Sonic Jam Review (Tiger Game.com, 1998)

People have strong opinions on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. This is especially true when speaking of the worst game in the series. Many claim it’s the Sonic the Hedgehog reboot on the Xbox 360/PS3, others say Sonic and the Black Knight is worse, and still more think it’s the remake of the original on the Game Boy Advance. Whenever I hear these arguments it becomes abundantly clear that no one played Sonic Jam on the Tiger Game.com. This is a port of the Sega Saturn collection which contained the games released on the Sega Genesis with enhancements and loads of bonus materials. That was a good release. This however, isn’t. Not by a long shot. While it has the same intentions as the Saturn version it’s like a night and day difference between the two releases. Let’s take a look.

As I’ve already mentioned Sonic Jam is a collection containing the mainline 16-bit Sonic the Hedgehog games. In this case it’s only Sonic 2, Sonic 3, as well as Sonic & Knuckles. The first one didn’t make the cut here. Upon booting up the game you select which of the three you want to play. This Game.com version does not include the ability to save your progress in any of them, nor can you continue via passwords. Every time you boot this title you have to start whatever game you pick from the very beginning. That’s not a big deal because each iteration of Sonic here only has five stages. They can be completed in one sitting pretty easily. Not that you would want to however because the game is an absolute nightmare to play.

I’ll get to how horrible it is later. First let’s cover the basics. Upon selecting which Sonic adventure you’d like to play you then are given your choice of character. These include Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails. We’re off to a good start so far. The games are all two dimensional platformers wherein your goal is simply to make it from one end of a stage to the next. Your life bar is measured in rings that the character collects. Each time you take damage these are all lost. The character dies if you are damaged without any rings or automatically upon falling down a pit. At the end of stage 3, as well as stage 5 you face off against a boss character that takes a little more finesse to dispatch. On top of running each character has two basic moves they can perform; a jump and spin dash.

Each of these games in their original forms were amazing. These were genre defining titles that have rightly earned their legendary statuses in the minds of gamers. It’s unfortunate then that the developers at Tiger couldn’t re-create the magic with this release. There’s pretty much no point in breaking down the three games separately because they all suffer from the same issues. First of all the framerate (like in most Game.com games) is absolutely terrible. The action moves with the finesse of a slideshow. If you’ve played any other games on the platform then you know this is routine. Sonic Jam does not animate well by any means. For a game based on momentum where your characters run fast this completely ruins the experience.

The physics engine is in a word, terrible. Sonic games are based primarily on momentum. Your goal is generally to run as fast and efficiently to the goal as possible. These games chug along and displaces your kinetic energy constantly. For lack of better term Sonic Jam ‘forgets’ how fast you were moving sometimes. I’ve had moments where I completely lost momentum while running uphill for no good reason. In other instances I found myself sliding backwards after not moving fast enough and coming to a complete standstill on said incline. It doesn’t make much sense but you can kind of reset your momentum by jumping. This makes little sense, and it’s like you’re exploiting the game or something. In other instances I kept getting stuck because your speed can be lost when bouncing off of a bumper.

Unfortunately a lot of the series trademarks were also cut. The spin dash remains but it feels like you barely get any speed from it. Additionally when hit you no longer get a chance to re-collect your lost rings. Instead they’re gone forever. The biggest crime however is that Knuckles and Tails no longer have their signature fly and glide abilities. These are what set them apart from Sonic himself, and without them it feels pointless to even include these guys here. Basically they’re just sprite variations now. What’s also really bad is that, while the stages and mechanics are based off of those in the original Genesis versions, the level designs have been severely cut back. Some have been completely redone. None of this is for the better. At this point the developers should have just made an original Sonic the Hedgehog game for the platform.

Now let’s talk about the lack of options or even game content. Remember all of the added bonuses in the Sega Saturn version? Like the commercials, sketches, and promotional material? Or how about the Sonic World mode which had an original level you could explore? Yeah, none of that was included here. There isn’t any bonus materials in this package. The most you get is 8-bit renditions of each cartridge from the game select screen. There aren’t even any other modes to play the games in. The fact that Tiger just slapped this port together with literally nothing celebrating Sonic shows that they didn’t even understand the original package. It was originally intended to be a celebration of the franchise. This version is more like a funeral for it.

It also doesn’t help that Sonic Jam is such a short game on the Tiger Game.com. With only five stages for each classic title (and these are already shortened and simplified) there isn’t a whole lot to this cartridge. I forced myself to play through it all and was actually kind of relieved that I could complete it in less than an hour. The original Sonic releases each took around that long to complete apiece. The fact that this was released as a full priced video game (by Game.com standards) shows a real lack of caring. The length here is even padded by how many times you’ll die because the engine is so bad. The actual obstacles aren’t much of a challenge, nor are the enemies. It’s actually trying to play it that’s difficult. Not all handheld games should be long, but this one is painfully short.

Like most releases for the Tiger Game.com screenshots are deceiving. Just look at still images of Sonic Jam and you might think it looks pretty good, and it does. The backgrounds have a surprising amount of detail for a handheld title from this era, and the character models are highly detailed and consist of really good sprite work. It’s clear that some visual materials were ported directly from the Sega Genesis. While in motion the game tells a different story though. As I mentioned earlier it animates like a slide show. The framerate here is worse than in any other Sonic the Hedgehog game. The characters have very few frames of animation. Sonic loses all sense of speed in this release and actually moves slower than Mario for the first time. The music is also terrible. There’s one song that plays in every stage, and it is awful.