The hate is overblown, but at the same time, I’m not surprised considering we’re in a world where the decompilations (with S1F, S2A) and 3 AIR exist. Sega made what would be a super solid collection 5 years ago. Most of us with reasonable expectations went in thinking, “These won’t be the best possible way for crazy Sonic fans to play, but 1, CD, and 2 will be decent mobile ports with the dropdash added, and 3K will finally have an official widescreen release with the beta tracks. The cutscenes will be decent and we’ll get some cool behind the scenes content and little challenge stages that may be fun for an hour.” That’s all most of us needed to think the collection was ideal. Sega missed this low bar by implementing the dropdash poorly, introducing glitches with Tails and problems across the collection generally, having some whack-ass version of the beta tracks, and even Sonic 3 has some issues with the physics being off. The only places in which the collection met my expectations were the cutscenes (though people has raised good points about their deviation from established canon), the behind the scenes stuff, and the challenges which I enjoyed. If my expectations were a 10/10, I’d give the collection as-is a 7 or so. I love the actual games so much it’s hard for me to hate it without them straight up changing the core experience, but it was a bit disappointing.
The ground attack sure, but the double jump is probably the most generic move they could have chosen for her. It's basically Sonic with the lightning shield, and guess what, Sonic can have that setup in this game. Combined with the ground attack being pretty obsolete with the spin dash available, and Amy feels kind of redundant. One of the fun things about having a new playable in the Sonic games is how they change up the gameplay in the same levels, and Amy in this form barely does at all since she mirrors an existing setup for Sonic. Everyone gets WHY they likely wanted Amy with more conservative gameplay than her Advance setup, Advance likely was a bit too complex to do (and really this is likely more on Superstars than Origins anyway) but I feel like they could have still given Amy a more innovative moveset that changes things up while maintaining stuff like rolling and such. Sonic and Knuckles have the same core moveset for example, but Drop Dash and gliding/climbing, as well as their subtle physics differences, are innovative game changers that allow them to take different routes from each other. Pretty much, I don't think Origins is BAD by any means, and it's neat to still get all these additions in official form, it's just really the fan base has long surpassed a lot of this sort of stuff. I think this sort of package for a franchise that HASN'T got loads of elaborate mods would be rather appreciated.
Yeah, I am really dissapointed by Chaotix not being here, it is in my top 5 Sonic videogames and it had never been rereleased, this was a perfect oportunity and it would have been very fitting seeing how this collection was kinda the games that inspired Mania with added Mania QoL features such as the dropdash or super button (at least thats how I saw it arround time of release) and Mania had a lot of Chaotix references/influence, and the music was already in the museum, everything was so perfect to add it and it would have been so cool and added more value to the collection, wich it really need, but I guess they wanted to make the extra games even further conect this collection with Superstars as Fang being an important villain in that game debuted and was almost only appeared in the game gear games until Super stars (and they also wanted to do as little work as they could lets be honest), but oh well im still happy to get something extra even if I am barely gonna play it
I like Origins itself but yeah the Steam delistings are why I'm never buying it and am just sticking to hacks/fan ports. It's a frighteningly Nintendo-esque move from what's otherwise been an actually pretty good approach to official emulation (I.E. you just pay for the ROM which you can personally do what you want with). I really hope it doesn't set a precedent for the other retro Sega titles on Steam and it's just a plain naive way to stop people from doing whatever they want with these Sonic ROMs anyway. Why add Chaotix characters to Origins when they can just give you no other options other than to pirate with a romhack that adds them? Checkmate customers!
It does kinda baffle me that Spinball and 3D Blast aren't at least an emulated extra like the Game Gear games. We don't need polished remakes for all the MD games but what's a couple more emulated ones if they're already going down that road?
Because if they bring in those Genesis spin-offs, they'd presumably have to also finally get around to making a damn 32X emulator for Chaotix, since I can't imagine them wanting to do an incomplete collection of the 5 Genesis spin-offs, especially after selling Spinball/3D Blast/Chaotix DLC.
What issues remain? The only one I can think of atm is the falling rocks glitch in Marble Garden. When I say issues, I do mean glitches and such. Not preference/QOL things like not having character select resemble Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
The janky Drop Dash being a one-frame spindash combined with an inexplicably reinstated roll jump lock, I don't think Tails was necessarily fixed for 2, the broken music loops in CD unless it's just playing the original tracks because I forget, the botched audio quality across the board for 3&K, a variety of weird things like 3&K's buggy terrain, collision and certain bits that snapped because of the deadline rush, and even minor things like Super Sonic being advertised for Sonic 1 but you still need a cheat code on a run you can't save to be able to play as him. I wouldn't have a list, and you can argue semantics about some of it, but Sega didn't really treat the collection well.
1, 2, and probably CD could get by without it, but the spindash is so integral to how 3 works that I can't imagine making a character for that game without it as an option unless you were going to force them primarily through Knuckles' routes and then you have a new set of control headaches to potentially deal with, and it would be pretty silly to have a less unified control scheme for the game than Sonic himself. As regards the drop dash, I can take or leave the current implementation. I can see why people are upset that it's not in Mania but it's hard for me to be outright convinced that a feature that doesn't exist in the games it's being implemented in is wrong per se, just different. About the only thing I think really doesn't make sense is that the drop dash direction can't be controlled in 1 or 2 when it's performed as it's always in the same direction you're facing, when an immediate boost in the opposite direction is maybe the one case where it makes sense to even use it as part of a post-roll jump in the first place; otherwise you'd just hold down instead. I dunno, I never was a huge fan of the drop dash even in Mania, and I prefer not to use it here if I can help it, and I don't think the roll lock issues you all bring up will change my mind on that. This feature always seemed superfluous, something to write on the back of the box as a cool new feature, and not something that really plays well with the old games' design, control lock or no.
