Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

Is the mod scene for Origins good? I have it on Switch but may get it on discount if the mod scene is decent.

 

If I may ramble a bit on the S3&K physics topic, from what I've heard in the comments here, the different S3&K physics actually come from how the Retro Engine handles what are the correct values from the original game. I can't tell if this falls under what Headcannon intended to add or what they were meaning to tweak when Sega's rushed deadline hit. There were apparently smaller if noticeable physics differences in the other ports, but I wonder if it really was just the result of a coding oversight they wanted gone, as it apparently interferes a bit with some of the level design's intent where that may have not been the case with S1/SCD/S2?

(I'm assuming this covers most of the "downgrade" changes Alex Yard mentioned. He's otherwise brought up a MGZ blue spinning top not working right with a spring and slope and no longer being able to Insta-Sheild frozen Item Monitors without touching their surrounding ice, which totally does feel like a deadline-induced oversight.)

It's pretty weird the jump height is apparently increased, considering the notorious Special Stage Ring in HCZ that Sonic now can't jump high enough to get to. Must be more specific than that, or maybe something to do with collision. I'm also not sure if this at least makes S3&K more consistent with the physics of the other Retro Engine ports or Mania; people want uniform physics or "Mania" physics across all 4 games, but that could mess with the level design and is the latter specifically even what S3&K has? I know losing your Rings works more like it did in that game than the original S3&K or the other ports.

In a perfect world, they'd offer some sorta level select cheat toggle to switch between the current camera-outrunning speedy physics and a closer approximation of the original top speed, air handling and such. It'd be like what they did with the option to toggle the ground and air speed caps in S1/S2's remasters. I'm sure that accuracy to the original would be just as important to Stealth and Headcannon, but we're still not even sure if they're actually helping with Origins' patches. Although, a brand new zeroes cheat to enable a hard mode that we had no trace of in the game's files prior to its patch whatsoever doesn't exactly seem like something Sonic Team would add themselves when they left a lot of S1/SCD/S2 untouched. But if that's still not the work of Headcannon, then it really gives Sega this air of having a burning building on their hands, and then coming up to the firefighters they know could fix it and kneeing them all in the groin, while they try to put it out themselves with pails of water.

On another note, did Tax/Stealth SCD make any changes to the level layouts like S1/S2 did to account for Tails/Knuckles? Not counting widescreen accommodation, of course. I'm tempted to include this as another facet of SCD being the earliest of the remasters and thus lacking in several cool elements they only added later down the line, but I'm guessing there's an argument to be made that with SCD's focus on exploration, adding more areas to dig through would just bog down things further or just be really inconsequential pockets for goodies like power-ups. Tails already seems to break the game when you're allowed to jump over ceilings because of that one secret area in Collision Chaos, so it's kinda awkward. Maybe if a hidden path managed to work as a brand new shortcut towards a hidden generator or projector for him?

 

Started Sonic 3 and instantly things felt a lot nicer, some minor extra love and attention goes a long way for how a game feels to play, sonic 3 is very much like mania.

Aside from a few retro engine things like slightly different ramp launches or something, it's really good.

Marble garden though, still in act 1 and already ran into half a dozen issues like falling rock effects not going away, springs into spikes you don't usually hit as easily on megadrive and those giant spike balls feel like their hitbox is larger than normal (same for the half spike ball platform in sonic 1 starlight)

 

This is my first ever time getting all 14 emeralds and while beating up knuckles in hidden palace he decided to run off and the camera stayed locked lol, I think it's because I beat him as hyper and the game didn't know what to do because I stood still and he bodied himself.

Might also be because I had over 50 rings and it continued to play the hyper music instead of reverting back to hidden palace? idk.

 

Y'know, considering Frontiers' surprisingly gung ho about making other characters playable, Tails, Knuckles AND Amy included, there might just be some credence to that survey wanting to add more playable characters to Origins, assuming Frontiers doesn't take up all the DLC development. Maybe they'll add an Advance-style Amy for parity with Frontiers, though maybe Headcannon could finally add Mighty and Ray like sorta kinda maybe suggested in the files. At the very least, I'd take just Knuckles in SCD technically fulfilling that, like "new playable characters" was technically fulfilled by S1/SCD/S2's Taxman/Stealth additions.

