Sega Genesis Collection

[JuntMonkey]

I recently picked up the new "Sega Genesis Collection" - a collection of about 30 games - for PS2. I mainly wanted it for the Phantasy Star games - 2, 3, and 4 are all on it. I also was having some side-scroller yearnings and wanted to play Sonic (1 & 2 are included).

Most of the other games didn't interest me at first, but as I started checking them out I became intrigued by a couple.

Ristar is a late 16-bit era side-scroller. The main character is a walking star who can extend his arms out to climb, swing, and grab enemies - like a cutesy Bionic Commando. Seems cool, I'll definitely try to get through it.

Comix Zone is a very stylish beat-em-up. It has the best 16-bit graphics I've ever seen - Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario RPG are technically superior, but Comix Zone just looks so cool. Each level is set up like a couple of pages of a comic book, and you jump from panel to panel and interact with items and the page itself.

The Vectorman games (1 & 2) are also extremely good-looking, but they don't appeal to me as much as the others. We'll see whether or not I play those.

Overall, the Genesis was capable of much better graphics than I gave it credit for - I'd really never seen any of these games in action.

In this collection you can save your state just like with emulators on the PC, so if you don't feel like going through Vectorman 20 times until you beat it, you can still see the whole game by using saves.

I'm on the fence about save states though. It just seems "wrong" to use them, like you're not giving yourself the full experience of constant 8/16-bit game restarts. I will definitely not use them for the Phantasy Stars. I guess it just depends on if you like the particular game enough to get the original experience.