Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

There is the PC version they could port, though it has some evident downgrades, especially the special stages.

 

I had little interest in this before, but I'm actually pretty interested in picking this up now. Feels like a lot of the issues I had are going to be ironed out, and the 8-bit titles are a nice touch. Very curious to find out how Amy plays.

Would have been nice to throw in 3D Blast, Spinball, and Mean Bean Machine for the definitive Mega Drive collection. Still, it's a great buy for anyone new to the series. I suppose it leaves some room for a Sonic Origins 2, similar to how Gems Collection came out after Mega Collection.

For my money, Sonic Jam is still the best compilation effort we've had purely for the Sonic World hub and museum. Mega Collection had some nice extras but we really were spoiled back on the Sega Saturn. It'll probably never happen, but I'd love to see that area remastered.

Do we think Knuckles Chaotix will ever be ported to home consoles? I suspect the real issue holding this up is 32X emulation more than anything else. It can't be quality control, otherwise Sonic Blast should have been left out too. I'm also hoping someday we get a home release of SegaSonic arcade, but - again - I'm guessing emulation is holding that back.

 

The Director’s Cut gameplay with the Saturn special stages is a dream of mind. Going forward I’d like remakes to no longer involve stealth and co. They had unfinished business with the genesis trilogy. I’m glad we’re getting origins plus, I’m glad we’re getting Amy… but in the future I want Mania 2

 

Heh, you plebs and your mice. Now this is a pointing device!



Ironically, I've never actually played SEGA Sonic, perhaps I should one of these days.

 

Please get Digital Eclipse as far away from Sonic as possible. Every game in the Cowabunga Collection has 5-6 frames of input lag, which is inexcusable for action games.

 

Yeah the praise for Digital Eclipse around here is bizarre. They're the last people I want to touching compilation titles.

 

Modifications to Saturn titles is already a super intensive affair, to the point that Sega would rather pay someone else to straight up remake Panzer Dragoon than emulate or release an altered ROM. And the fan fixes would be like with Stealth and Taxman - pay them to do it, which still requires money and development resources to get that stuff in official (including QA and bugfixes). SegaSonic was for an arcade board and is there anyone at Sega who'd know how to modify that piece of specialized software? That and it has voice clips, which might cause legal issues all its own.

(the universe in which the SegaSonic "WAAAAAAH" is the next MJ song debacle would be a funny one though)

So I strongly disagree, $20 for a DLC of intensive technical work is way way underpricing the effort involved.

 

The fact Origins has consistent marketing with Mania leaves it possible this could be some sort of ongoing series with SEGA if it continues to prove profitable. Both Origins and its Plus patch had a noticably larger price tag than Mania however, suggesting that if they do decide to aim for more ambitious titles, they may end up a pretty penny.

A compilation with all those rare 32 bit titles would be interesting though I wonder if they have enough appeal to sell good numbers. Almost every fan admits that Knuckles Chaotix is more intriguing for its elusiveness for example, it's a pretty half baked game. Fighters, 3D Blast, and R are relatively better, though still simplistic spin offs. I'm wondering if SEGASonic Arcade is even possible at this point.

A reminder that Gems Collection despite having a lot of those rare games, was derided as pretty average when released, having a 'wanting is better than having' feel with many.

 

Yeah, wouldn't they just port the 3D games instead of RSDK-ing them? Sonic R already runs fine on PC with some fan tweaking, and Fighters was of course available on XBLA and in Lost Judgement. Don't know how easy it'd be to add 60FPS to R without just remaking it in RSDK (also mentions a good "driving" button layout for the game), but just give them the 4K widescreen treatment, some restored elements like the lighting system to R and all cut characters to Fighters, and call it a day.

(Incidentally, I got a thought of Sega making a rushed RSDK version of Sonic R and fans claiming the PC version with mods was the definitive Sonic R experience, and that made me chuckle.)

Like others and myself have said, I'm guessing the Game Gear games only being invited to the party was part not quite having the proper emulation necessary on standby (and thus not as complete a collection of Genesis spin-offs/arcade games like all mainline classics/GG games would be), and part current availability elsewhere for at least some of the would-be titles, or even their music as DLC within Origins itself. Maybe they thought they'd have to delist the Steam releases again and didn't want to deal with the backlash lol.

