The fact that I pumped so many quarters into these games when I was young just goes to show my love for video games because, they are really annoying now! The SEGA Mega Drive Classics Collection Volume 1 brings together 10 classics from the arcade and Mega Drive eras including Altered Beast, Comix Zone, Crack Down, Ecco the Dolphin, Gain Ground, 
Golden Axe, Shinobi III, Sonic the Hedgehog, Space Harrier II and Vectorman.Sometimes it feels like they just wanted you to be frustrated and sometimes I have some deep feeling of nostalgia when I play them.
But I think, "was Golden Axe really this bad and I loved it that much?" Although all the games in this collection aren’t really the best of the best, they certainly are some pretty good candidates from that bygone era. Shinobi III was a wise selection to say the least, as were Ecco and Sonic. All true classics in their own right Altered Beast was one of my favorite games back then and even now still proves to be a good distraction I’ve found out.
No they haven’t revamped the graphics or sound. They haven’t fiddled with the controls or anything else. These are all straight ports of the games in their perfectly preserved blocky, 16 color glory. The only real addition here is the ability to save your game pretty much anywhere. So that means you can finally pass that level you never passed or finish that old game you never finished. You can unlock the mysteries of Ecco and seek out the secrets of Sonic. No matter how much or how little time you’ve got these days, you can always find time to play one of these.
Really, there’s not much to this compilation and it’s 10 games for 15 Euro or 9 if you get it from Amazon. Considering that the Ultimate Collection is about the same price and includes all 40 games (there will be 4 PC volumes) it’s really a rip off. Even if you pay full price for the PS3 pr Xbox 360 collection which is 25-30 Euro/GBP you’ll end up paying 40-60 for these.
Considering that SEGA also has an online way to play games PlaySEGA and SEGA Pass for some 5 Euro/GBP a month and that includes loads and loads of SEGA games, well, why would you pay so much for just 10 games when you could pay 29.99 for a year of all of their games online?
The program can’t even multitask. For example, I use Raptr to login and chat with people while I’m playing games. If a chat window pops up from Raptr the SMCC freaks out, minimizes and doesn’t even pause the game. Honestly, I can’t see why you would want this collection at all. It is not very well made, it’s over-priced and all of the games are available in numerous other formats. It just seems to me like SEGA is trying to milk the retro craze for all its worth without actually giving value to the gamers.
