Three Mega Drive favourites on one cartridge: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. Sonic Compilation in Europe and other PAL countries, Sonic Classics in the Americas and South Korea.
ReleasedAug 1995 (Europe) · 24 Apr 1997 (North America)
PublisherSega
GamesSonic 1, Sonic 2, Mean Bean Machine
Players1 or 2
Cartridge3 MB (24 megabits)
JapanNever released
Title
Sonic Classics Europe and other PAL countries: Sonic Compilation; Australia also had a 3 in 1 edition
Platform
Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
Developer
Sega (compilation of games by Sonic Team, Sega Technical Institute and Compile)
Publisher
Sega
Distributors
Tec Toy (Brazil), HiCom (South Korea), Majesco Sales (US re-release), Ecofilmes (Portugal), Zegetron (Greece), Sega-Ozisoft (Australia), Consumer Electronics (South Africa)
24 April 1997 (1190); later re-released by Majesco
Released (Brazil)
June 1997 (Tec Toy, 042780)
Released (South Korea)
1997 (HiCom)
Also released
Portugal, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa
Rating
ESRB: Kids to Adults
Cartridge
3 MB; two ROM revisions, built June 1995 and January 1997
Overview
A compilation featuring Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. Also known as Sonic Compilation in Europe.
Sonic Classics does exactly what it says on the box. Sega squeezed its two biggest Mega Drive platformers and its Sonic-themed puzzle game onto one 3 MB cartridge, added a simple menu to choose between them, and sold it in Europe from August 1995. Some European Mega Drive consoles came with it in the box.
It travelled further than most Sonic releases. Australia, South Africa, Portugal, Greece and New Zealand had it, Tec Toy put it out in Brazil, HiCom in South Korea, and Sega finally brought it to North America in April 1997, with Majesco reissuing it later. It never came out in Japan.
Under the hood it is more interesting than it looks. The Sonic 2 on this cartridge is a quietly revised version that fans only fully pinned down in 2012, the compilation added a few bugs of its own, and lock it onto Sonic & Knuckles and you can play the whole of Blue Sphere.
Choose your game.The European Sonic Compilation box.Mean Bean Machine, the third game.
“Includes 3 great Sonic games!”
The North American box needed no more of a pitch than that banner across the top. Sega’s cover simply stacked the three games’ own logos, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, over the artwork.
— Official packaging: the North American Sonic Classics box (Sega, 1997), from the scan on Sonic Retro. Box line quoted; the rest describes the cover.
Quick Answers
The short answers, with the detail further down the page.
What games are on Sonic Classics?
Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. Every regional edition has the same three. More →
Is Sonic Compilation the same thing?
Yes. Sonic Compilation is the name in Europe and other PAL countries such as Australia and South Africa; North America, Brazil and South Korea got Sonic Classics. Australia also had a 3 in 1 edition. More →
When did it come out?
In Europe in August 1995, and in North America on 24 April 1997. It was never released in Japan. More →
Are the games the same as the originals?
Almost. Sonic 1 is the standard version with one new palette bug, and Sonic 2 is a revised build, REV02, with fixes from Sega and a few new bugs of its own. More →
Does it work with Sonic & Knuckles?
Yes: locked on, it unlocks the full Blue Sphere game, just as the original Sonic 1 cartridge does. More →
Can you go back to the menu?
Only by pressing reset or switching the console off and on again. More →
Plot / Story
Sonic, the star of two of the three games.
Sonic Classics has no story of its own, but it carries three. Two are the classic Sonic adventures, in which Dr. Robotnik chases the Chaos Emeralds and Sonic, joined in the second game by Tails, runs him down. The third swaps platforms for puzzles and cartoon slapstick, with Robotnik turning the people of Beanville into robots.
Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
The 1991 original.
The game that started it all, from Sonic Team. Robotnik is hunting the Chaos Emeralds, and Sonic tears through six zones of loops, springs and Badniks to stop him, collecting rings as he goes. Read more on our Sonic the Hedgehog page.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992)
The 1992 sequel.
Made in California by Sega Technical Institute, the sequel adds Tails as Sonic’s sidekick, the Spin Dash and a two-player mode, and sends Sonic after the Death Egg, the space station Robotnik wants the Emeralds to power. Read more on our Sonic the Hedgehog 2 page.
Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (1993)
The 1993 puzzle game.
Compile’s Puyo Puyo, rebuilt with characters from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. Robotnik is kidnapping the beans of Beanville to make robots out of them, and you stop him by stacking and popping coloured beans. Sonic himself does not appear. Read more on our Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine page.
The games on the cartridge
The select menu shows a new little rendering of each game’s box art. Press left or right to choose and Start to play.
Sonic the Hedgehog1991 · Sonic TeamThe worldwide REV00 version, plus one new palette bug in Scrap Brain Zone.
Sonic the Hedgehog 21992 · Sega Technical InstituteSega’s silent second revision, REV02, with fixes from Sega and a handful of new bugs found only on this cartridge.
Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine1993 · CompileThe Mega Drive puzzle game, whose music and chime also play on the select menu.
Adventures of Sonic the HedgehogTV · 1993Mean Bean Machine’s cast, from Robotnik to his robot henchmen, comes straight from the American cartoon.
Sonic & KnucklesMega Drive · 1994Lock this cartridge on to Sonic & Knuckles and it opens the full Blue Sphere game.
Sonic 2 DeltaFan hackEsrael built his well-known Sonic 2 hack on the REV02 code from this cartridge, and in 2012 released it as a standalone ROM with a full disassembly.
Characters
The casts of three games in one place. Artwork is from our Sonic 2 and Mean Bean Machine pages.
Character
Who they are
In this game
Stats & abilities
Sonic the HedgehogSonic 1 and Sonic 2
Sega’s supersonic mascot.
The hero of both platform games. He sits out Mean Bean Machine altogether.
Spin attack and rings in both games
Spin Dash in Sonic 2
Miles “Tails” ProwerSonic 2
Sonic’s two-tailed fox sidekick, who joins him in Sonic 2.
Follows Sonic through Sonic 2, and a second player can take control of him.
Playable in Sonic 2’s two-player mode
Dr. RobotnikAll three games
The mad scientist behind every scheme.
Chases the Chaos Emeralds in both Sonic games and turns Beanville’s beans into robots in Mean Bean Machine.
The villain of all three games
Has BeanMean Bean Machine
Puyo Puyo’s Carbuncle under a new name.
A little helper who reacts to how you play.
Animations change with your play
How it was made
Our original page had two sentences, both kept in the overview. This section is new.
Three games, one cartridge
The menu with its unused text background restored.Image via Sonic Retro
The only new thing Sega made for the compilation was the select menu, with fresh small renderings of each game’s box art. Its music and the chime you hear on choosing a game come from Mean Bean Machine. A shaded background panel for the menu text sits unused in the data.
The three games themselves are almost untouched, but not quite. The Sonic 1 code is the standard worldwide release, yet moving it to a new place on the cartridge broke the cycling palette in Scrap Brain Zone, because the game’s two-byte palette pointers could no longer reach their data. Sonic 2 is a revision Sega made quietly after the 1992 release.
The Sonic 2 mystery
For years fans suspected that the compilation’s Sonic 2 was a third version of the game, REV02. It was confirmed in June 2012, when the hacker Esrael, who had used this build as the base for his hack Sonic 2 Delta, extracted it as a standalone ROM and then published a disassembly showing Sega’s bug fixes and changes.
Release
Sonic Compilation reached British shops on 25 August 1995 at £39.99, and was also packed in with some European Mega Drives. The American Sonic Classics followed on 24 April 1997, with Brazil and South Korea the same year. Two builds of the cartridge exist: one from June 1995 for Europe, and a revision from January 1997 used in both America and Europe.
Firsts: what this game introduced
What the compilation added to the games on it.
1Full Blue SphereOne of only two cartridges, with the original Sonic 1, that unlock the complete Blue Sphere game when locked on to Sonic & Knuckles.
2New box-art renderingsThe select menu draws each game’s cover in miniature, the only new art made for the release.
3Sonic 2 REV02 on a shop shelfSega’s quietly revised Sonic 2, sold here as part of the bundle.
Glitches, exploits and oddities
Sonic Retro has catalogued the bugs this cartridge added to its games.
Scrap Brain’s broken palette
The cycling colours in Sonic 1’s Scrap Brain Zone load the wrong data, because the palette pointers are only two bytes long and the data now sits past the first 64 kB of the ROM.
