Sonic & Knuckles Collection PC CD-ROM
Published
by Xplosiv
Developed by SEGA
Released: 12th November 2004
Price: £9.99
If you're a non-console owning Sonic fan it can be tricky playing some of the older Sonic games. Fortunately most of these have been ported to the PC in one form or another but often these ports are rather sloppy and don't do the games justice. Here we have the Sonic & Knuckles Collection and it's another of those sloppy ports that just doesn't feel at all right on your PC.
The compilation offers just Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 and Sonic and Knuckles. These games are now ancient and asking almost £10 for them is simply criminal. The minimum requirements for these games is a 486 DX4 100 MHz CPU which should give you some idea of how graphically weak they are. This wouldn't be a problem but running the games on anything that resembles a modern PC will cause problems. Running the game in full screen mode makes the games look hideous but at least they are playable. Don't even try the recommended windowed mode (which the games run in by default). Expect a frame rate that has to be in the thousands and no I'm not joking. Playing in windowed mode is impossible because of the speed and just watching the screen for a few seconds leaves you in real danger of coating your keyboard with the contents of your last meal.
Having played classic Sonic games on various platforms over the years I wouldn't personally attempt to play the games on a PC. The Sonic games were meant to be played on a TV and not a high resolution PC monitor that makes the games look pug-ugly. Looks aren't everything of course but even though the games support joysticks and gamepads, most of these don't feel right and the default keyboard controls just feel plain clumsy. If you must have your Sonic fix then put the £10 you would have spent on this towards a GameCube and purchase the Sonic Mega Collection. If that's not an option then be warned that these games are not of the best quality and even at £9.99 they are expensive for what they are.
Recommendation:
Not recommended. The games look poor and aren't value for
money.
Suitability for deaf gamers: No subtitles
here but none are needed.
Overall Game Rating: 1.5/5