Yeah that History section music in Mega Collection is just amazing, really loved scrolling through all the Archie cover artwork of it too, especially in a bittersweet hindsight-sense knowing how it got fucked over royally.
@Dom Cruise If you're still with us, how's 2D Sonic going so far?
3D Sonic has always been kind of hit or miss but if you really want any feedback regarding some of the more average to alright 3D Sonic's to try and get your hands on to see how it goes/got some tolerance for it:
- Sonic Adventure's decent in a sense, but it definitely reeks of development shortcuts as the most effort/time went into Sonic's gameplay/stage count while all the other 5 characters feel like afterthoughts in terms of lenght and how almost all of their stages consist of shortened/altered portions of Sonic's stages. Besides the banger OST there's really nothing much home to write about imo, but the DX version while more sloppy in some collission and graphics area's has a map function to help navigate through the jungle maze and mission mode to fuck around with. (As well as all the Game Gear games as unlockables in the Gamecube release of the game)
- Adventure 2's alright depending on your approach. If playing casually you might struggle with some of the more frustrating gimmicks they throw at you in a good chunk of the stages especially the later ones but you should be able to plow through it. Sonic and Shadow's stages are more linear and the rewarding factor lies in replaying the stages to know how to get through it quickly and score bonus points for doing fancy stuff fast for better ranks. Shooting and treasure hunting is meh but as long as you deal with it it isn't that horrible.
If playing with the mindset of wanting to get all A ranks/emblems, this game becomes a nightmare of trial and error gameplay that'll frustrate the shit out of you, so imo definitely avoid going that route unless you're a masochist. Janky 3D Green Hill ain't worth it imo.
- Heroes is so-so. It follows the same stage design mentality of SA2's Sonic/Shadow stages where you're encouraged to replay stages and learn the 3-character swapping mechanics in order to get the most fun out of it and this game does deliver on some good setpieces here and there. The main issues lie in that all 4 teams go through the exact same order of stages with the only major differences being a few attack/ability tweaks and stage length/enemy placements so it really comes off as a cheap way to artificially extend gameplay time, some of the stages especially the later ones can go on for 7 to over 10 minutes even if you know how to breeze through them and the characters have really slippery acceleration so it's very likely you'll fall off if not cautious with moving around. Oh and the true final boss requires essentially playing the whole game 4 times in a row and get all the Chaos Emeralds from really janky special stages.
Those are the only ones I've played up until 2006 where I stopped playing 3D Sonic to give my own feedback on. Unleashed is alright from what I heard too but on PS3/360 versions but the Werehog parts seem like really shitty God of War trendchasing much like how Shadow's spinoff tried to ride off the whole 2000's edgy alien shooter genre/attitude to shitty results.