What's your favourite Sonic compilation?

[Plasme]

There's a lot of great ones to choose from, but my favourite is probably. Sonic Gems Collection!

It's actually still good now, because it's not easy to get hand of an official port of Sonic R. But at the time, it was even better, just because of how many people still didn't use the internet to that degree at the time (at least not many people did). The game released in 2005, before the heyday popularity of Youtube started, and was the first time I got to see Sonic CD and Sonic R and play them. This was a big deal for me, because the games had become mysterious icons in my childhood. Then it also revealed a bunch of cool curio games I didn't know existed, like Sonic the Fighters and Tails Adventures. And while the Museum didn't contain much outside the Sonic Screen Saver, it was a bunch of cool concept art I had never seen.

Admittedly, the game had a lot of flaws. It didn't contain Chaotix despite the fact it was planned, and the Vectorman games don't make a lot of sense being in the collection. A lot of the Game Gear games are also trash. Sonic CD is worse than the Taxman port and doesn't use the Japanese music.

Yet I think the fact the game showed me a world of Sonic which I never knew about will always mean it will have a special place in my heart. As great as Sonic Mega Collection Plus was, it won't hold quite the same power to me for that reason.

[Myst]

Sonic Mega Collection. Nice menu music, a good assortment of artwork, and the first time I saw Sonic CD's intro & endings. 

I really would like to try Sonic Jam though someday.

[Menace2Society]

I’d say the best compilation title was Mega Collection Plus. It had worse extras than the original Gamecube version, but it made up for that by having more games. Plus, it’s the version I grew up with, so I have a biased memories of it, lol (although I do remember having the Gamecube version at some point.)

Not a huge fan of Gems Collection. The main three games were lesser in quality (R and The Fighters aren’t that great and CD’s Taxman remake is just the better way to play that game) and the Game Gear. Still a neat novelty in some ways, though.

Never tried Sonic Jam, but I like how it’s the only compilation title where the games are actually ported to the hardware rather than just being emulated, meaning they were able to add extra stuff to the games like the difficulty settings and Time Attack Modes. Sonic World was also a really neat little extra.

[Splash the Otter]

Sonic Jam had that really cool 3D world. I still want a full game based on that.

[HywelAtTheMoon]

Gems was also the first time I ever played CD. I believe both CD and R were the PC ports, the latter threw me a bit considering I played the Saturn original to death back in the day. 

[Blue Blood]

Sonic Classic Collection is a garbage-tier collection of poorly emulated games, but it's still the only way to play S3K on the go these days. So it gets points for being the only thing to do that job, even if it's setting a very low bar.

Also S3KC was my first time playing any of those games, so it will always have A special place in my heart for the soundtrack alone.

[Badnik Zero]

Mega Collection Plus.

The straight up full collection of the main series classics, plus 3D Blast made a pretty full collection, and the extra 8-bit games were just a bonus. And Ristar. 

The menu music is quality, which is not expected from a compilation. The collectible gallery was nice. You got to unlock manuals which was a smart choice, and the Archie comic covers which was another nice choice because however you feel about Archie you can’t deny the awesome cover artist Spaz. 

This compilation is the reason I didn’t buy any rereleases between 2006 and 2012, when Taxman came along. It’s just that complete. I have only one negative thing to say about Mega Collection Plus and that’s the damn unlock system. I have to open the game how many times to unlock Ristar? Who came up with that. If you do it manually it will take a whole day to unlock the game to completion.

[Big Panda]

Sonic Jam. Everything from the music to the overall aesthetics make me super nostalgic, and the Sonic’s World mini-game was a genius way of incorporating all the bonus features. It was also through this game that I first learned about a shit-ton of old games that I had no idea existed. I first played the game in 2002, and before then, the only games I knew about (from before Adventure) were the original trilogy, Spinball, Mean Bean Machine, Sonic 3D, and Sonic R. I’d never heard of this “Game Gear” with its range of Sonic titles, or Sonic CD, and I finally learned where the Chaotix originated from!

I also love Mega Collection, which has great music and aesthetics of its own, and the fact that it properly introduced me to Archie Sonic.

Finally, since this thread’s title is “favourite Sonic compilation”, I may as well give a shoutout to the literal Sonic Compilation

I played Sonic 2 and Mean Bean Machine for the first time through this collection.

[Cayenne]

Does Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection A.K.A. Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection count as a Sonic collection (It has Sonic 1, 2, 3, Knuckles with other unrelated Genesis releases)? If not, It's Sonic Gems Collection for making Sonic CD, Fighters and Sonic R playable on modern consoles.

I also have a soft spot for Sonic Classic Collection on NDS since I didn't have other ways to play Genesis Sonic games on a handheld at the time. The emulation wasn't very good, but it was cool to have all the lock-ons of Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

[Plasme]

I've heard Sonic Jam doesn't actually run well on the Saturn hardware. Framerater made a video on it and, well, has anyone else played it on the Saturn here?

Also, while Sonic World looks cool, it apparently plays horribly, especially because the camera is always pointing down.

[SaturnWolf]

Hmmm...

Sonic Jam. Mostly for my love of the Saturn controller, the Easy Mode for games being good for just kicking back and relaxing on an afternoon, and the Sonic World is a pretty cool feature, especially with all the content you can view with it and the context of it being an early prototype for Sonic Adventure.

[TheOcelot]

My favorite is the Sonic Mega Collection Plus (PS2).

No Sonic games or collections were released on PS1, so it was nice to finally be able to play a collection of 20+ Sonic games on a PlayStation console when the PS2 version was released (the only other Sonic game on the PS2 at that time was the Heroes port). SMCP had some nice music and a neat gallery where you could view Sonic comic archives & art (which you could unlock as you played through the games in the collection.

The inclusion of some of the gg/ms games was nice and was my first experience playing them. As for the Mega-Drive games, whilst Sonic 3 and S&K were included, you could also unlock S3&K, Knuckles in Sonic 2 & Blue Sphere. Although the requirement to do this was cumbersome-you had to load up Sonic 3 and S&K (start the game) like 30 times each just to unlock S3&K...

Sonic Team did consider including Sonic CD in the SMCP collection. It's inclusion would have been the icing on the cake.

Of course we did get Sonic CD in the Sonic Gems Collection. For me the main attraction was CD, Fighters, both games I'd never played before and it had been a while since I'd played the PC release of Sonic R. Gems Collection also had some unlockable comics & art.

Still got my original PS2 copies of SMCP & Gems:

 

I'd like SEGA to release a new collection of (just) Sonic games for next-gen consoles featuring the Mega-Drive games, Sonic CD, Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic R & Sonic Fighters etc. Now this would be the ultimate collection of Sonic games. A guy can dream...

[sonic 1-derful]

i'd say super sonic gold plug n play - which features sonic 1, 2, spinball, and robotnik's mean bean machine. I only play the first one though

 

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Sonic Jam and Gems here myself, for having actual rare and unique inclusions and not just the obvious ones.