Sega Smash Pack Volume 1 (Dreamcast) review "I can't believe I bought this compilation over Cannon Spike back when they were both new. I guess the allure of owning 12 "classic" Sega games got to me. I figured I would have more fun with a collection of mostly old-school games than I would with one title going for the same price. I was wrong. And here I am, four years later, writing a review of Sega Smash Pack Volume 1, and regretting overlooking a game that is now hard to get and probably going for twice its original retail pr..."

I can't believe I bought this compilation over Cannon Spike back when they were both new. I guess the allure of owning 12 "classic" Sega games got to me. I figured I would have more fun with a collection of mostly old-school games than I would with one title going for the same price. I was wrong. And here I am, four years later, writing a review of Sega Smash Pack Volume 1, and regretting overlooking a game that is now hard to get and probably going for twice its original retail price on some auction site.

Sega, thinking they could get a quick buck from people like me, put together a crappy compilation of so-called "great" games. Altered Beast's "are we there yet?" paced gameplay is nothing to write home about; the only redeeming quality is that the game is sooo cheesy, you just have to play through it once to experience it all. Strong, manly men who (you knew it was coming) WYSZ FOM TUR GRAVV's to fight demons in their thongs and POWER UP when they grab balls? I AM SO THERE! Vectorman is strictly an average platformer that tried to wow gamers with its graphics for what was considered "amazing" back when it was released for the Genesis. Quite frankly, I've seen early Genesis titles that pulled off better graphics than this. Then there's Revenge of Shinobi, or what I like to call "The Musashi and Friends Variety Hour Show" due to its overwhelming number of guest appearances like Rambo, Spider Man, and godzilla. Now, this could have turned out to be a decent game, but Joe's rigidness ruined it. For a ninja, this guy has no flexibility: he's slow, cumbersome, and can't pull off a flip half of the time. Makes me wonder why the obviously awesome Shinobi III was shunned in favor of this awfulness.

Two rpgs were also added to this collection..... two very boring rpgs. Shining Force, a srpg, is good for only ONE playthrough. After you beat the game, and realize the majority of the battles were long and boring as hell, you'll probably never touch it again. Replayability? HA! Phantasy Star 2, a supposed classic of epic proportions, is a total snoozefest. The start of the game was terrible: it took forever to get up to a decent power level, you would run into a random battle every two steps, and the first "dungeon" was annoyingly hard that I gave up on the game at that point. Classic my ass.

Then there are the baffling moments of the collection. The first one being WHY are the Genesis ports of Golden Axe, Altered Beast, and Wrestle War on here instead of the arcade versions? Was it too much to ask for? Did you really think you could get away with lazily shoving these ports into the collection and expect us to go "Screw the originals! These watered-down ports are where it's at!". The second baffling moment is the inclusion of Sega Swirl. This title was thrown onto several Official Dreamcast Magazine demo discs, and if memory serves me right, became a free game at one point. So, why in the world was this put on a compilation that I payed for? They could have used that space to include a good ga..... I'm sorry, another crappy game to the disc.

There was ONE title I enjoyed, and it was the DC version of Virtua Cop 2. I dunno, I guess going around a city as a cop, watching idiotic robbers pop out of their hiding places so they can taste justice (aka my lead) was pretty fun. Actually, it would've been two enjoyable titles, but Sonic the Hedgehog has been included in so many other Sega collections before this one, that I didn't bother playing it at all.

Sega Smash Pack Volume 1 have other crappy games that I neglected to mention, but I'm just too awesome to put you through more horror. Sega has made some pretty good compilations, but they really dropped the bomb here. "The Ultimate Package Deal"? Bah.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go back to regretting picking this over Cannon Spike. It's probably not as great as it's made out to be, but it would've still been a better choice than this.

*sits in a corner.............. doing something nonsexual*

*is lying*

-2009 note: my opinions on some of these games changed, drastically and/or slightly, since I wrote this. Vectorman still sucks, though.

Community review by dementedhut (October 14, 2005) So what's the second game going to be called? Operation Wolf Returns: Operation Thunderbolt: Second Mission?