Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

Including the 8-bit games would have been cool. They don't get top billing so I wouldn't mind if they just got basic emulation. Just throw them into a side menu somewhere. It can't be that expensive, right? At the very least it'll help relieve the "...that's everything?" feeling people are getting with this collection. Same could be said with the other "missing" 16-bit games.

 

I think you misunderstand, theres nothing new developed for CD at all. Headcannon developed the S3 remaster and Sega bolted Origins on top of the existing remasters. Hence why they lack any new features whatsoever while secrets are being found within S3.

 

So, up to now I've closely followed this thread and saw and listened to most alternative remixes or own interpretations of the new Super Sonic-theme. The first one that made me go "Oh my, someone already fixed the Sonic 4-sound Origins got on that theme, the theme isn't that bad" was this one:

Then, Josh brought me to the attention of this one:

And I love them both. But my god, have I found my absolute favorite; simply because it seamlessly incorporates the 'unused song' with the use of the Origins-theme and actually, in my opinion, fully completes the entire theme with it. This is what I genuinely call the blast processing, that Origins seems to be lacking on Sega's part:

 

The cutscenes are kind of their own thing though, they added an extra intro and ending for CD like the others.

I feel like having a "Games" section in the museum could have been a good idea, add emulated versions of the 8 bit games and maybe the remaining 16 bit ones as a fun unlockable but thus done in a way that makes clear they're only a side attraction to the main four. SEGA has plenty of emulators at hand so I get the feeling it would have been a less time consuming way to boost up the content to meet the price tag.

Heck they could have even used that as a way to add in the original ROMs of the four main Sonic games as well.

 

Three of them max; let’s face it, until Sega hires someone who knows their way around the sound chip to get the work done, we aren’t seeing Sonic 3 in ROM form again

I doubt they’d even risk just having M2 make a shell that does the switch on the fly; seems like the songs’ presence in the code at all would be playing with fire

 

2021: Oh, why it's just a ROMs with shiting emulation!?
2022: Hey, SEGA! Where are my original ROMs with emulation?!?

 

Weird little thing I found while messing around, but if you do that out of bounds trick in the Mushroom Hill badnik mission (which someone posted waaaaay back) and then actually complete the zone, you get sent back to the S3 title screen. If you start Sonic 3 and beat Angel Island 1 you get softlocked, but you can actually click Restart and the game will spawn you randomly underneath the first Special Stage Ring in Act 2. The mission HUD stays visible the entire time.

This is dumb and pointless to do, but messing around with a glitchy awkward version of the game reminded me of pulling off glitches in the classics as a kid and seeing what kind of screwed up shit you could find, like a discolored Knuckles sprite or a bugged boss fight. Just silly, vaguely nostalgic fun

 

The best thing to come out all this... are the memes:

 

I know it's to make it instantly understandable, but slapping the games' logos on the characters faces ruins the charm of that SpongeBob meme entirely for me.
I do hope that the uproar about the state of this game and its music can prompt some action, but it's increasingly hard to believe that Sega will deliver on good updates these days.

 

I wrote about this many pages ago , but yes. So many peoples hates new tracks


My favorite is

 

That's actually not a contradiction, there is such thing as non-shitty emulation. =P

They could even do widescreen and all sorts of crazy stuff with LUA scripts, like Nintendo did in Super Mario 3D All-Stars.

 

Note that I'm not saying they SHOULD have added emulations, I'm just saying a Games museum could have been a cool way to compromise people who want a true retro experience as an option as well increase the games number without having to program tons of ports from scratch.

I think making individual ports of Chaotix and 3D Blast is asking a bit too much, but having emulated versions of them as a bonus game would be something cool to make Origins more worthy of its price tag, turning it into a fuller Sonic collection.

Sonic Adventure DX had the Game Gear collection as a cool unlockable incentive for example.

 

Come on, don't you know these fans? At first they ask just to release remasters on consoles, and then they begin to resent why there are still no remakes of 8-bit games

Although, on the other hand, everyone has the right to a personal opinion

 

This genuinely is a banger. It even managed to incorporate the horrible few bars at the end of the Sonic Origins version in a natural way that sounds pretty cool. I just wish SEGA had some quality control, to realise that the flaws of Sonic Origins should've been fixed before release. Nobody cared about it releasing on Sonic's birthday *but* SEGA.

 

I've had a week and a half-ish with Sonic Origins, and I think I'm ready to share my thoughts.

Like the grand majority, I'm incredibly disappointed, of course. This really should have been a surefire thing. I genuinely thought it'd be like shooting fish in a barrel. Throw the Retro Engine versions of 1, CD, and 2 in as-is and then get a serviceable version of Sonic 3 done. Wrap it up in a nice looking (if quite lifeless) Hedgehog Engine UI and roll it out. How could Sonic Team bungle this? It's a menu.