It's a fine collection if you just want a bare bones collection and it's better than trying to play them in their native release. SEGA trying to nickle and dime us from day 1 just stings, especially with the minimal effort from their part. Do not get me wrong, the work that Christian and Simon did throughout the years and up until now with 3K is phenomenal. No other game can really compete with them at that on a per game basis. But when you see how SEGA shits out Origins as a package and then the work that Capcom puts into their compilation titles? Can't help but look at the other side of the fence and wonder why SEGA doesn't water us better.
To be fair on the Capcom comparison, Capcom wasn't much better years ago. The early Mega Man Legacy Collections and the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection are both pretty wank, the latter especially being just bad in various dumb decisions and budget cut methods. The backlash was enough to make Capcom stop hiring Digital Eclipse and take their work entirely in-house, which substantially improved their quality, and Digital Eclipse themselves have gotten arguably better in more recent history too. One can hope the Origins controversy for what we now think was meant to be a marketing push for Superstars inspired Sega to clean up a little bit, but Sega is Sega. They wouldn't realize they're the problem if it bit 'em on the ass for the past 30 years.
I don't think my comparison was unfair. I'm comparing current Capcom and current SEGA. SEGA shouldn't have to have their own stumbles in order to achieve the same standard of quality of Capcom's current output. Capcom already paved the way for them. So has M2 with their Konami Collections. I've said all I have to say on this matter. I'm moving on.
Sonic Origins as a package was put toghether without care. The ui/ux is attrocious, options hidden everywhere that not even Sega's own social team managed to navigate properly in their last stream. Did you know there's a form of stage select (non-cheat-codes) available? Most peolple don't. It's that bad. Beat the game without the best ending? Here an animated cutscene without the correct context. Knuckles own story in S3K, same. You can't bind arrow keys on pc, on a platform game... (S&KC managed something so basic decades ago). While i was in sandopolis everything glitched. The sandfalls, the checkpoints... made the whole act absurd to navigate properly. Origins deserves the same level of love that Sonic 1 GBA gets, almost the same level of polish as far as i'm concerned.
Are you referring to the time attack menu? Because, yeah, "my data and records" is not the most intuitive name for that menu option.
My goodness, that reminds me - I hope they've actually fixed the fact that you can't replay Sonic 2's Hidden Palace Zone through the Time Attack menu at all, even if you've discovered it in a normal playthrough. It should unlock for replays like any other Zone - baffling that it doesn't currently. ...On that note, they should also stop it from registering a time for Mystic Cave Zone Act 2 if you take the secret exit to Hidden Palace Zone - it ends up registering stupidly short times that you can't hope to beat if you actually complete the stage properly.
Credit where credit is due, Origins has lots of amazing features (including things we never dared to dream of such as playable Amy, scans of development docs and all new-animations. Mirror mode is sweet too!). But it's badly lacking in polish. A lot of the extras are hidden behind cheat menus, which is dumb. It's silly that you only have Classic and Anniversary mode, and can't customize the additions as you see fit. They should have had 2PVS available for more levels. The S3 style save menu (which doubles as a level select after beating the game) should have been the norm for all titles. And maybe ported over some features from Mania, such as the ability to switch characters in a level. Even the animations... Sega should have given the animators the budget so they could more closely follow the manual stories instead forcing them to take liberties, in order to keep all the animations under 1 minute. Given that Sega are charging $54 for existing owners, and $39 for newcomers, the hate is 100% justified. It feels like this could have easily been a more polished collection, especially as the vast majority of the work was already done for the remasters. (If adding Knuckles to Sonic CD and Amy is more cost prohibitive than we realize, then fair enough, but that doesn't seem like it would be the case). (I know I've said this all before, but the lack of polish really burns me!)
Disclaimer: I haven’t played Origins and my opinions on it are based off of playthroughs I’ve seen as well as user feedback. I guess what bothers me the most about this collection is that it doesn’t feel like people who regularly play retro games put it together, it feels like a bunch of random SEGA staff that aren’t that passionate about the games were forced to put it together, hence why we ended up with things like the janky Drop Dash implementation, ugly bilinear filter with no option for a CRT filter or even a plain simple no-filter, and awkward handling of replacing the mobile menus with their own menu (removing some features like replaying levels in a finished save file in the process), and releasing it with numerous bugs not in the original - I still can’t believe they released a collection of their most treasured classic beloved games in that state. They should’ve just asked M2 to whip up an emulation collection, and while that means we might not have gotten Knuckles/Amy in Sonic 1/2/Cd, I’m sure they would’ve found some hacky way to force widescreen in the games like they did with some of their emulation stuff on 3DS, and the Sonic 3 music can easily be handled by telling the emulator to just not play the problematic songs and play an external audio file (the prototype songs) instead (or just do that for all audio in the game).
