This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

Companies love making money off some of their classic titles by releasing them in compilations. We’ve seen Namco’s numerous arcade classics and Capcom’s Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Sega has been banking on their mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, and have done so twice already with Sonic Mega Collection and Sonic Mega Collection Plus. Those two games covered the entire Genesis library, and now Sega has treated us to some of the more rare and obscure titles in Sonic Gems Collection.

Gems Collection offers up nine different titles from the Sonic franchise – Sonic CD, Sonic R, the first US release of Sonic the Fighters, as well as the six Game Gear Sonic games. It’s definitely quite a number of games, but unfortunately, some of them just aren’t worth playing.

Sonic CD is regarded by most fans as one of the best in the series. Originally released for the Sega CD and the PC, it contains the same solid speedy side-scrolling action as the classic games with the added twist of time travel. Each stage has a past and future version and things you do in the past version, such as breaking walls and platforms, will affect the stage layout of the future version. This simple mechanic essentially doubles the size of the levels and thus the game itself. It’s rather fun to just take your time and see what exactly you can fiddle with and how it changes the future version. Also, since this is one of the games in this collection that was originally made for the CD format, the audio tracks sound clearer and crisper than most of the others in the collection.

Sonic the Fighters sees its first official US release here in Gems Collection. It’s not the deepest or the prettiest fighting game, but it’s nice to see it added here. Fighters is basically a dumbed-down version of Virtua Fighter 2, which makes sense since both originally ran on Sega’s Model 2 arcade hardware.

Sonic R is a racing game, but not with karts – competitors race on their feet. This makes a lot of sense for Sonic and Knuckles, but not so much for everyone else. That aside, if you can suspend that logic for a second, Sonic R is pretty fun due to its course designs. Most of them are designed after classic 2D Sonic stages and feature a bevy of shortcuts and alternate routes. It’s actually a pretty good idea to scope out the course in time attack mode to familiarize yourself to the main course and its shortcuts so that you can gain an advantage on the AI.

Out of the Game Gear games, Tails’ Skypatrol is the most interesting. It plays more like a puzzle game than an action one. You’ll control a flying Tails in forced forward movement stages. Armed with a ring that can be used as a weapon as well as for activating switches and such, it’s up to you to navigate Tails from start to finish.

Lastly, Vectorman and Vectorman 2 are waiting to be unlocked. The first Vectorman was an underrated action title in the waning days of the 16-bit era and is a welcome addition to the collection. Its sequel isn’t as solid and polished as its predecessor, but it is still nice to have.

While those games are fun for a while, some do have their downsides, and the other Game Gear games just aren’t fun.

Sonic CD, Tails’ Skypatrol, and Vectorman are actually quite fun and will hold your attention for more than half an hour. The same can’t be said for the rest of the collection.

Sonic the Fighters will get boring after your first fight or so. There are only eight selectable characters and half of them are only known to the most hardcore fans of the franchise. And though each character has a decent movelist, the dated and choppy gameplay will leave gamers unsatisfied.

Sonic R is fun the first time through, but after you’ve finished a couple of laps, you will have seen all you really need to see. The Grand Prix just isn’t enough to sustain any amount of interest.

The rest of the Game Gear games include Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble, Tails Adventures, Sonic Drift 2, and Sonic Spinball. Sonic 2 and Triple Trouble are your standard side-scrolling titles; Tails Adventures is a side-scrolling featuring just Tails who can throw bombs and fly for short amounts of time; Sonic Drift 2 is a go-kart racer; and Sonic Spinball is a pinball game. The major shortcoming these games all have in common is bad emulation. The frame rate suffers greatly in every game with frequent slowdowns even when there isn’t much on-screen. Also, the audio quality is horrendous. I realize the audio was originally intended to be blasted out of the Game Gear’s miniscule speakers, but the horrible audio fidelity will have your ears bleeding.

Sonic 2 and Triple Trouble are passable gameplay-wise, but Sonic CD is where you’ll want to stay. Tails Adventures is just mind-numbingly boring. Tails walks slow as molasses and he throws bombs? The idea of him throwing bombs just seems way out there. Sonic Drift 2 is atrocious. Think of it as F1 Race with muddy textures and a horizon so-low that it makes anticipating turns impossible, and you have Sonic Drift 2. And then, we have Sonic Spinball. If you’ve played another pinball game with an action theme, then you’ve played Spinball, and the one you played is probably better.

Finally, I don’t mind having the Vectorman games as unlockable extras. However, I would have enjoyed the unlockables a lot more if they had left the Streets of Rage trilogy in there. Japanese gamers got it in their Gems Collection, and word is that Sega of America took it out to get the “E” rating, rather than the “T” rating had they included Streets of Rage.

For $29.99, you sure aren’t getting a lot. Is plunking down $30 for the 12-year-old original Sonic CD, maybe Tails’ Skypatrol, and then having a bunch of useless extra baggage thrown in, really worth it? In my opinion it’s not. While Sonic CD and Tails’ Skypatrol are fun, the others get boring after a few rounds, and the Game Gear emulations are horribly done, which doesn’t translates well when playing on a larger screen. If you have Sonic fever and the only prescription is Sonic Gems Collection, then I suggest you hold out and wait until it drops in price. Even then, I don’t know how much you’ll get out of this collection.

If you love classic side-scrolling Sonic games, some of these games will satisfy you.

Sonic CD and Sonic R aren’t too bad, but the Game Gear games look ugly. Framerate drops often.

Sonic CD’s soundtrack is nice; R’s is weird. The Game Gear games' audio quality drops the score

Some of the games are fun, and some are fun, even if only the first time around.

Vectorman games to unlock for a total of 12 games, but some of them aren’t worth the time.