Late last year, the SEGA Ultimate Mega Drive Collection had merely been a rumor. Now, it’s a reality, and it’s coming to video game store shelves this January 26, at least in Australia. Is it also slated for release in North America and Europe? I really have no idea.

All I know is what’s in the SEGA Ultimate Mega Drive Collection. Here’s a partial rundown: Sonic the Hedgehog (1, 2 and 3), Alien Storm, Space Harrier (whoopie!), Streets of Rage (1, 2 and 3), and Columns.

Here’s what, *sigh*, PC World has to say about the upcoming release of SEGA Ultimate Mega Drive Collection followed by a short clip of what you can expect:

SEGA will bring smiles and nostalgic thoughts to many next week with the release of the Ultimate Mega Drive Collection for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Featuring 40 of the most popular games for the SEGA Mega Drive, the collection brings the retro games to the latest generation of consoles with high-definition refinements. Each of the 40 games has been enhanced to 720p, and console-specific unlockable achievements and multiplayer modes have been added. The collection is scheduled for a January 26 local release on both consoles.

Oh, and in case you didn’t like the video, PC World has a slideshow of screenshots from the collection. You might want to check it out.

Post from: EveryJoe

SEGA waxes nostalgic, to release Ultimate Mega Drive Collection for Xbox 360, PS3

Image featuring popular characters from Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers series and Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog series downloaded from The Master Knight’s collection.

Post from: EveryJoe

Video game collage: Mario and Sonic

Well, here’s my list:

Pong, Space Invaders, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Pac-Man, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, Leisure Suite Larry, Afterburner, Double Dragon, Prince of Persia, Tetris, Secret of Monkey Island, Sonic the Hedgehog, Castle Wolfenstein, Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Minesweeper, Myst, Rayman, Command & Conquer, Tekken, Tomb Raider, The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, and Total War.

Darn, I think I have to brush up on my video games history and literature again.

Post from: EveryJoe

The History of Video Games in two minutes

The author of this mish-mash, however, missed the entire Apple line of personal computers. I owned an Apple IIc, so I know first-hand that a lot of video games can be played on the machine—that is, if any Apple computer is still intact to this day.

Post from: EveryJoe

Video game consoles, then and now

Sega have announced that a compilation of 28 classic Genesis titles will be available for your Sony^TM Playstation^TM 2^TM and your Sony^OMG Playstation^WTF Portable^LOL in the next few months.

There’s a ton of great titles on this compilation, but of course not every Sega fan will be happy with the selection. Take a look:

• Alex Kidd: The Enchanted Castle
• Altered Beast
• Bonanza Bros
• Columns
• Comix Zone
• Decap Attack*
• Ecco the Dolphin
• Ecco: The Tides of Time
• Ecco Jr.
• Eternal Champions
• Flicky
• Gain Ground
• Golden Axe
• Golden Axe II
• Golden Axe III
• Phantasy Star II
• Phantasy Star III
• Phantasy Star IV
• Ristar
• Shadow Dancer: Secret of Shinobi
• Shinobi III
• Sonic The Hedgehog
• Sonic The Hedgehog 2
• Super Thunderblade
• Sword of Vermillion
• Vectorman
• Vectorman 2
• Virtua Fighter 2

*Why oh why did they give us Decapattack? Why not just do at least a half decent job of localising “Magical Flying Turbo Hat Adventure”? I weep at the destruction of such a great game. I mean, with a title like “Magical Flying Turbo Hat Adventure“, how can you go wrong? And just check out this box art:

Video game gold…

I’ll echo the concerns that the ‘Streets of Rage’ trilogy should have been included, and I don’t think this thing could ever be complete without ‘Sonic 3 & Knuckles’, but I don’t decide these things. I’ll probably still pick up a copy… Pick a copy up? Whatever…

1up has further coverage on their special little section of infospace. Checkitoutcheckitoutcheckitoutcheckitout…

Post from: EveryJoe

Genesis classics coming to PS2 and PSP – Huzzah!

It’s around half an hour long, but well worth it… If I said the words “Max”, “mania” and “atomic drop” to you would you be interested?

Now that’s something very special indeed… I only ever finished the game on the “mania” setting once, but that was a two player venture, so the victory was not all mine… I doubt I could ever perform as well as is shown in this video. It appears that speed-runner Gavin Ward (or SprintGod) is fully versed in 17 different forms of “kick your ass with a quickness”…

Gotta love that atomic drop… And the methods he employs to avoid some otherwise terrifying beatings are pretty ingenious…

Now if only I had a copy of the game… It was one of my favorite Genesis games, so I would totally drag it out this very second… I don’t know why I don’t have it actually, I should track one down…

Oh, sorry… Thinking aloud again…

Via GamerC…

*When I say commentor I mean that he’s commented once so far and it appears to have been some sort of advertisement for his blog, but at least he was polite

Post from: EveryJoe

Streets of Rage 2 – Mess you up real good…

Aww yeah… It’s a downloadable papercraft Green Hill Zone! I’m not sure if I’ll ever try this out because some of the pieces in the downloadable PDF look a little fiddly, but it still looks pretty damn awesome…

Check out the papercraft on the Sega of Japan Sonic website.

Via Edge Online.

Post from: EveryJoe

Super Paper Sonic!

That’s right, today is Sonic the Hedgehog’s 15th anniversary!

I can’t believe it’s been 15 whole years since I first played Sonic the Hedgehog on my trusty old Mega Drive.

We’d picked up a copy of Mean Machines (before it became Mean Machines Sega) and saw the review of Sonic’s console debut. The buzz surrounding the game was incredible and Mean Machines were suitably excited, making Sonic the cover star for their eighth issue.

