Review by: Danielle Riendeau

At first glance, Dreamcast Collection seems a little anemic. A compilation of four seems a little stingy for a console that easily had 20+ absolute-must-have titles in its short lifespan – especially considering that only two of those are included here.

If you’re able to look past the exclusion of classics like Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio, Chu Chu Rocket, the PowerStone’s, the NBA and NFL 2Ks and the epic roster of RPGs and fighters, you’ll have a lot of fun with the games that are here: Sonic Adventure, Sega Bass Fishing, Space Channel 5 Part 2 and Crazy Taxi. It’s only a small sampling of what made the Dreamcast such an incredible system for hardcore gamers – but it does a good job of representing the colorful arcade-y ethos of the machine.

I was most worried about Sonic Adventure, after hearing about the shoddy work done on the XBLA port. I’m pleased to report that the game is intact – this is the same, blazing fast platformer that caused motion sickness on the console way back on 9.9.99. It’s certainly not perfect – the camera can be a complete hassle to control, some of the “adventure fields” in between action stages are fraught with confusing objectives, and this was the title that started the unwelcome trend of bringing in weird stages designed around Sonic’s crappy friends (like “Big the Cat”). Despite this, it’s a very fun, well-paced adventure with tons and tons of content – and certainly the best Sonic game prior to last year’s surprisingly good Sonic Colors.

The most surprising, colorful, and nigh-insane title in the package is Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s (Lumines, Rez, the upcoming Child of Eden) wacked out sequel to the original Space Channel 5, a pattern-based dancing game. You’ll know from the premise whether this is your wheelhouse or not: you play as Ulala, a retro-fantastic space reporter who grooves to the news and engages evil aliens and rival dance crews in dance battles to save the universe.

The music, graphics and storyline are all awesome in a very candy-colored J-Pop sort of way, and the dancing action is addictive – that is, when it’s not being overly punitive. It’s a little odd to be playing a dancing game on a controller in 2011 (oh, how motion controls have changed us), and the timing can be incredibly tricky. On the plus side, you can configure the controller however you like (and even map multiple commands onto one button), and there is multiplayer, if you can convince a friend to control a dancing Barbie lookalike along with you.

The runt of the litter is the fishing game, which was a well-regarded arcade classic back in 1999 – but time hasn’t been kind. The graphics simply haven’t held up as well as they have for Sonic and Space Channel, and compared to the kinetic thrills of everything else on the disc, playing a fishing game (however arcade-inspired) just feels a bit boring.