Sonic 3D Blast (USA, Europe) ROM

Ever imagined a 3D Sonic game, minus the 3D? We are talking about Sonic 3D Blast, one of the most (in)famous installations of Sonic ever.
This 1996 incarnation was one of the last games in the Megadrive/Genesis library, before it got replaced with the Sega Saturn. This game even got ported to the aforementioned platform and Windows/PC.
The story comes like a filler for the Sonic series: Robotnik (Eggman in Japan) discovers a race of birds, the Flickies (an obscure reference to a previous Sega game, named Flicky), which he turns into robots, to help him find the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic comes visiting the Flicky island and finds out his friends turned into robots, so he goes around the island destroying them to rescue the Flickies inside and foil Robotnick's plans once again.
From a pseudo 3D isometric point of view, Sonic 3D Blast is usually one of the most panned games, but also, one of the most acclaimed.
It is widely panned for its counterintuitive gameplay: The spindash is really poor, the controls together with the graphics feel weird (mainly because of the isometric point of view), Sonic is not a fast creature anymore, and the platforming skills founded with previous Sonic games are useless, a fault (again) of the isometric perspective, thus, stuff that looks near to the player might be really away. Instead of being a really innovative game, it becomes a hindrance.
One particular gameplay mechanic that turns the game even slower is the need to find and destroy all robots in the level to find out 5 flickies. Without them you can't advance, because each now and then, a big ring closes up one of the teleporters towards the next section of the level.
To gather the Chaos Emeralds, you have to find Tails or Knuckles in the map and give them 50 or more rings. Get all the 7 Chaos Emeralds hidden in one of the bridges/Special stages, finish the game and pat yourself in the back, you completed Sonic 3D Blast.
On the other side of the coin, the game is widely acclaimed because of its music. The compositions created for this game are spectacular by definition, with multiple remixes been done of several songs. One of the most popular songs, Panic Puppet Zone Act 1, was used up again with a different orchestration in Sonic Adventure.
All in all, with 7 zones, a final fight and 7 special stages worth of complexity, with an awkward point of view, weird controllers but an awesome sound track, Sonic 3D Blast might not be for everyone, but anyone who dares to call himself a serious Sonic fan has to play it, even if it's only for completionism sake.

Sonic 3D Blast (USA, Europe) is a Sega Genesis game that was developed and published by Traveller's Tales and Sega. Sonic is in a 3D world with all the flickies. When the flickies got captured, Sonic must rescue them before time runs out. Defeat Doctor Robotnik and his forces in order to complete the game.