Sonic Mega Collection

There was a time you'd have been as likely to see Sonic the Hedgehog on a Nintendo system as glimpse a duck riding a bicycle on a motorway. Now, the velocity-happy hero has made Nintendo his natural home - and this nostalgic round-up of Sonic games past firmly lays the ghost of old-time Nintendo-Sega scrapping to rest. Switching on Sonic Mega Collection for the first time presents you with seven slices of Sonic history from the 1990s. These classics haven't been updated, retouched or cosmetically enhanced in any way. If anything looks or sounds different from when your younger hands clasped the chunky black Sega Megadrive controller, that's the mistiness of memory for you - shake your head to realign your braincells and appreciate these vintage games in all their primordial perfection. The centrepiece of the collection: the entire quartet of 2D Sonic The Hedgehog titles. The impossibly pretty maps of Green Hill Zone in the original Sonic the Hedgehog. The transparent pipework and skyscraper-high ramps of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Miles "Tails" Prower's first tag-along outing), where Sonic's sprinting shifts the screen at speeds that must have had the Megadrive groaning aloud in pain. And Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, offering as much high-speed coin-collecting and enemy-bopping (and, inevitably, spike-colliding) as those perfect prequels. Such a fun-packed foursome of massive-mapped, secret-stuffed platforming titles would be worth the asking price alone. But for your cash you also net the compulsive flipper-flipping Sonic Spinball, the tough Puyo Puyo-alike puzzler Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, and the bizarre-but-brilliant isometric runaround Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island. All simple stuff compared to today's 3D effects-fests - but all the more glorious for it. And that's the lot... except, it isn't. Repeated plays of the seven main games will unlock even Megadrive memories - including (and look away now if you don't want the surprise ruined) the variations and games unlocked by the later Sonic games' clever cart-combining technology. Plus, a library of movie clips, comics and artwork allows you to wallow in Sonic's extensive history and shed a nostalgic tear or two. In short, the perfect compilation of perfect pre-3D platformers and their equally playable offshoots. Grey-haired gamers and joypad juniors alike will be in hedgehog heaven.