That large amount of SteamDB depot altering has gotta be for something more than a Frontiers advertisement... Unless it's REALLY elaborate. It could just be HC continuing to refine S3&K, maybe add in S1/S2/SM swaps or a Blue Sphere editor. Though that could just be another S3&K mobile pitch era idea that may have not been even considered for Origins like the full single-player versions of the Competition levels seems to be.

 

That’s a good point actually. Never saw Frontiers getting new characters so maybe we will see Amy in Origins?

Id love to see Mighty and Ray but I feel like that’s more a Mania leftover than a feature, even if it should’ve been

 

This reminds me of Total War Three Kingdoms. Everyone got excited about Steam DB Edits. First time it ended up being a OST DLC. Second time it ended up being Xbox Game Pass.

I've been down this route before. It could be something. But a word of caution. Lol.

 

I honestly don't expect much to be done, games are 90% functional.

If anything there will be an update to go alongside a retail release like with mania but at this point i'm semi doubting it, I don't trust sega any more.

 

I'm optimistic personally, if they're willing to provide a large amount of post-launch support for Frontiers (for free at that), I don't think it's completely out of the picture to get a Mania style 'Plus' update along with a retail copy. Especially after the accounts of surveys being pushed out regarding extra Origins content.

 

It makes me wonder why they’re so open to laying out DLC plans for Frontiers post launch right off the bat but with Origins they haven’t laid out anything. Perhaps these SteamDB updates may not actually mean much?? (Really hope that’s not the case)

Speaking of SteamDB, the review depot was updated earlier today. Perhaps that means the latest fixes are being reviewed prior to being finalized for the next patch?

 

Because there probably are no substantial updates planned and any of the talk about updates over the past month in this thread have been wild speculation based on very little information.

 

^This is very likely. It’s also possible sega just wants to keep the focus on the higher priced new Sonic Team game during the holiday season.

 

I don't know why you guys are going crazy over Origins updates, if anything Origins was essentially just a moneygrab appetizer.

 

For some reason, my cloud save started not working. I had to shut down steam, then change the save type to local only. Then I deleted the save. It works, maybe the updates broke it.

 

I've been having issues with Steam knocking out my internet connection any time I do anything more substantial than look at it. Been having problems with Frontiers myself when Steam attempts to sync to the cloud, only to find that it suddenly has no internet for some reason.

 

I'm kind of surprised there was no xbox achievements for stuff like beating sonic 2 as knuckles or sonic CD as tails or something similar, i'm doing that anyway but a lot of the main achievements concentrate on doing mission mode over original stuff in the games itself.

Why yes I want to defeat 10 rhinobots by replaying angel island 3 times or jumping in and out of special stages to respawn the bots, what a lovely achievement idea.

 

Yeah it's weird comparing the achievements to the original versions of the Tax/Stealth remasters, with much more interesting stuff like "get all the rings in GHZ Act 1's trapezoid in one jump" (Sonic 1) or even just "destroy all generators and Metal Sonic projectors" (Sonic CD). Some even taught the player about the more obscure secrets of these games. They are just achievements and they do now have to account for 4 games + Origins' supplementary content (with a couple OG achievements relating to Time Attack/Boss Rush stuff that was changed in Origins), but it comes off as another aspect of Origins that was rushed or at least mishandled. Not even sure if it was just ST being inexperienced with Retro Engine coding.

 

Achievements/trophies in games seem to be getting easier as a whole. Frontiers for example didn't even need you to complete all the cyberspace levels, just open their portals. It's a shame, having incentives for doing random things in specific paths of the levels like Mania's achievements would have been cool.

 

I think it has to do just with accessibility, Origins was meant to be an introduction to Classic Sonic to kids who liked the movies, or hell just kids in general. But idk personally I’d rather achievements just not be there if they’re mind numbingly pointless.

Although part of me wonders if the reason they make the achievements so easy is so they can get an idea of how much the game retained people’s attention. Idk the exact stats but if you have a game where an achievement is like, beat level 5 out of 12, and you see only 20% of people have beat level 5, you have some issues.