Recent reviews by loganjamesalex

Five minutes on Google found me the NVIDIA control panel settings that fixed the stutter and audio crackle. I can use DX12 no problem after that. Didn't need mods or editing files or anything like that. GTX 1080

I most likely will write a longer review when I finish.

Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!

This game is too cool. If you are at all interested, check it out. Even though I tap out at about 20% for all the puzzle games I still think it's rad. As for the Early Access bit, the game is a complete package with no bugs that I could find. They just seem to be not 100% sure on some of the design mechanics and tutorials so put it into EA for feedback on stuff like that. There is no part of the game that you have to wait for a future update to play.

EDIT: As of TODAY playing as '& Tails' in any of the games is FIXED!! (I even tested Knuckles & Tails in Sonic 2 as well as Sonic & Tails in Sonic 1 using level select codes)

There are already mods that give the old music, add the CRT filters or character sprites ported straight from Sonic Mania, play as Metal Sonic in 1 & CD mod, etc. . . That list will only grow from here and the mods even been made to work on modded Switch consoles according to the community. We will most likely be getting a mod for Knuckles in CD very soon.


Playing it on the new game engine with none of the regular emulation features I am used to like save states and rewind but having no extra lives and instant restart from the pause menu that doesn't even reset the music gives an entirely fresh new feeling to these games I have revisited so many times. Let alone the widescreen and smooth 60fps everwhere.

Being able to retry Special Stages if you miss the Chaos Emerald is really nice too. Anything that lagged on emulation due to limitations on the game engine like some of the Special Stages in the later games is gone due to the new game engine and we have never seen S3&K on this game engine before so that game is smoother than ever. I also heard they fixed the Super Sonic animation frames in S3&K so they are totally unique and do not use any of Sonics regular animation frames as well.

The drop dash feels great in all the games, I have no idea what that top review is talking about but it works great for me with an Xbox One controller in Sonic 1 and 2. (Tails is broken, though I don't think it's his AI cause he would get stuck lots before. I think it is just the range at which he "flies" back to Sonic when he is stuck that seems to be changed by accident. Perhaps a by-product of increasing the screen size that they failed to realise in time due the strict deadline of Sonic's Birthday. I hope this is fixed soon).

The new animations are amazing, the AI upscaling company they contracted to upscale the Sonic CD animations did an amazing job as well. They also added a new level transition to tie the animations further into the games and the story mode that lets you play through all 4 games in one go really shows how much the animations add to tying these stories together. There has been a lot of debate over the years as to whether Sonic CD should go before or after Sonic 2 and now we finally have an official order of events (it goes before Sonic 2).

The new challenge levels are so good! I didn't think anything like that would be in the game. I would have been promoting that a lot more than Mirror Mode if I was SEGA (honestly who cares about Mirror Mode?) they really helped me get into the swing of not having rewinds and save states after I realised how different this was gonna be. You can earn coins so quickly there too, if you are interested in unlocking all the extra museum content or just having tons of retries for the Special Stages you should check it out. This for me is the main reason to bother with the Digital Deluxe, as the most difficult challenges in the game are locked behind the "Premium Fun Pack."

The museum is full of great content but there are some questionable design choices in the way that content is presented to the player. For example scans of the original game manuals are there but in order to flip to the next page you have to exit full screen mode every time which also resets the zoom. Also images aren't centred by default which means you have to manually centre them every time you reset the zoom. The music can be organised into playlists which can only be listened to in the museum while you are looking at the illustrations or something and the interface for building these playlists is so clunky you are better off avoiding it. The music DLC is nice but again it can't really be listened to in many places and the game has DRM so. . . You are already connected to the internet to play. Meaning you could just listen to it online MUCH easier. As well as the video content just being the Sonic Mania Adventures from YouTube as well as snippets from the Sonic 30th Anniversary Symphony that is also fully available on YouTube. Thankfully some of the illustrations have never been released to the general public before and they are all extremely high quality scans that look good all the way zoomed in. They also included some Sonic Mania Adventures behind the scenes stuff in the video content that I don't believe is available online but that just makes me wish ALL the video content besides cutscenes featured in-game were behind the scenes or interviews (which there are absolutely none).

Which leads me to my last point. . . The "DLC" which really feels like you are just changing a zero to a one in the game files somewhere that turns on the additional content. Separating this content from the base game is just a bad idea when it could have been included in the game as something extra to spend coins on because as it is you only need to play through the challenge levels once to unlock all the content (unless you don't have the DLC then you might have to replay a couple of the high coin earning challenges).


In the end for me as a massive Sonic fan whose very first introduction to video games was classic SEGA Genesis Sonic I 100% had to buy this game. Having the games on Retro Engine on PC without mobile emulation as well as having Sonic 3 & Knuckles on the Retro Engine was enough to convince me. However for many people I realise the price point is high and I think SEGA easily should have at least included the DLC in that price, probably knocking another $5 off that even. So even though I really like this collection and would say this is probably the best way to play these games on PC, especially thanks to the mod community, I would still say that this is a, "wait for a sale" purchase for most people. I give it 8/10 subtracting a point for the DLC price/high price in general and another for the super clunky museum.

The extra cost hurts both those who pay for this and those who don't. It should be included in the base game.

The extra cost hurts both those who pay for this and those who don't. It should be included in the base game.

SEGA actively encouraging piracy/emulation by de-listing these. . . .

Soundtrack is broken. Downloads 0 files, just makes a folder. Verify says, "all 0 out of 0 files verified."

Got me through so much I can't imagine playing without it in the arsenal. Sucks that it is exclusive.

They fixed it today on June 23, 2022. Now it actually downloads properly and can be used.

Only one 320kbps .mp3 of each song so you won't find the FLAC here.