Review: Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection Review, SEEEGAAA!

By: Stuart Instrell
Posted: Mar 20, 2009

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The Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection consists of 40 Sega Mega Drive games, 9 Master System games and a few extra arcade games to boot, all in there original form when it comes to sounds, level design and graphics, but now look better than ever as they are all fully HD compatible.

The most obvious thing to point out when it comes to the collection is the sense of nostalgia it brings. If you grew up with Sega like myself, the sense of nostalgia this collection posses is amazing. All the little things like the theme music in columns to the boss battles in the many Sonic games included. Even if you’re not planning on playing all of the games on the disk, getting this collection for it’s nostalgic and sentimental value is worth it. So what about if you never grew up on Sega? Well, you may not be flooded with memories of your childhood, but you will be able to experience the authentic retro games that are still great fun to this day. So regardless of what games you played all those years ago, the fun of the Sega originals is still there for you to enjoy once again, or experience for the first time.

Along with all the games included on the disk, Sega have gone the extra mile to include a museum feature with each game. What the museum feature consists of is a brief history lesson and a small image gallery of the box arts and original cartridge designs of every game in the collection. Being given the option to view the old boxes and cartridges is a nice touch, but I was disappointed to find out that all of the box art images were from the original North American release of the games. If you’re not from North America like me, while it’s cool to see some alternate art that you are not used to seeing, it’s a shame Sega didn’t include all versions of box arts and cartridges. That’s not all there is when it comes to extra content though.

You can also unlock 9 arcade games including Altered Beast Arcade, Golden Axe Warrior and Phantasy Star. Unlocking these extra games is a simple process, all you have to do is complete a few very simple tasks like beating the first two bosses of Sonic 2 or completing the first level of Streets of Rage using all three characters. You can also unlock 10 different video interviews from the Sega developers in a very similar way. Just collecting 5 yellow starts in Ristar or by simply playing Phantasy Star III and IV will unlock you some interviews.

When it comes to the actual game play, it will probably be exactly how you would expect it to be, plus more. There is no slow down or frame rate issues and the games run exactly how they used to back in the day, however there are a few options that you may like to play with before you start getting into your game. When you run a game for the first time you may be put off by the fact that it will be displayed in a 4:3 format, with a distracting border around the edge of the screen. While this may be good for those who want to see the game in it’s true form, it may prove as a bit of an annoyance later on. You can easily go into the pause menu and fully customize how large you want your screen size to be.

You can stretch the image slightly to fit a widescreen display, or just make the image a bit bigger so you don’t have so much of a border. It’s all up to your personal preference really, just play around until you get something that suits you – either way none of the screen settings will break the game. There is also a smoothing option that can be toggled on and off at any time during the game. Some may not want to use it due to it not looking exactly how it used to, but others who never played the games in the past may find it more pleasing to the eye to turn smoothing on. Again, it’s just a personal preference that you may need to play around with before you decide what you will use.

Thankfully every game in the collection uses a save state system, so you can save your game any time you want, so there’s nothing to worry about if you don’t want to complete a level just yet, or are tired of trying to beat the same boss over and over. Just save-state and come back later and the game will be exactly how you left it. You can save multiple save states so you can have one for each member of the family without them ruining your progress.

The Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection is hard not to recommend. It’s good for nostalgia and good for first timers. The only people who I wouldn’t recommend this too would be people who can’t get into retro games, for obvious reasons. There is no online co-op or leaderboard systems so it really is one of those things you’d get either for the sheer sentimental value, or to experience the fun of the games that so many people grew up loving.

Presentation : 8.0
The menus are easy to navigate through, allowing you to list the games in alphabetical, by year of release and by your own personal ratings makes everything very stream-lined. The lack of PAL box arts might dissapoint certain gamers slightly.

Visuals : 10
The graphics aren’t anything ground breaking, but they are not supposed to be. They are supposed to represent that of their original form which they do perfectly, while also giving the option to turn smoothing on or off.

Gameplay : 7.5
The gameplay itself is exactly how you will remember it from back in the day, mostly for the better, however some games haven’t aged as well as the others.

Sound : 10
Once again, the sound’s in all of the games haven’t been touched so they remain true to their original form. The sounds are sometimes not as crisp as you would like them to be, but the idea of the collection is to emulate how the games used to play, and sound.

Lasting Appeal : 8.5
It really depends on your personal preferences. If you get the collection for nostalgia and sentimental value you won’t be coming back to play each game through as much as those who have never played the games before. There is unlockable content as well as a total of 50 games, so there is lots of potential for a lot of gameplay here. It just depends on the reason you got the collection.

8/10 – Very good (High recommended)