No Spin Dash off the Tornado
In Sonic 2’s Sky Chase Zone you can no longer Spin Dash off the plane; Sonic or Tails just hovers in the air for a moment.
Walking on air in Wing Fortress
The vertical conveyor platforms in Wing Fortress Zone no longer drop you when they retract into the wall, so you can walk on thin air.
Unmirrored sparks and legs
Mecha Sonic’s sparks and the Grabber Badnik’s legs are not flipped when they turn round. These Sonic 2 bugs appear on this cartridge only, not on other REV02 copies such as Knuckles in Sonic 2.
Cheats, but not Game Genie
The games’ built-in cheat codes still work, but Game Genie codes made for the original cartridges do not, because the games sit at different places on the ROM.
No way back
Once you pick a game, the only way back to the menu is the reset button or the power switch.
The emulator gap
The full Blue Sphere trick depends on a quirk of the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge, which reads the last 2 MB of a larger ROM. Emulators do not reproduce it.
Videos & media
The North American Sonic Classics played through, and the European Sonic Compilation start-up and menu.
A playthrough by DirtCat Retro Plays.
The start-up and menu, recorded by retrocopyvideos.
Trivia & facts
The European cartridge.Image via Sonic RetroThe cartridge is 3 MB, the 24 megabits of three Mega Drive games at once.
European cartridges were made in two places: some are labelled Assembled in UK, others Made in Philippines.
Sega’s North American box carries the banner “Includes 3 great Sonic games!”
Seven companies besides Sega handled it around the world, from Majesco in America to Zegetron in Greece.
Mean Bean Machine has no Sonic in it, so on a cartridge called Sonic Classics one game in three has no Sonic.
Media & artwork
Boxes and cartridges from around the world, from Sonic Retro and Sonic Wiki Zone, with Sonic Scene’s own art for the games inside. Select any image to view it larger.
North American box.Back of the North American box.Majesco re-release.European box.Back of the European box.South African box.Australian box.Australian 3 in 1 edition.Brazilian box (Tec Toy).South Korean box.North American cartridge.European cartridge.Brazilian cartridge.The select menu.The unused menu background.Sonic the Hedgehog.Sonic the Hedgehog 2.Mean Bean Machine.
Legacy
Sonic Classics was one of the earliest ways to buy the Mega Drive Sonic games again. It was not alone, though: in 1995 Sega’s PAL cartridge Mega 6 Vol. 3 also put Sonic 1 alongside five other Mega Drive favourites.
Editions
Europe: Sonic CompilationAugust 1995 – UK release 25 August 1995, £39.99; also a pack-in with some Mega Drives.
Portugal, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa1990s – Ecofilmes, Zegetron, Sega-Ozisoft and Consumer Electronics among the distributors; Australia also had a 3 in 1 edition.
North America: Sonic Classics24 April 1997 – Sega; later reissued by Majesco Sales.
Brazil: Sonic ClassicsJune 1997 – Tec Toy.
South Korea: Sonic Classics1997 – HiCom.
The same three games everywhere
Whatever the name on the box, every edition holds Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. Two ROM builds exist, from June 1995 and January 1997, but the line-up never changed.
Sales & reviews
Sales and reviews
No sales figures have been published for the compilation, and we have not found a review score to list.
3Games on one cartridge
3 MBROM size
£39.99UK price, August 1995
2ROM builds, 1995 and 1997
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet. Played it? Give it a score out of 10 and tell other fans what you think.
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources below. Sonic Retro and Sega Retro pages were read through Wayback Machine copies, because both live sites show a bot check; each link opens the copy we read. The first two sentences of the overview are Luke’s text from the original Sonic Scene page.
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Sonic the Hedgehog1991 · Sonic TeamThe worldwide REV00 version, plus one new palette bug in Scrap Brain Zone.
Sonic the Hedgehog 21992 · Sega Technical InstituteSega’s silent second revision, REV02, with fixes from Sega and a handful of new bugs found only on this cartridge.
Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine1993 · CompileThe Mega Drive puzzle game, whose music and chime also play on the select menu.
Miles “Tails” ProwerSonic 2
Dr. RobotnikAll three games
Has BeanMean Bean Machine
