Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection Right now

This is just what it looks like - a collection of Sega Genesis titles for the 360, complete with updated graphics, achievements and save capability.

The collection is a decent cross-section of the platform's offerings, with the noticable exception of sports games, which are totally absent. Most of the classics are here though, like Sonic, Streets of Rage and Ecco. There are also a few deep cuts and the occasional "why did this one make the cut?" choice, but as a whole the collection is solid, especially when counting the nine unlockable games.

The achievements (33 total) are a curious lot. Not all the games have them, and the ones that do have only one as far as I've seen. Sometimes they're involved (like unlocking Roo as a playable character in Streets of Rage 3) and other times they're almost ridiculously easy (like "Get a Chaos Emerald" in Sonic). Most are worth 30G. I would have liked to see more achievements worth less. That way each of the 40 primary games could get 25G and have multiple achievements. Instead of having only one achievement for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ("Get 100 Rings with Tails in the first level" for 30G), we could get four or five ("Beat the game in any mode" (5G), "Get 100 Rings with Tails in the first level" (5G), "Get a perfect on a Special Stage" (10G), "Collect all the Chaos Emeralds" (5G)).

The "Save" feature is very nice, meaning you don't have to have a five-hour session to beat a particular game. The listing of the games is also a nice touch: you can do it alphabetially, by genre, by release date. Players can also rate the games on a scale of 1 to 5 and sort the games by their ratings.

The graphics have also improved, though not so much so they don't still feel like the originals (think what the memory add-on for the N64 did to that console's standard games and you get the idea). This is accomplished via a widescreen option and a smoothing option (like the Genesis titles you can get on the Xbox Live Arcade).

All in all, this is a good collection of classic titles at a decent price (if you downloaded them all from the Xbox Live Arcade - most are available there - you would be paying a lot more) with some other titles thrown in for good measure.Get more detail about Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection.