This will honestly be very brief. Why? Well it’s repackaged games from 1991 to 1994 (or 96 for the Game Gear games that are included in Plus), what can I add to that beyond “wow the same!”
DO, at least thirty minutes later: Ah. No, I have Thoughts™ regarding this, never mind it’s not brief at all!
Well mostly. For three the four base games included, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic CD and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, these are all repackaged and updated versions of the pre-existing Retro Engine releases that already existed, the difference being until now only Sonic CD’s Retro Engine version had been released on PC (Steam, 2011) whereas Sonic 1 and 2 had only had Retro Engine versions released on iOS and Android. This is all very neat! It’s great to have a chance to “officially” play them without having to get a hold of decomps etc. for PC :V
In addition we finally got a Retro Engine version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles! Finally an official widescreen port of the game that is all in the spiffy engine that also ran Sonic Mania! Neat!
SEGA also pulled out a bit of extra money to pay for an official animated intro to not only Origins, but also intros and outros to all four games with Tyson Hesse involved, directing the animations, alongside Ian Flynn writing them. A third neat!
There’s a little missions mode that gives things like “beat this without destroying any enemies” or “destroy all these airborne enemies with Knuckles’ glide” etc. which are great if you want a little extra challenge I suppose! There’s also a museum mode where you can spend coins you earn through the games and mission that let you unlock content and so on. Coins are also used to retry special stages in anniversary mode, which for Sonic 1 and Sonic CD is a godsend ‘cus I hate those special stages.
The “anniversary” modes as well (which is the widescreen versions of the games) all did away with lives as well, earning a life just gives a coin, or three coins for earning a continue. Personally I wish we had the option not to because there is still a satisfaction in knowing you didn’t completely game over, but I do accept it’s a relic of the past now.
The last thing the base game added was a back to back mode too, where you can play Sonic 1, CD, 2 and 3 & Knuckles back to back in one long sitting, effectively as a (game) chronological look through the series. That’s actually what I considered the “beat” category for Origins Plus, beating that mode in which I gained almost 200 coins in Sonic 3 & Knuckles ‘cus I was obsessed with it as a kid and played it all the time.
And finally Origins Plus added in playable Amy as well as finally allowing Knuckles to be playable in Sonic CD. Not something I was clamouring for but it was a weird omission that Knuckles wasn’t at least in SCD in the base Origins, buuuuuut it was basically a port of SCD2011 so *shrug*
Of course what wasn’t neat that in the process of this SEGA…
- Pulled down the 2011 Steam release of Sonic CD
- Pulled down Sonic 1, Sonic 2 as well as Sonic 3 & Knuckles from SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics
- Chose to charge honestly a somewhat galling $40USD/£35GBP at launch for this despite the fact that we are talking games that until they pulled them off the Classics collection where only a couple quid most. I appreciate that work had gone in to the game to bring it up to speed and the animations, but it was a very hard sell for me to pay for that price at launch (and why I only picked it up recently).
- Chose to have more gall to add in a deluxe version which… barely added anything but bumped the price another 5{INSERT CURRENCY}. (Honestly there was a whole pricing TABLE at the time which made it even wilder)
- May have slightly meddled with the game after the 3rd party contracted Headcannon that perhaps caused bugs with the game alongside performance issues.
- Either didn’t attempt to, couldn’t afford to, or decided it was too expensive, to attempt to reliecnse the music for Carnival Night Zone, Icecap Zone and Launch Base Zone. Which I kind of get, two of them of them are associated with Michael Jackson’s music as he was supposedly brought on for Sonic 3’s music (it’s one of those open secrets at this point, it’s a whole thing I’m not getting in to it) and IceCap Zone turned to be Brad Buxer choosing to use an unreleased track from his band The Jetzons, Hard Times.
Hard Times is honestly a pretty good song btw, I don’t blame Brad wanting to reuse what was at the time a melody that might’ve otherwise not had the public hear it outside of a silly little videogame with a blue hedgehog. I suspect given Brad still being alive and the record label even acknowledging that it was used for Icecap Zone, SEGA probably could’ve got somewhere and reused the track without too much of a cost.But I do understand that the other two tracks likely got immediately shut down by SEGA’s legal team, ‘cus I doubt SEGA would ever want to cough up what MJ’s estate would’ve wanted, if they’d even allow it
- Made strange choices regarding Sonic 3 & Knuckles’ audio compared to how S1, SCD and S2’s audio was handled. For some reason, with the exception of the new Super Sonic track that Jun Senoue busted out, all of the music is a lot lower in quality compared to Sonic 1 and 2 which sound accurate to their other releases. Honestly, compare these two side by side
(Gameplay of Angel Island in Sonic Origins) The typically accepted game rip of Angel Island Act 1 It’s weird! All other releases of S3&K that BGM audio has been fine! It feels unfair putting a gameplay vid next to a BGM rip but also we have that rip for a reason, that’s what the Mega Drive was putting out! It’s what emulators matched (including SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics), it’s also what Sonic Mega Collection sounded like too (because it’s emulating too :V)!
But not Origins, nope! I think, and someone who knows more than me can possibly confirm or disprove it, but they all appear to be using the audio out of the November 3rd, 1993 prototype of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. With the quality they put out, though with some tweaks to the prototype tracks that replaced IceCap etc.
It really stands out when you have this crisp, fairly accurate audio from Sonic 1 and 2, and then it feels like you’re listening to Sonic 3 & Knuckles through a speaker with a bit of muffling in the way that detracts from the experience. I was okay with The Legal Hell being ignored to push for the original compositions that got scrapped, but the way in which it was all done is… shite honestly!
This is fine on the PC version mind, modders were on the case pretty quickly regarding audio and you have so many choices to pick from that you can just shove in the original BGMs or a myriad of other choices to fix the lower quality. Kind of shit if you’re playing on a console version ‘cus SEGA ain’t fixing it!
- We then added a Sonic Origins Plus DLC right when the base game was entering the “well it’s worth it in sales” range, which meant no it was better to hold off which retained the increased price. But at lease this was actually adding things to the game.
- Plus DLC also added all the Game Gear games that are included in Sonic Adventure DX??? Cheaper to grab ’em there but they do actually allow for save states if you need them (and maybe Sonic 2 8-bit is worth it to do so if you find it too hard)
Speaking of the Game Gear games, I took the opportunity to clear out the Game Gear Sonic 2, Sonic Chaos and Sonic Triple Trouble finally, just to finally say I’ve beat ’em. I’m not reviewing them, they’re emulated games from 30 years ago with no changes unlike the Origins of the Mega Drive games :V
All in all Origins Plus isn’t a bad way to bundle up the original quadrilogy and have a trip down memory lane, and until the 6th of May 2024 it’s currently 50% off on Steam if you finally want to grab it. But also it is games you can already find ways to play already, this just gives the Retro Engine experience an accessible point for console and PC players.