They finally reviewed it in their tenth issue (link to PDF of the review), and that was it. We were getting a Mega Drive for this one game. We had to sell our NES to get it, but it was worth it.
I still remember bringing it back from Rumbelows, on that day. I think there’s a jewelry store there now. They gave us a Mega Drive that had clearly been opened, and I noticed because I could not stop staring at the thing. I voiced my eight year old concern to the man in the shop, but we were assured that the unit was fine and that it hadn’t been removed from the box.

Upon making our way back to our house we met my sister in “the snicket”, which is wank-speak for a thoroughfare (next to “the spare field”). She was about half way through her paper round, but managed to finish the rest of it fairly quickly when she saw what we were taking home.

Upon getting home we excitedly gathered round and unpacked the box. I was positive at this point I was going to freak out sometime, and I probably did, but not through excitement. It had been opened in the store and was missing an RF cable.

My stepdad, just as eager as the rest of us to play Sonic, cycled back into town to pick one up and hopefully beat the poo out of that asshat in Rumbelows. It only took him around half an hour, but it was one of the most agonising waits of my life. Imagine being eight years old, with the very latest in cutting edge games hardware sitting in front of you, perfectly functional, yet useless. Imagine what it must feel like for a heroin addict to go cold turkey. How their blood must itch.

My blood was itching.

I think I read the manual for Sonic four or five times before my stepdad returned with vital component.

This was it. We were ready. But who should play first? I can’t remember who did, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t mind. Just watching this game was incredible enough. It was the fastest damn thing I’d ever seen! These days Sonic 1 is almost laboriously slow, but at the time let me assure you that there wasn’t another game that moved so quickly and smoothly.

I remember feeling something life-changing that day. I think the first time I played Sonic was the moment where I knew I’d be playing games for the rest of my life, if only to see what the future holds. After witnessing this incredible transition from 8 to 16bit, I wanted to see where it was going to lead us all.

The 23rd of June 1991 is the day that I became a gamer. And it’s thanks to the little blue guy. Hell, were it not for Yuji Naka and his team I wouldn’t even be called Jonic! My life would very different indeed. I can’t believe it’s been fifteen years.

Happy anniversary to Sonic and Sonic Team, and thanks for the past fifteen years :o)

Incidentally, today is also the sixteenth anniversary of the Simpsons, the tenth anniversary of the N64 (Japan), The fifth Anniversary of the Nintendo Gameboy Advance (UK) and the launch day of the Nintendo DS Lite (UK)! I wonder what it is about this date that Nintendo is so keen on? Three important pieces of hardware at five year intervals. You think they’re were trying to steal some thunder from Sonic’s 5th, 10th and now 15th anniversaries? Anyone got any ideas?

Oh yeah, Sonic 1 screenshots from Console Passion

Post from: EveryJoe

Happy Birthday Sonic!

The first is from Sonic the Hedgehog, anyone who has used the good old debug cheat will know, the perfect stress-test for the Genesis’ 7.61 MHz Motorola processor is pressing B and deploying a ton of Crabmeats. As you can see the newly overclocked Genesis handles their presence nicely, were it not for the fact that the game freezes intermitently.

Next up is Road Rash (or one of them at least), which has a “trip-hop” filter applied to its music after a brief freeze in gamepley. DJ Shadow should be all over this.

The next two are interesting, the first is from Sonic the Hedgehog again, and it involves the debug cheat and more Crabmeats, but this time we get to see Sonic destroy them. Now if the Crabmeats weren’t enough for the Genesis’ puny processor (blast or otherwise) then making Sonic take them all out would really slow things down.

As a sidenote I used to play around in th debug mode in Sonic 1 a lot… Like hours at a time, I did start working out and writing up how the hexidecimal codes that replaced the score counter reflected the value of Sonic’s position, his actions, the badniks and other items in relation to the environment aroun them, but never got round to finishing it. Perhaps I should pick that up again.

Anyway, the last video is taken from Sonic 3D Blast, and was the first cartridge to have such an introduction as the one you’re about to see. This just about stretched the Genesis to its limits, and as a result was the jerkiest animation you’re ever likely to see outside of Albino Blacksheep, but with overclocking in play it runs pretty smoothly.

All in all, overclocking your Sega Genesis may prove to be a worthless affair, as it doesn’t seem reliable enough to actually play games while in place, but it still makes for an interesting experiment.

Now I’m going to trawl the Internets for someone who could help me out with my Sonic debug hexidecimal code mystery.

Post from: EveryJoe

Overclock your Genesis

After the huge success of the first Sonic cellphone game, Sonic Team have announced that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will be released as a preinstalled game on the Panasonic P902iS cellphone.

Unfortunately the site also states that it’s not known whether or not this game will be released seperately. Following the deserved success of the first game, which is currently riding high in the mobile games charts, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see it get a standalone release. More details and screenshots after the jump…

From what I can tell no release date has been announced as yet, but a date would be useless to you unless you lived in Japan and were planning on buying a Panasonic P902iS… I’ll be keeping an eye on this, so any information regarding a western release will follow here.

The game itself is looking great, perhaps even a little better than the Genesis version. My only gripe is the fact that the viewport seems to have been zoomed in a little too far for my liking. In a game as fast as Sonic 2 it would be handy to see what’s ahead of you, whereas mobile handsets don’t offer such a luxury. Take a look at the screenshots:

It’s looking great so far, let’s hope that Sega give us what we want by releasing it as a seperate game!

Anything else I find out will of course be reported right here. Sonic 2 cellphone – Sonic Channel

Post from: EveryJoe

Cellphone Sonic 2 announced! First Screens!