hey guys welcome to my review of this Ikea™ branded shelf! also before the video begins be sure to comment, subscribe and smash that like button into FUCKING OBLIVION!!! so on to the shelf, it's actually quite good! very sturdy! sturdy enough to hold my massive dump truck ass! see as I test it right no- breaks and I fall on the floor ow! fucking hell! this doesn't make for a good sitting shelf at all! (or as I call it a shitting™ XD) now if you'll excuse me I'm off to go see if my Wii remote makes for a good masturbation device,

This is a compilation of Sonic games featuring classic levels from Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. You can choose to play them as either Sonic, Tails or Knuckles. These are advertising points on the box of the Game.com version of Sonic Jam, a game better known for being an extremely well made Sonic compilation for the Sega Saturn.

If you don’t know what the GameCom was, it was a handheld that tried to compete with the Game Boy. It had a similar black and white screen but boasted higher specs – although games didn’t really utilise it. It did have a touch screen and limited internet capability. When porting a game to a handheld system like this, you have to compromise in some way, mainly graphics, to make the game playable.

Except Tiger Electronics didn’t want to do this. The sprites are taken straight from the Mega Drive games (if they didn’t want to make any, they could have asked for the Game Gear ones). This focus on graphics (it should be noted that it’s a black and white console, so all backgrounds were removed) is one of the core issues with the Game.com version of Sonic Jam: Sonic takes up most of the screen.

The levels in this are also not the levels from the classic games, but merely “inspired” by the first stage of each. There are four acts for each, but when you take Emerald Hill and Angel Island, remove the background and make them black and white, they look extremely similar. Despite being made for the GameCom, the levels don’t feel like they were made for the console, as you have falls you can’t see (a lot of the time, the ground is pretty much five pixels from the bottom of the ground), you need to jump over spikes before they appear on the screen and all sorts of other problems due to the tiny amount you can see on both sides. The Game Gear version of Sonic 2 is known for having these issues, but the GameCom Sonic is even worse.

Then there are the physics of Sonic himself. The developers figured this aspect of Sonic was so important that it renders the game unplayable. If you go slow enough so that you have time to stop before a jump, you won’t be able to make the jump. You’ll often have to run backwards in order to do a running jump. Inclines also kill your speed almost instantly, unless you’re running at full speed (which will cause death), you can sometimes make it to the top, but other times you have to move up it bit by bit by jumping constantly for 20+ seconds. It really is agonising to play.

After four acts in each of the three “games”, you’ve played everything. The one good thing I have to say is that there is a good variety in bosses, as you will encounter them in acts 2, 3 and 4. These are based on bosses in the games, but because they have to place Dr Robotnik on the screen, you just have to jump up a few times to kill him.

Sonic Jam on the GameCom is by far the worst Sonic game I’ve encountered so far, and I think it will likely be the worst overall.

I have seen lots of complaints pertaining to specific Sonic games over my time playing them. Some say that 06 is the worst, or that one Labyrinth spinoff is bad. They are all wrong: nothing compares to this specific Sonic title.

Sonic Jam on the Tiger game.com is an incredibly barebones and barely operational Sonic game that isn’t even a “compilation” like its Saturn counterpart. You get 3 “games” in total: Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. Note the usage of quotes on “games”, as in reality each game has one zone spread across a tedious four acts. 2 gets Emerald Hill, 3 gets Angel Island and S&K gets Mushroom Hill.

The “Sonic World” overworld present in the Saturn counterpart is outright missing here, and so is Sonic 1. Sonic 3D Blast, present in pre-release material for this game, is also not here. Must have either been a time related exclusion, or a quality assurance thing. Would be hilarious if the latter.

What does not help matters is the fact that not only is the game.com hardware clearly having trouble running the game in the first place, but controls are wonky and certain characters cannot clear specific levels. Sonic and Knuckles can not get up the Angel Island tree sequence, it is outright bugged in this version. If you don’t know this, then you’ll find out the hard way by repeatedly trying to run up it.

Tails is the only one capable of bypassing this sequence by virtue of Tails having flight (though busted in comparison to even the Mega Drive original). Knuckles doesn’t even have his gliding or climbing abilities from the Mega Drive original, he is practically just a skin of Sonic himself. If you want to actually play through the game in its entirety, then you are effectively forced into playing as Tails.

Visuals are awful and are reminiscent of those unofficial Game Boy Sonic bootlegs, and the sound doesn’t fare much better either. There is zone music present in the game but because of the hardware it’s slowed down to an outright crawl; it sounds like incoherent beeps and boops.

There are special stages in this game but they are not mandatory to beat the game. Literally. It doesn’t even matter. The special stages themselves are the same ones present in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, being Blue Spheres (albeit hardware limitations make them look more like Black Spheres). I only ever got to these once, then never bothered reaching them again.

Unless you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for Sonic games to play, don’t bother touching this one. I wouldn’t even recommend playing this. Play the Saturn counterpart, or any Sonic compilation to get a better experience.