Have any of yall had a game that was like incredibly elusive but interesting? one of those games that you know of, but for one way or another, can't actually play. That was this game for me. I had heard of it decades ago on the sonic central website's game catalog (no idea why that website was so comprehensive to the point where they added pico games, but props to em), and I was intrigued just by the title and low res jpeg of the title screen alone. "Tails and the music maker"? The game kinda has that "Mario's time machine" kind of vibe where if you don't know what it is, it sounds like it could be an interesting game, but once you do more research on it, you realize its a lame edutainment game. Add that to the fact that unlike marios time machine, tails and the music maker is on the weird-ass hardware that is the sega pico, and you have an irritatingly unplayable piece of sonic history. Unlike sonic gameworld, the other sega pico title in the sonic series, tails and the music maker was focused a lot more on "education", in a way. You do a bunch of weird minigames, and the pages in the book cart are the same things as the actual image on the game screen, which leaves me to wonder what the point of the book is to begin with, and each page is just another lukewarm minigame that tries to teach kids about music. Something like sonic gameworld gets a pass because that game wasn't trying to be some shoehorned educational experience, but instead just a little minigame collection for kids. This game bogs down the minigames to make them music themed, and ends up making this edutainment game neither educational nor entertaining. They could have made an interesting music making program using the sega picos weird custom sound chip to teach kids how to make music, but instead they made this disappointment. I wasn't expecting the world from this game, I knew I was getting myself into some braindead children's media, but compared to sonic gameworld, this is night and day and thoroughly disappointing.