Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Remember the old Sonic Games? Or even the newer ones! Talk about these Sonic games here, whether you are stuck or just want to talk about your favourite game!
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Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Ivogoji »

Might as well do topics for the compilation games too.

For a lot of fans, myself included, Sonic Mega Collection for the Gamecube was their introduction to the classics of the series. It didn't contain that much unlockable content- especially not compared to Sonic Gems Collection- and there was no save feature for games that didn't already have one, so this port basically existed for the benefit of Sonic fans who didn't own the original systems.

It did come with some nice bonus materials though. Two non Sonic games, Flicky and Ristar (historically important to the development of the franchise), were unlocked after clocking in a certain number of hours playing the other titles. There was also a gallery of character art for SA, SA2, and Sonic Advance, a gallery of Sonic related videos (curiously including Sonic CD's animated cutscenes), and a gallery of covers from the Archie comics series. The game also featured these insanely melancholic and heartbreaking menu themes that sound unearthly compared to typical Sonic music but are forever burned into my soul as the essence of this series' wistful nostalgia. Seriously, have you heard those menu themes? Good grief the feels.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Rajikaru »

I'll never understand why they gave a game like Sonic Mega Collection such a profound soundtrack specifically for the menus only. Don't get me wrong, Mega Collection is a great game and was one of the best Gamecube games (which is funny since it's just a collection of older sonic games), but that music, especially for the galleries, is insanely good, possibly even better than the music in other Sonic games. It's so oddly deep, emotional, and vivid, it's insane.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by chaoadventures »

Ivogoji wrote:The game also featured these insanely melancholic and heartbreaking menu themes that sound unearthly compared to typical Sonic music but are forever burned into my soul as the essence of this series' wistful nostalgia. Seriously, have you heard those menu themes? Good grief the feels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_c2RLiCHSk

Anyways, this game was my gate to the older Sonic games (other than Sonic & Knuckles Collection and Sonic CD for the PC, which both of I had no idea to boot up).

I remember giving up on actually completing Sonic 1, 2 quickly but, I actually wanted to play Sonic 3 (and 3D Blast for some reason).
Sonic & Knuckles didn't save, which is why I never committed to completing it, not because I kept losing, but because I always want to take a break around Flying Battery.

As for the other unlockable games, Flicky felt like a fun mini-game, and I never unlocked Ristar and played it on the Wii Virtual Console instead.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Sable »

that mother****ing history music man
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

Actually, unlocking games was based on number of times each game has been launched, not on time logged. I forget the exact details, but I think you had to launch most games 20 times to unlock everything, and somewhere around 40 or 50 launches, a game would stop displaying the tutorial screen that comes up between the game menu and the game itself. It's a bit dull, but you can get every single game to the point you'll never see the tutorial screen again in about half an hour of just launching and exiting games.

Anyways, while I had played most of the games in the collection on the genesis in my school's rec center and/or PC emulator prior to getting the collection, it was my first exposure to 3D Blast and Flicky, and remains the only version of S3K for which I have gotten 14 Emeralds with every player character combination(and S3K remains the only classic Sonic game I've 100%).
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Ivogoji »

Nova! wrote:I'll never understand why they gave a game like Sonic Mega Collection such a profound soundtrack specifically for the menus only.
To enshrine the history of Sonic the Hedgehog in appropriately haunting, heart-tugging melodies that convey the sentimental feelings fans have towards the series. You don't play electric rock music at a museum (well, maybe Gems Collection's museum :P).

I'd actually like to know who specifically composed these themes. They are that memorable.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by strawberry-boyfriend »

Definitely one of the better arcade gallery type collections I've owned. And I've owned a lot of those, or at least have torrented them.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by DangerousToGoAlone »

:chaocry: :herocry: :darkcry: I remember it not actually having Sonic CD. It has 3D Blast though. Which is 99% worse.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Nano »

This was the only game that I pirated and already had a copy of. I was then was sent that email saying "don't pirate" by our ISP.

A fantastic game though, one of the best collection type games I've ever played. Most collection games shove in a bunch of games and then call it that. Not a lot of heart and soul in it. Mega Collection (and also Gem Collection) took it one step further and included so much little tiny details and a huge gallery to unlock. Super satisfying.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by retrolinkx »

Yeah, I remember playing the original games and Sonic 3D blast and all that Spinball and Mean Bean Machine. Never got far in any of the games, but I always remember that I wanted the "Plus" version since it had Sonic R and Sonic the Fighters, or at least I believe it did.

