I had a quick look at Sonic Gems Collection, and I can tell you Sonic fanatics that it should round out your game collection with some more obscure titles from the Hedgehog's library.

There isn't much to the E3 demo I played with. Only three games are listed: Sonic: The Fighters (Arcade), Sonic CD (Sega CD), and Sonic R (Sega Saturn). Strangely, Sonic R is listed but not playable.

Sonic: The Fighters is a strange little 3-D fighter that has Sonic scrapping with other characters from the series in a ring that floats through the sky. The controls involve a lot of button-mashing, but you can actually pull off some combos and make your opponent spill - yup, you guessed it - rings all over the playfield. I didn't play this for very long because there isn't much to get into, but our resident fighting addict Ty Shugart would probably tell you otherwise. =)

Sonic CD is classic Genesis-era Hedgehog action. Bouncing around like a pinball, going through loop-de-loops, grabbing rings and losing them on spikes, the whole nine yards. I'm not too familar with what set this CD game apart from its cartridge-based brethren, but I can tell you that it hasn't been changed a bit. It looks exactly like it did on the Genesis more than a decade ago.

Sonic Gems Collection should immediately pique the interest of Sonic the Hedgehog

completists. Sonic: The Fighters has never had a console port to our knowledge, so its

inclusion should make a lot of people happy. Sonic Gems Collection is currently slated

for an August release.