But, of course, they found a way. My optimism was rewarded with the reminder that, in fact, they are Sonic Team in the 2020's, and have no earthly idea how to make a game or what made Sonic so good in the first place.

A quick run down of thoughts from me:

- The handling and mastering of the music is awful. Now, I understand Sonic Team felt they needed to have "control" over Sonic 3's music (for obvious reasons), but there was no need to apply that to the rest of the games in the collection. This is honestly the worst part for me, having the recordings from DCT Record's soundtrack release for 1 and 2 and the 20th anniversary release of CD replace the lovingly remastered tracks from the Mobile versions. A true downgrade. Some of the higher notes in some of the tracks (the Sonic 1 Special Stage and Labyrinth come to mind) are distorted and don't get me started on CD. The 2011 release of the CD soundtrack is a clumsily, compressed bodge job compared to Taxman's edits in the original Retro Engine port. Removing the voice tracks is also revisionist and terrible.

So much has been said about Sonic 3's music that I won't even get into all that. Suffice to say that anything else they could (and should) have done would have been a better result for the collection and its presentation.

- The Premium Sound and Video Museums are an utter joke. It's incredibly disappointing that with all the archive sound and video that we know exists, that the meager selection in these Museums is what we ended up getting. The Sonic Generations Classic stages? One remix from Forces? Are you serious? I know a lot of people have rightly said that there may be issues putting in tracks from Sonic Boom, SONIC THE HEDGEHOG-REMIX and Virtual Sonic into the collection, but that doesn't excuse them not tapping people like Naofumi Hataya and Tee Lopes on the shoulder and asking for some brand new exclusive tunes.

And where are the commercials? I was really hoping for nicer, higher res VHS transfer of the Japanese commercials. Again, not sure about the rights on these, but they were in Sonic Jam, and they were the best part of the Video museum in that game. Maybe add some American ones... it is such a wasted potential.

- This is a personal thing, but I feel like two versions of the Sonic CD endings should have been present. An in-game version that runs slower ala the Mega CD/2011 port, and a museum one that runs at the full frame rate (with the Zone montage in full screen as well). Losing the noises of Eggman's base exploding, Sonic running off, and the chains falling is a downgrade. I do like the new presentation of the credits, but I wish they would replicate the original Mega CD credits font. Again, a VERY small thing, but shows how little they care for details like this when the opportunity is presented to them.

- Classic Mode really should have involved M2 and Mega Drive ROMs. We all knew it wouldn't in April, but it really should have. Especially irritating after they had announced the Mega Drive 2 Mini and showed off Mega CD emulation. There was no excuse not to have legacy versions in this game, beyond their laziness with Sonic 3's soundtrack, and not knowing how to edit ROMs. Too much effort, I suppose.

- The Mission mode is fine. Some of them are all right, the more "extreme" ones are literally "do this mission, but without the floor, and everything is moving really fast" and it's not worth my time. I feel like with the amount of effort on display, there should have been twice as many of them honestly.

- I loved the regular and Premium Image Museum. Probably the best part of the collection. It's so nice having much higher res versions of existing art, and the new concept art that we'd never seen before. Is it worth $40? Probably not, but it is a nice part of an otherwise lackluster collection.

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I proudly stated that I would double dip on this when it released. After playing through my Switch version, I now have to renege on this. I wasn't asking SEGA to make the decomps and Sonic 3 AIR obsolete. I merely asked them to match what these things brought to the table. They have failed to do that, and in doing so they've lost money. Not just from me, I'm sure, but wiser people who decided to wait and others who wanted to double dip and have chosen not to for the foreseeable future.

 

You can achieve the same result by activating debug mode for S3&K and then placing a signpost partway through AIZ Act 1.

 

So not sure if this has been pointed out, but you can still access Debug mode and the level select in Sonic CD, but you have to unlock level select and sound test via the time trials in Sonic CD itself.

If you've already beat the trials but the extras don't show up, you weirdly have to re-enter the trial menu, back out, then go to extras. The game seems to load assuming it's a blank slate until you trigger a menu to remind it otherwise.

Of course you only unlock the extras per mode so if you did it in mirror mode that's the only way you're playing with debug until you beat the time trials again in anniversary or classic mode.

 

In the new version of 3K if you crouch whilst standing on the moving platform when fighting Eggman in Ice Cap you won't take damage from the ice jets, whereas you do in the original version.

Here's a gif:

Nice little change. Makes this fight a bit easier.

 

Do we know that's an intentional change?