!" that can potentially drive you crazy since it's more luck than anything while others are just simply "Turn to easy, max lives, play".

Another disappointing factor is that the games don't have online play, whether co-op for Golden Axe or Streets of Rage or leaderboards. Imagine competing against somebody to see who can get the highest score in Columns or taking on enemies with other buddies but sadly none of it are implemented and it's strictly offline co-op. But there's quite a few unlockables from videos of the games' developers to additional games (while unlocking Shinobi is cool, Congo Bongo flat out sucks) but it's the games that are important and for completionists, having so much games to beat will surely keep you busy.

The Ultimate Genesis Collection is tough to judge as a game because for every Sonic the Hedgehog or surprising gem like Ristar there's godawfulness from Fatal Labyrinth to Flicky to Bonanza Bros. However getting all Sonics, Phantasy Stars, Streets of Rage, and Golden Axes on one disc is reason enough to get it.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great option for old-school lovers, December 12, 2009

By 

Jonathan Mettin (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection (Video Game)

This is just what it looks like - a collection of Sega Genesis titles for the 360, complete with updated graphics, achievements and save capability.

The collection is a decent cross-section of the platform's offerings, with the noticable exception of sports games, which are totally absent. Most of the classics are here though, like Sonic, Streets of Rage and Ecco. There are also a few deep cuts and the occasional "why did this one make the cut?" choice, but as a whole the collection is solid, especially when counting the nine unlockable games.

The achievements (33 total) are a curious lot. Not all the games have them, and the ones that do have only one as far as I've seen. Sometimes they're involved (like unlocking Roo as a playable character in Streets of Rage 3) and other times they're almost ridiculously easy (like "Get a Chaos Emerald" in Sonic). Most are worth 30G. I would have liked to see more achievements worth less. That way each of the 40 primary games could get 25G and have multiple achievements. Instead of having only one achievement for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ("Get 100 Rings with Tails in the first level" for 30G), we could get four or five ("Beat the game in any mode" (5G), "Get 100 Rings with Tails in the first level" (5G), "Get a perfect on a Special Stage" (10G), "Collect all the Chaos Emeralds" (5G)).

The "Save" feature is very nice, meaning you don't have to have a five-hour session to beat a particular game. The listing of the games is also a nice touch: you can do it alphabetially, by genre, by release date. Players can also rate the games on a scale of 1 to 5 and sort the games by their ratings.

The graphics have also improved, though not so much so they don't still feel like the originals (think what the memory add-on for the N64 did to that console's standard games and you get the idea). This is accomplished via a widescreen option and a smoothing option (like the Genesis titles you can get on the Xbox Live Arcade).

All in all, this is a good collection of classic titles at a decent price (if you downloaded them all from the Xbox Live Arcade - most are available there - you would be paying a lot more) with some other titles thrown in for good measure.

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