I've heard good things about Tails Adventure, which I've gotten the impression is regarded as a gem among Sonic fans. Maybe I'm just listening to the wrong people, because I didn't care for it. Placing Tails in a search-action game is definitely a more worthwhile idea than whatever the hell Sky Patrol was going for (devil's advocate: it was never meant to be a Tails game), but its design is severely encumbered by the Game Gear's hardware, or possibly emulation issues with Sonic Gems Collection. Maybe a bit of both! I have no idea. All I know if it drops frames about as often as it drops inputs, and it's enough to make this a total chore to play.

Not that performance is the only thing dragging this game down. There's some... questionable design elements here. Tails can only carry four items at a time, and you can only change his load-out back at his workshop. In theory this forces you to be more considerate of what you're taking with you, but in practice it fails to gel with the rest of Tails Adventure's search-action design. In these kinds of games, hitting an impassable barrier should encourage the player to explore further. However, too often the barriers I encountered were the result of me not having the foresight to equip the specific set of items I need. As far as I can tell, there's no way to warp back to the map, so if you hit a dead end of any sort you get to slowly trudge your way back through the level or throw Tails into a pit, which for some reason doesn't kill him. How intuitive.

At least this looks impressive for a Game Gear game. I was genuinely surprised by the fidelity of some of the sprite art, and although the bosses are absolutely not fun to fight, they look great. I also love Tails' little submarine, but maybe that's the byproduct of reading the Archie comics as a kid. All of this could only carry me for about 45 minutes, after that I was begging for the game to be over.

I don't know what's up with these sidekick solo outings being so bad, but at least Tails Adventure is a few hairs better than Knuckles' Chaotix. Of course, nothing can beat Shadow the Hedgehog. Now that's a video game. Even if it weren't one of the greatest titles of the sixth gen, it'd be carried off the power of its lead character alone. Shadow the Hedgehog is a gift from the heavens, immaculate and created by God to be a modern day messiah. Knuckles and Tails can't compete with that.