I am kind of materialistic and I really like to stand in front of my shelf filled with games that ask to be played. Those discs usually come in a nice DVD-box or at least as a review disc. The way I received Sonic Heroes however, was below every standard. Two copied discs, they couldn't even spare a cover, in a broken jewel case. So we have to be satisfied with a blanc disc on which the title was, to be sure beautifully, handwritten.

Luckily, things seemed to improve when the autorun caused the installation menu to pop up. With one click on a button you can choose to select Sonic related backgrounds and mouse pointers. Very nice touch, especially for little children which I am not so I used the default button to instantly reset the graphical environment to the frugally settings I prefer.

Apparrantly, I forgot to reinstall the latest version of DirextX after I entered the probably best known DOS command ever, "format c:", a few days ago. I already opened a browser to search for a proper download location which appeared unnecessary as the programmers where good enough to add a shortcut to the menu. Not useful you might think? Well, if a seven-year-old has to install the game on his own, I guess it isn't that bad to make things easy for him.

The actual transfer of the game files from cd-rom to my hard disk, a fast 80 Gigabyte Maxtor which runs at a speed of 7200 rpm, started. Nevertheless, it took my pc five minutes to finish the complete installation but because I could read some introducing texts that appeared above the progress bar, minutes passed as seconds, exactly the time I needed to forget about the cheap looking discs. Suddenly, the nightmare became quite vivid again: I had to enter a registration key which wasn't written on the disc. First they send me such a stupid review copy and in addition they forgot to include a key! Okay, after five minutes I found out that they mailed it so copy paste is all what was left for me to do.

Normally, I wouldn't even so much as think about playing a platform game on a PC but as a hard-core Sonic fan, I decided that i should do it. Now, it must have been coded quite solidly because nothing can make the installation go wrong and the system requirements are fairly low while everything keeps looking and running quite smoothly.
I guess it must be easier for a computer to deal with graphical environments because it does look better than on a console. The magical Sonic atmosphere as I remember it from the Sega 8-bit or Mega Drive was converted properly and the environments are very decent but they are nothing compared to the rendered movies of which the intro is the best example.

Accompanied by a up stirring beat, Sonic runs through mountains and valleys at an incredibly high speed and still manages to overcome every obstacle on his path. His companions catch up and together they take on the adventure that lies ahead. Once again they have to save the world from Doctor Ivo Robotnik who plans to kill millions with a new weapon he invented.

The clinging sound of hundreds of rings falling out of your pocket didn't lose any of its strength and the pinball effects when you blast off is still spectacular so the music and sound effects are as great as they have always been.

Unfortunately, all that jumping has become ridiculously easy nowadays so there isn't much of a challenge left. The only input expected from you is to choose the right team member: Sonic is fast, Knuckles is strong and allows you to punch through concrete, and Tails can fly. In a good old marble zone you could rush after a while but if you made one mistake you would die and that eventually meant restarting and playing everything all over again. Sometimes you had to be patient, but precision, skills and experience were needed to help you boost through the game. In Sonic Heroes everything is instantly fast, even more lineair and easy and your progress is saved. So, after a few hours, you'll be sitting there, completely bored by a lack of difficulty, challenges or something to do while your team moves on.

Perhaps a console edition would have made things fall into place better and you definitely wouldn't have to cope with porting issues. However solid the game might be, flexible it is not because in every menu or text, they still tell you to push "a" (controller from Game cube) to continue. You can forgive that in a menu but in-game that is extremely irritating, especially because every tip or tutorial results in trying all of the buttons on you keyboard. Neither, did they bother to make a handy list of buttons and their functions together with their Game cube counterpart. I guess it is fair to say that this port was done quickly, cheap, economically and above all: lousy.

Although the system requirements are low, I would prefer a console version because that allows you to play the game how it is meant to be. As a complete Game cube package and Sonic Heroes won't cost over 120 euros, I'd say that is quite cheap. Never will a pc edition be as good, even not with a controller and better graphics. In the end, it isn't the worst game ever but Sonic's days are over and I guess that every attempt to resurrect him will fail or cost damage to the legendary image I have in my mind. Conclusion: a PC is not meant to play platform games (especially when they are ported lousy) and in the genre there are far better and equally cheap titles, no matter how hard that is for me to say, being the hardcore Sonic fan I am.