Sega Genesis Collection - Notes

Notes

The European version does not include Shadow Dancer. However, it does fix previous speed problems concerning Sonic the Hedgehog which plagued the game's original PAL Mega Drive incarnation and most home console emulations of the game.

This is the first time Golden Axe III has been released in Europe and Australia and the second in North America, as it was briefly available in the U.S. on Sega's Sega Channel.

This collection marks the first appearance of the two Vectorman games on the PS2 in North America, since Sonic Gems Collection has remained unreleased Stateside on the console, with the exception of the GameCube version.

According to ToeJam & Earl Productions, they were going to include ToeJam & Earl and its sequel, ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron as well, but Sega wasn't very fond of the series, so they included Sonic the Hedgehog and its first sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as well as Flicky, Ristar, and Comix Zone instead, to make up for the emulation issues of the PlayStation 2 version of Sonic Mega Collection Plus. The reason is listed on the bottom of this section.

It is of note that the Streets of Rage trilogy is also absent from this collection in the wake of its removal from Western versions of Sonic Gems Collection.

Although mentioned in passing, the collection does not include the first Mega Drive/Genesis Shinobi game, The Revenge of Shinobi, possibly due to copyright issues surrounding the inclusion of Spider-Man as a boss character at the end of Stage 6.

The absence of the Streets of Rage-series as well as The Revenge of Shinobi might also have to do with all those games featuring soundtracks by Yuzo Koshiro. It is especially notable because unlike Streets of Rage where he contributed the soundtracks for all three games, The Revenge of Shinobi was the only game in the Mega Drive/Genesis-incarnations of the Shinobi-series he composed the music for, and it is the only game of that series missing from the collection. This makes licensing-issues concerning his work seem like a possible reason for leaving these games (which are among the most popular on the Sega Genesis) out. These licensing-issues would be eventually solved, however, as all three Streets of Rage titles appeared in the follow-up compilation, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection and The Revenge of Shinobi would be released on the Wii's Virtual Console with an altered version of the Spider-Man boss.

Similarly, this collection is the first release of some Mega Drive titles, especially Phantasy Star IV, on a non-Sega console, as it has only been seen twice before – on its native Mega Drive, and in the Phantasy Star Collection on the Sega Saturn (available only in Japan).

While for the most part emulation of the games themselves have no defects, some people have noticed that sound emulation in some games is not exactly the same as their Mega Drive/Genesis incarnations. This compilation was developed by Digital Eclipse, whose more recent compilations have become known for emulation problems. Regularly noted examples are the "Spindash" sound in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 fading out in a peculiar way, sound effects in Sonic the Hedgehog and Columns sounding slightly off, the special stage victory theme in the Sonic games missing, as well as no change in tempo when obtaining Power Sneakers in either game, wrong/missing death screams in Golden Axe and the sequel, a bizarre sounding Star Handle noise in Ristar, in addition to Awaueck's "bad singing" being muted when Ristar fights him as the game's fourth boss and the "Victory Theme" in Phantasy Star IV not stopping the battle music. It should also be noted that Golden Axe 3 suffers badly from poor sound emulation compared to all the other games, and a few games had minor graphical modifications, such as in Sonic the Hedgehog when the screen sometimes flashes when Sonic is underwater and in Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium when the screen sometimes flashes when a character was poisoned. Some of the sound effects in Altered Beast Arcade are off too, including the effect when grabbing a spirit ball power-up, hitting most enemies, and some of the beast secondary attacks (such as the Weredragon laser barrier).

Most of these errors have been fixed in a new enhanced version Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection (Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection in Europe and Australia) for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which allowing high definition playing through scaling-up and filters.