I remember going through the manual for Sonic 3 and everything was labelled wrong. No idea why, seems like a weird blunder for even Sega to make.

Music's still pretty cool to this day.

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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Lamby »

^plus had six gamegear games: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Chaos, Sonic Drift, Sonic Labyrinth, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, Sonic Blast added as well as the Ooze and Comix Zone originally only unlockable in the Japanese version. also more new museum garbage nobody cared about and mid-game saving, so as usual relying on a gamecube was proven to be hilarious

sonic gems collection is what had sonic r and fighters and sonic cd along with more obscure gamegear garbage you have to convince yourself is a shred of fun. japanese version had streets of rage 1-3 and bonanza bros. as a bonus, and we got left with vectorman. so really fighters was the only reason to own it then, paying any more than 10$ for it would have been a rip-off

anyway i remember mega collection because i'd never played anything but the adventure games because when you owned nintendo and playstation consoles, sega's just seemed lame so i was able to play Sonic 1 to S&K, didn't care about anything else. already owned archie comics so the museum stuff was pointless. the 'depth' of the menu music was... sentimental but i think it's alleged depth is really just people projecting nostalgia on typical game ambience, idk

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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Tsui »

^why do you hate video games so much? did they hurt you?


Mega and Gems Collection are great to have, even though nowadays there are various things such as Virtual Console and PC downloads. I've put many hours into these games over the years, though I've still never beaten any of the games because I'm a filthy casual. I've written my Flicky high score down somewhere to brag about, but I lost it.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Ivogoji »

Flicky is addictive, I think I've played that game more than anything else on Mega Collection besides S3&K.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Roaxes »

I still own it and it was definitely my introduction to the classic sonic games. I liked it just for the unlocking capabilities because for some reason I hate when you start with everything in a game. That's why i'm obsessed with games like kirby air ride and timesplitters where you unlock a lot of stuff and smash bros 64 melee and brawl. Smash 4 was way to easy to unlock everything. :darksurprise:
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

@Tsui: I don't know, Lamby has some decent points.

Mega Collection brought all of the Genesis Sonic titles together, but didn't really offer anything new to people who owned a Genesis or knew about emulation, and didn't stack up well against Sonic Jam, which actually included some enhancements for S1-3K, and best I can remember, the only thing the Museum had going for it was having one of the highest quality versions of the SCD animations, and it didn't even give you the choice between Sonic Boom and Toot Toot Sonic Warrior/Cosmic Eternity. If the included Archie Archive had been complete digital versions, it might have been interesting especially since it would be years before Archie would start publishing the Sonic Archives and Sonic Select volumes, but it was just cover art.

As for the GameGear Sonics, most of them seem like Pale imitations of their Genesis counterparts or a non-Sonic game with Sonic shoehorned in, and Tails Adventures is the only one that really stands out. Plus, by the time Mega Collection Plus and Gems Collection came around, anyone who owned SADX and was decent had already unlocked all the GameGear games in SADX(and unlike the original Mega Collection, unlocking GG games in SADX was both fairly straight forward and rewarding rather than non-intuitive and tedious).

As for the games that Headline Gems Collection: R and CD had cheap PC ports that were still relatively easy to come by at the time, and as much as I enjoyed Sonic R, It did suffer from having 3D graphics that were crappy even when it was new, had only five tracks at a time when sixteen tracks was the standard for a Cart-type racer, and had very unbalanced characters. Fighters was the only thing in Gems that was previously unavailable to the home market.

And sure, screwing over American gamers has been SOP for Japanese game debs since the beginning, but it doesn't change the fact that Americans got the short end of the stick on most of these collections.

If I could still see well enough to play video games and got the itch to play these old games again, I'd probably dust off my Gamepark32 or Pandora, boot up a Genesis emulator, and maybe swap out the S1-3K roms for Sonic Classic Heroes, Sonic 3 Complete, and Blue Sphere Plus rather than dust off my Gamecube or Wii and boot up Mega Collection, and that was already the case back when I still played my Gamecube on a regular basis.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by dustyoni »

I think this game is what got me into the comic series actually? :thinking:

My brother, dad, and I would play the game for hours and look through the extras quite often.
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Re: Game Discussion: Sonic Mega Collection

Post by Lamby »

Tsui wrote:^why do you hate video games so much? did they hurt you?
nostalgia and poor subjective analysis doesn't cut it for me, love

i said they're fun, that's about as much empathy as i have toward it and as much as it deserves, super sorry, because it was a good bargain bin compilation, but that's about it
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