Retro Gaming Australia

It’s arguably one of the best games on the Mega Drive, if not of all time, but Sonic the Hedgehog was the recipient of a totally crude PAL conversion. I decided to take the opportunity to illustrate just how slow and sluggish that particular version of the game is in this latest edition of Retro Gaming Theatre.

This video runs through the first four acts of the game, and a couple of special stages.

There’s no retro news today, so enjoy this video of the opening sequence for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.

One day we’ll get around to writing those in-depth features on video game cartoons.

Desert Demolition starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote is one of only a handful licensed 16-bit games that are actually any good. The game boasts superb sprites and animation, and does a pretty spectacular job of capturing the spirit of the classic Road Runner shorts. It’s a bit on the easy side, though.

After Burner is one of Sega’s most popular arcade games, mostly owing to its fantastic cabinet rather than the game itself. The X68000 version is probably the best of the home ports prior to the Saturn one.

A lot of people blame consumer fatigue from failed addon consoles for the Saturn’s failure in the West, but the rather confusing early promotional campaign wasn’t exactly brilliant either. Here we have Ice Cube preaching the merits of the system.

In light of the recent announcement of Virtual On for PSN and Xbox Live Arcade, peripheral producer Hori has announced that they will be releasing a limited run of twin stick controllers for use with the game.

The twin sticks are designed to mimic the control scheme of the original arcade game. Sega released its own official version for the Saturn and Dreamcast in conjunction with their ports of Virtual On and Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram respectively.

Of course, authenticity doesn’t come cheap – Hori’s twin sticks will set you back 30,000 yen, or about $AU375.

As part of their evergrowing focus on digital distribution, Sega has announced that it will be bringing a collection of Model 2 arcade games to Xbox Live Arcade and PSN in the coming months.

The slate of titles, dubbed the “Model 2 Collection”, includes Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Striker, Sonic the Fighters, Fighting Vipers and Virtual On.

Word on the street is that these titles will boast improvements like online play and in the case of Sonic the Fighters, extra playable characters. We’ll have to wait and see. I doubt we’ll see Pepsiman in Fighting Vipers, but one can always hope.

Sonic & Knuckles is alright on its own, but combine it with a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and you have the best Sonic game ever produced. They were actually intended to be one game throughout most of development until the high cost of production for the large cartridge size the original Sonic 3 project needed forced Sega to cut the game into two – Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles.

USAopoly has been producing licensed versions of Monopoly for years, with properties such as The Simpsons, Lord of the Rings, Batman and even Mario making the cut. You can now add Sonic the Hedgehog to the list of names with the recent release of Monopoly: Sonic The Hedgehog Collector’s Edition.

It’ll set you back $US39.99 plus shipping.

Panzer Dragoon Orta is one of a handful of Xbox releases which was designed with the Japanese audience in mind. It is the first home console Panzer Dragoon game not developed by Team Andromeda, which had been split up at the end of the Saturn era. This is the Japanese ad for the game.