Sonic Classic Collection Review [NDS]

Posted March 23, 2010 by Travis Barbour.

Sonic the Hedgehog’s early adventures are deeply engraved into the minds of the  majority of twenty-something gamers, whose first experiences with a gaming platform were jumping and spin-dash through the Marble or Star Light Zones. It’s likely that at some stage the stand-out sounds from an extra life to the invincibility theme have consequently been assigned to said gamers ringtone collection. That’s a testament to the love shared between these players and the blue hedgehog.

Sonic Classic Collection allows you to re-enact those glory days, or if for whatever ungodly reason you’ve never experienced the 2D Sonic games before, you’ll have the option to experience them all in one place.

We say all of them because that’s what we mean. Sega have squeezed Sonic 1, 2, 3 and Sonic and Knuckles onto the DS cartridge. Not only that but you can play as Knuckles in Sonic 2 and 3 just as you could in the days of the Genesis/Mega Drive.

Each of these is presented as a separate game giving six in total that can be selected from the main menu. Unfortunately, the menu’s lack any sort of production values offering simple selection by choosing the relevant box art. From there you’re pretty much playing the game as you would have on your home console (or on any of the platforms it has since been released on).

The games will play just as if you’d inserted the original cartridge; Sega logo, Sonic introduction if and where appropriate and character selection. From there it’s 2D Sonic platforming as you fondly remember. We can’t say for sure that any visual improvements or tweaks have been made, but the colours feel ramped up with the the game’s skies and grasses looking more distinct than ever before. Whether that speaks for the DS screen or against my ancient Panasonic back-heavy TV is difficult to gauge.

The controls are simple with the d-pad controlling movement and each of the face buttons performing the in-game actions. If you want to check the specific controls, you’ll have to divert your eyes from the game on the top screen to the touch screen. Options to view controls, quit and pause are joined by two other features. The first is the default option for the bottom screen and can only be described as a description.

It’s literally two paragraphs giving a synopsis of the game and unless you choose to have the controls on the touch screen, this is the default. It seems a little unimaginative, but with all the necessary information about the game on the top screen (such as time and lives etc), anything that’s placed on the touch screen seems a little unwarranted. Perhaps a live running total of statistics would be ideal, if even possible: total number of jumps, highest number of rings, time without losing rings etc. Then again, this is the ‘Classic Collection’ and so wouldn’t be remaining true to the game if included.

The other option available is save/load. At any time in each game, you can save your progress. Only the Sonic 3 titles exclude this as saving is dealt with via an autosave function.

The recent releases of the Sonic series on XBLA introduced a save system that allowed mid-level saves and loads at anytime, which ultimately lead to strategic saving just before bosses or tricky periods and ultimately proved the checkpoint system useless. Thankfully, saving here will just bring you back to the start of the current level meaning that to progress, you will still need to complete a level in a single run through. Additionally, it’s possible to have a game save for each title giving you freedom to jump in and out of each title at different stages.

The Classic Collection uses the American versions of the titles in all releases. The European copies of games will use the ‘Genesis’ box art and the loading screen even informs: ‘All games are U.S.A version’. Fittingly, the difference between versions is speed. Given that the PAL and NTSC regions use different refresh rates (50hz and 60hz respectively), the versions included in the collection may seem a little faster if you’re accustomed to the European model. The difference isn’t particularly notable in areas other than jumping, where Sonic seems much ‘springier’ and can take off with more acceleration. Don’t expect it to be a game-changer though, it still plays as you’d expect, even if you do overshoot a jump or two.

In fact, it’s admirable that even when using the faster US version and racing through the level with Power Sneakers, the framerate doesn’t drop. Loops, jumps and ziplines look even more impressive. Anyone who played the games on a Genesis though, probably won’t notice as much of a difference. The only times you’ll experience slowdown is when travelling at high speeds and then get hit by an enemy.

Sonic will fall back and lose his rings and the screen slows a little. From memory, this happened on the console versions as well but it seems a little more noticeable given the increased speed. Testing against the XBLA releases, the slow down might be down to the processing power of the DS.

The game offers nothing in terms of unlockables or extras besides an illustrations gallery that simply displays a handful of images of the classic characters in somewhat unusual poses. If you want to see Sonic sunbathing with a cocktail then here’s where to look, otherwise, there’s nothing that’s going to add to your gaming life.

As a package, the Sonic Classic Collection offers everything that you’d want from a title with that name. Including all of the classic games and their variants with Knuckles; offering the games just as they were presented when they were released and a suitable save/load system that fits perfectly with the portable nature of the DS.

One small issue with framerate, a lower screen resolution and the lack of any kind of multiplayer or significant extras are all that holds the game back.  As the ‘Classic Collection’ it’s arguable that you might not expect anything else, but given that there are multiple other platforms to enjoy these games on, a little more love to Sonic wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Despite those gripes, there’s still a lot of fun to be had here, mainly down to how classic the games remain, despite the overall troubles of the collection. If you’re a fan of the early Sonic games,you’ll love this collection for its nostalgic value alone, but if you’ve never been too fond of them, this isn’t the title to change your mind.

Tagged as Review, Sega, Sonic Classic Collection