Though it was probably mainly a result of Sega noticing that "oh yeah, we're no longer offering a way for people to purchase specifically the GG games, thanks Nintendo", I do think it's kinda neat to finally have all the Classic 2D Sonic platformers (emphasis on 2D and Sonic there) in one convenient package, the Genesis classics accompanied by their GG counterparts as a nice bit of gaming history. May've also helped that out of all the spin-off-y Classic Sonic games, IDK if it'd be too controversial to say half of the GG games were, well, the least controversial. The other half of course just there out of completion obligation.

It would've been nice to have the one big Classic Sonic collection with the Genesis spin-offs (Sonic Eraser not excluded), the 2 actual arcade games and Sonic R, especially since this isn't even the first time a collection teased Knuckles Chaotix without actually including it. But yeah, it depends on if that effort and budget was better spent on adding to the existing games rather than working out the kinks for several more rarer ones.

 

It's just a little hard for me to take the availability argument seriously for the games that SEGA ripped out of SADX.

 

I think the biggest argument against these games is their core appeal.

The original quadrilogy is continuously rereleased for a reason; they're REALLY popular and well made games. They have bugs but the remakes shown you could polish them without changing their original base more than what SEGA will allow. CD is kind of a spin off, but one very true to the style and gameplay of the mainline games and many believe its gimmicks actually make it an even more fun game, to some even BETTER. There is a REASON it is put on par with the MD trilogy nowadays.

The games leftover right now, well they mostly aren't BAD, but they're much more flawed or niche. There isn't really any mainline 'classic' games left to add to a new collection now, unless Knuckles Chaotix counts which is like a very undercooked version of CD. 3D Blast, Fighters and R are VERY divisive titles, and even those that like those games regularly think they're nowhere on the league of the originals. You'd need a LOT more to get them up to par, likely too much than what SEGA would be comfortable with. Even adding stuff the Origins' four got like the odd new character and level would likely be more tasking for those particular titles since it would often involve 3D modelling and rendering rather than just porting stuff from another game.

I do like the idea of a 32 bit era compilation myself, let's say those four games and maybe even Sonic World as a hub for it all, that sounds glorious, but I will gladly say I'm a hardcore Sonic fan who compulsively buys most of these compilations anyway, they would need a MUCH wider market ensured to buy something like that to justify the extra work.

 

I guess that's the thing, since for some games, even emulation is likely out of the question. They only VERY recently mastered Mega CD emulation, it was ports and remakes that kept Sonic CD obtainable until then. 32x and Saturn emulation I don't think they've even toyed with just yet.

For some games solutions are easier than others. Fighters and R already have ports that could hopefully be brought over to new hardware, but the rest are in a very muddy territory where emulation and ports aren't really a clear thing right now (not for official release anyway which is nearly always over a decade behind fan projects :P).

 

Isn't the only version of SADX that still has the Game Gear games the XBLA/PSN release a couple generations ago? The Steam version doesn't have the games.

 

To my knowledge, only the original gamecube and PC releases have them. I don't think the 360/PS3 had them either.

This is why I can only envision them getting any attention in a future update to something like Origins. I can see a company taking a "go big or go home" approach, I can't really see them making a collection of obscure products out of completion's sake. This is why I brought up other 2D games; If they were to shove Mania or a Sonic 4 remake or another officialized fangame or some such in there, you could sell that. You can't sell products that are notable mostly because they keep being ignored.

 

Hmmm, then I gave a random Redditor some bad info the other day lol. That’s what I get for never bothering to go for Emblems and the missions back in the day.

 

I imagine a future update to add more games would inevitably serve as even more paid DLC into this game than what we ever expected. At that point, people could easily compare to previous collections just including (most of) the unaltered spin-offs and main games in one package. Plus's GG games at least have the excuse of being a physically sold deluxe version of the game.

 

I’m very confused about the current availability of the Adventure games… and I’m guess I’m glad I’m not the only one lol. I bought SADX from steam and the gamegear “minigame” menu is there. That said I’ve never played any of those games once.

I was under the impression that SA1 and 2 were talking off the PSN store. I didn’t realize the consoles lacked the game gear games. If SA1 and 2 have been removed from console stores then I bet you they’ll be putting out an adventure bundle to tie in with Movie 3. If they insist on nickel and dimeing us, I just hope they include heroes in this hypothetical bundle

 

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