With the advent of digital download services, many companies have opted to put their older titles up for singular download, effectively ending the reign of the moderately priced compilation pack. Sega, on the other hand, has decided that it can still do both, and has released the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection, which incorporates just under 50 games from their Mega Drive, Master System and Arcade archive. Many of the best Mega Drive series are represented, but some notable omissions, questionable emulation quality and a lack of extras and attention to detail dampen an otherwise fantastic package.

Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection boasts a selection of the finest titles of the Mega Drive era, as well as a few stinkers. The classic Sega franchises are almost fully represented – Sonic the Hedgehog (1, 2, 3, Knuckles, 3D, Spinball), Streets of Rage (1, 2, 3), Golden Axe (1, 2, 3), Phantasy Star (2, 3, 4) and the Shining series (In the Darkness, Force and Force 2). You also get a few other fine Sega games, such as Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master, Comix Zone, Vectorman, Ecco the Dolphin, Kid Chameleon and Ristar. Of course you get Sega’s usual selection of compilation stink material like Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Flicky, Bonanza Bros., Super Thunder Blade and Fatal Labyrinth. A few bonus Arcade and Master System titles are thrown in as bonuses, including the original versions of Altered Beast and Fantasy Zone, the heavily Zelda-influenced Golden Axe Warrior, the original Phantasy Star, and a few odd-ball ones like Congo Bongo. A selection of 30-odd achievements and trophies are linked to accomplishing certain minor tasks in games, ranging from easy tasks such as collecting $1000 in Alex Kidd to much tougher challenges like beating Dr. Robotnik in Mean Bean Machine.

Despite Sega’s claims of this being an “ultimate” collection, only about one-third of their published titles appear on the disc. Understandably, licensing issues prevent many of their celebrity-endorsed sports, Marvel and Disney games from appearing, but there are some notable absentees, some of which have appeared elsewhere, such as After Burner, Outrun, Super Hang On, Toe-Jam and Earl, Return of Shinobi, Eternal Champions, The Ooze, Sub-Terrania, Sword of Vermillion, Gunstar Heroes and Landstalker. Sega could also have used this as an opportunity to bring over some titles that we in the West missed, such as oddball RPG Rent A Hero.

Of course, that would have taken a lot of extra work, and that’s not something that Backbone Entertainment is known for when it comes to emulation compilations. The emulation featured in the collection is pretty lousy when compared to emulation projects on the PC, especially when you consider the extra resources they had at their disposal. Some of the sound is way off, particularly in the arcade games, and there’s a noticeable flickering in some games. Don’t believe their claims of the games being done up for HD resolutions either – the HD filter makes the games look like they’ve been smeared with Vaseline.

The Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection showcases two great examples of Backbone’s laziness with compilation projects. The first is the fact that they couldn’t even be bothered changing all of the Genesis art assets to their Mega Drive equivalents for the PAL release (except for Gain Ground, strangely enough). Sega managed to get them to do it for the Sega Mega Drive Collection on the PS2 and PSP, so why not here as well? The second is that Sonic 3 and Knuckles, the game players get when they lock Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles together to get the full Sonic 3 experience, is missing from the package. Backbone claimed that emulating this would have taken them months of extra work, yet homebrew emulator programmers have had the game working for in excess of a decade. I’d suspect that Sega had them leave it out on purpose so they could sell the game (which is admittedly pretty epic) separately on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network at a later date.

Another particularly lacking aspect of the compilation is the extra content. The addition of the Arcade and Master System games was nice, but it seems to have come at the cost of more traditional extras. “Art” in the package is just a picture of the front of the box and the cart. How about some original concept art, magazine ads or, god forbid, game manuals? The video section of the game encompasses around half a dozen interviews with Sega people, most of which you won’t recognise, as they talk about current and recent projects, rather than the games in the compilation. Where are the people that defined the era, like Yuji Naka, Yuzo Koshiro, Tom Kalinske, Hirokazu Yasuhara and Mark Cerny? How about a few TV commercials, trailers, or even a documentary about the console itself?

Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection is filled with fantastic games, but as a compilation, it’s a totally lazy effort. Sega can go to the effort of producing perfect ports and disks full of extras for the SEGA AGES line for the Japanese PS2 audience, but we in the West get this half-baked load of emulated rot that has been farmed out to a developer known for producing shoddy work. Shoving 150 megabytes worth of ROM images on a disc with a fancy front-end, omitting some of the best releases for the system, skipping out on games that are allegedly “too hard” to emulate, and not even bothering to change art assets to their PAL region equivalents shows that Sega really has no appreciation of their fans in the West. There’s really no reason why Sega couldn’t produce a truly ultimate celebration of the Mega Drive, which included their Mega Drive, 32X and Mega CD games, along with old art, trailers, game manuals and more documentary style material and charge full price for it. There is a lot of bang for your buck in the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection, particularly with the number of RPGs included, but Sega could easily have done a lot better.