Sonic Gems Collection (ソニック ジェムズ コレクション) is a compilation of more obscure Sonic the Hedgehog video games. The compilation is a Nintendo GameCube exclusive in North America, but has also been released on PlayStation 2 in Europe and Japan. An Xbox version of the game was planned, but was later cancelled[7].
SegaSonic the Hedgehog was initially planned as a title to be included in this compilation but was left out due to problems with emulating the game's original trackball control scheme[8]. There is also an entire art section of the museum dedicated to Chaotix, which may indicate that Chaotix may have been planned for inclusion, but was left out instead. Sonic Eraser and various games from the Wonder Boy series were also considered for inclusion in the compilation[9].
These Game Gear games (as well as the unlockable Sega Mega Drive games and demos below) have a pause menu that is accessed by pressing / at any time during gameplay, allowing the user to reset the game, exit the game or save and load savestates. Quick saving writes a temporary savestate that is lost when the user exits the game, while permanent savestates can be saved to and loaded from the memory card. Up to 8 different savestates can be saved to a single memory card, as long as it has enough free space to hold all the savestates.
All of the above games also include their original manuals in digital form. In the case of Sonic CD and Sonic R, their PC manuals are included alongside the manuals from their original systems, and in the case of Sonic the Fighters its original arcade flyers can be viewed. The manuals available are region-specific in most cases, with NTSC-J versions using the Japanese manuals and NTSC-U/PAL versions using the North American manuals.
If a game has been run for a total of three hours, "Hints" will be unlocked for that game in the Extras menu or in the pause menu, which detail cheat codes and other tips. The user does not need to actually play the games to unlock the hints, they just need to be run for the required amount of time.
Unlockable games
Only the Vectorman games are available outside of Japan in order to keep the ESRB's "Everyone" rating.
Vectorman 2 — Play the collection for a total of 7 hours and play Vectorman once.
Bonanza Bros. (JP version only) — Play the collection for a total of 12 hours, play Vectorman 2 once, and play any game(s) at least 20 times.
Bare Knuckle (JP version only) — Play the collection for a total of 12 hours, play Bonanza Bros. once, and play any game(s) at least 30 times.
Bare Knuckle II (JP version only) — Play the collection for a total of 12 hours, play Bare Knuckle once, and play any game(s) at least 50 times.
Bare Knuckle III (JP version only) — Play the collection for a total of 12 hours, play Bare Knuckle II once, and play any game(s) at least 70 times.
Game demos
Games from Sonic Mega Collection Plus can be unlocked in a "demo" form by playing Sonic Gems Collection daily for a consecutive number of days. These are actually the full games, but play automatically begins at the last level or final boss with a time limit imposed on play time. If the player completes a demo or gets a Game Over with time remaining, then the remaining time can be used to continue playing from the beginning. There are cheat device codes available which will freeze the time limit, allowing the games to played through fully.
All demos are accessed via the Museum rather than the Games menu. Savestates and hints are unavailable for these demos, and resetting the demos via the pause menu will not reset the timer.
Sonic Gems Collection includes a Museum, where the user can view various artwork, screenshots, videos and other content. Content in the museum is gradually unlocked as the user plays each game in the collection, though some items must be unlocked through other means. Music may also be unlocked by completing specific objectives, and unlocked music can be played by pressing / in the Museum to view the audio player.
The contents of the museum can be viewed in the link above.
Versions
The PlayStation 2 version contains both Japanese and American regional data, including different released manuals scans and alternate and differing versions of games (for example, Sonic CD has both the Japanese and American soundtracks). The game will load the data depending on the language the console is set on. The GameCube version only has the language for the region of release in the game data.
This article needs cleanup.
This article needs to be edited to conform to a higher standard of article quality. Specifically, issues with this article are:
This section needs moving to the comparisons page(s)
After the article has been cleaned up, you may remove this message. See How to Edit a Page for help.
Sonic the Hedgehog CD
The European version oddly uses the US soundtrack for Sonic CD instead of the original Japanese soundtrack.
The hints for Sonic CD place the debug mode sound test code with the other hidden pictures.
The water in Tidal Tempest in all time zones is clear. On the Mega-CD and PC versions, the water was colored differently in all time zones (Present was green, Past was brown, Good Future was cyan, and Bad Future was red). The reason for the clear water is because this is a port of PC version. The PC version used 256-color mode, which uses a palette, similar to the original Mega Drive VDP. Consoles with modern GPUs don't properly support palette effects, so instead of rewriting it to work correctly, the palette effects were simply dropped.
Sonic the Fighters
When originally released in arcades in the US and Europe, it was renamed Sonic Championship. In Gems Collection, the title of Sonic the Fighters was used for every region. Model data of all unused characters was removed. Character data still exists, but upon selection, the game crashes due to missing models.
Sonic R
Due to the limited amount of controller slots on the PS2, Sonic R's multiplayer mode was reduced to two players from the possible four on the PC version. The GCN version preserves the four player capability from the PC version. The draw distance is greatly improved over previous versions.