Sonic Classic Collection is a compilation of four of Sonic The Hedgehog's earliest adventures, converted to look and play exactly as they did on the Megadrive/Genesis way back in the ’90s. This new DS compilation (Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles) also allows you to play as Knuckles in both Sonic 2 and Sonic 3.
Back in the 1990s there were two mainstream console manufacturers and their two mascots Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog and Nintendo’s Mario sold more games between them than any other franchises around at the time. It was permissible to like both games but nobody really trusted someone who liked both, just like someone who says they support both Arsenal and Chelsea…
I should ’fess up right now and say that despite being lucky enough to own most of both mascot's titles I was always rather more in the Mario camp, I thought the games were more polished, more user-friendly, and invited more replay value and exploration. The Sonic games were always more dazzling visually—gaudy even—and Sonic moved with great speed (at times), but I never really fell in love with the spiky one’s trial-and-die gameplay—particularly in the early games Sonic levels seldom allowed you to finish them easily, and only the practice accrued through the loss of literally hundreds of lives would ever see me through a Sonic game. Some of these lives would be lost due to carelessness, some to the lack of control you had over Sonic when he was travelling at full speed, and some were down to the individual game’s idiosyncrasies, many of which have come back to haunt me during my time with the game for this review. The fact that I’m playing this Sega game on a Nintendo console would have been unthinkable back in 1991 (when the original Sonic The Hedgehog was released on the Sega Master System) but Sega’s demise as a console manufacturer must surely be linked to the fact that the Sonic games were never quite as good as the Italian plumber’s, and there must be a reason why they didn’t have as wide an appeal...
Anyway, let’s reverse back out of memory lane get back to this compilation. The Sonic Classic Collection will zoom retroholics and retro-curious gamers back to the golden age of the platform genre. Remarkably enough I can report that they play just as well (or badly, depending on your opinion) as the originals, with only the DS’s teeny screen size to perhaps make things occasionally trickier than they should be. Sonic on the DS is still basically a 2D platform game with you collecting gold rings, chaos emeralds and saving the world. Doing this involves (usually) trying to get to the end of each stage which is always towards the right side of the screen, you might have to drop down or climb up a screen’s width or two, or even double back on yourself but the end of each level can always be found on the right, so keep heading that way. Sonic and Knuckles are still capable of zooming through the screens at high speed, still have a maddening amount of momentum and inertia, and the game can still make me grin from ear to ear when I complete a speed section cleanly or yelp with anguish as I lose yet another life. Sonic never felt quite as controllable as Mario to me and although the sensation of weight and momentum were clever things to imbue a game mascot with back in the ’90s, that opinion still stands, I found myself dropping off platforms because he wouldn’t stop, or not jumping far enough or high enough because I didn’t have enough speed, and some ‘leaps of faith’ are placed seemingly just to test the player’s patience and commitment. Many a time you’ll find yourself replaying a previously completed level, not to improve your score or because you particularly enjoyed it, but because you reached a new stage with just one life and need to get there with more lives intact to make progress viable. Once learned and memorised, many levels can be completed incredibly quickly by zooming Sonic through them at breakneck speed and hitting jumps and successfully negotiating the trademark loop-de-loops and spirals—a lot of these impressive looking sections are actually almost automatic, and you don’t even feel like you’re in control of Sonic.
End of level boss battles are usually simple matters of jumping on top of them when you get a chance, whilst avoiding the incoming fireballs or stopping yourself from falling off a shrinking floor—it’s straightforward, easy to understand stuff by today’s standards, and extremely addictive/annoying in equal measures. There isn’t any provision for the DS’s touch screen stylus control so it’s traditional D-pad only. Sonic 1, 2 and Knuckles have single save options, whereas Sonic 3 allows you to save up to 6 separate profiles. Be warned though, that the save points will only take you back to the start of the stage you saved on, meaning you’re going to be replaying the same stages over and over again, a LOT, especially if you want to see the later levels of the games.
The newer games added more variety in the backgrounds and different game elements like underwater sections and 3D special stages, but in the main the classic Sonic gameplay remains intact. The games even still exhibit occasional slowdown (usually when Sonic gets hit and spills a load of rings). It’s great to see a classic collection being just that, and staying true to the originals, complete with original graphics, sounds bleeps, warts and all. On the down side there are annoying intro sequences that you can’t quit, stages that require at least two deaths before you have the slightest chance of passing them, deaths frequently due to the DS’s teeny screen and the inherent difficulty in spotting some obstacles and enemies (it’s nothing to do with my fading eyesight, obviously). You’ll also be disappointed if you’d like a mate to play as Tails and help Sonic out in Sonic 3, it might seem churlish to complain about multiplayer options lacking in a DS port of classic games, but when the original featured it, it's still disappointing when options are actually removed rather than added.
The Sonic Classic Collection on DS allows a fascinating look back in time at what us sad old gamers used salivate over, but once most of you have had a pop at each of the four titles and had a look at the art section frankly I think it’s unlikely you’ll return to them because (and dare I say it) they’re just so difficult and unforgiving to play and lack variety compared to most of today’s games. Nevertheless this is an excellent port of a retro collection and (as long as you can refrain from swearing when you die right near the end of a stage) makes perfect DS gaming fodder. Fellow bus/train passengers and family members will definitely give you funny looks if you cuss at your tiny games console though, trust me — from personal experience during this review, I know.
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