I'm guessing they didn't do a lock-on thing with Mania because: A. Mania's kinda last gen in terms of receiving updates B. More importantly, they were already implementing Amy/SCD Knuckles into these games, which is about as much character adding as can be expected of RSDK projects (S1 = Tails/Knuckles, SCD = Tails, Mania Plus = Mighty/Ray) I'd love to see fans make proper crossover on the characters of the two projects, but RSDK S3&K still needs to be decompiled (with Hedgehog Engine 2 also being hard to tinker with right now, FWIW) and Mighty/Ray would presumably be lofty to try and implement into other RSDK games, with the additional details like how Mighty's attack would interact with certain objects. If someone did do a mod for a new character across all 4 of Origins' RSDK games, I'd love to see it.
Origins has been littered with lots of weird bugs, which suggest that Sega's internal development teams struggle with using the retro engine. I bet if Team Mania had been helming Origins, we'd have seen a lot more Mania style features in Origins, and they probably would have added Amy to Mania.
It's not just bugs that litter Origins. The whole package feels very, very slap-dash. Inconsistent menus and UI (talking about the cheap-ass character select and save systems for 1/2/CD) S3K only, without S3 or SK alone being available as choices. Knuckles absent from CD without paying extra. The 'new' S3K music being hot shit. The entire S3K soundtrack sounding painfully low quality for no reason. Mission mode is half-arsed, just chucking random grey boxes into every level. "Classic Mode" isn't the original roms, rather its the remakes in 4:3 with lives re-enabled. Lack of options regarding lives and coins. Game Gear games had buggy sound and stretching, which is nothing to do with the RDSK. 3D and Spinball really have no reason to be missing. They could be emulated, just as the Classic Mode games should be. Minor issues with the existing mobile S1/S2/CD remakes haven't been addressed. There's more, but you get my point. Even though SEGA introduced a bunch of bugs with these ports and could only implement a barely functional Drop Dash into S1/S2/CD thesmselves, I don't think that there was ever much time, effort or money put into the project. The games are perfectly playable and Origins is arguably the best way to do so in the current day for most audiences. SEGA knew that they didn't need to invest much in Origins. That's the problem. They were never going to go above and beyond when it's clear that Origins was treated as easy money.
We're already four years into this console generation. What do you think they'll do with the next collection? Patch Origins up further and add the remaining classic-era games? Add Mania? Restart from plain ROMs again? Even if we criticize the execution, the available content standard feels like something that might be hard for them to move backward on.
Origins was also released on PS5 and Xbox Series titles we aren't lacking a collection for current gen. So, I don't see them revising the "Sonic Collection" concept for a while. And even when a new generation releases, they can still port Origins as is, sell it for cheap, and call it a day. It already renders at 4k 60fps on PS5/Series X, you don't need more.
I think it's obvious by now SEGA are done with Origins. I wouldn't want them to release an updated version anyway unless Evening Star are involved and fix that mess of a compilation. Ideally I’d like the StealthTax ports to be released separately on PSN/Xbla & Steam. At least then we could get the finite lives system in 16:9 in each game without shitty COINS, heh. Perhaps they will do this in 5/6 years time for next-gen. We've not had a current-gen (PS5, Series X/S) collection of mega-drive roms yet, and SEGA do like releasing bundles each gen. Yeah, I know we got plenty of roms included in the mega-drive mini 1&2, but I do expect another roms collection for consoles reasonably soon (hopefully featuring MD & Mega-CD games). On that note; SEGA where is our 32x mini, Saturn mini & DREAMCAST MINI???!!!
What I can't see happening is SEGA resisting the urge to make money by selling them individually or simply re-releasing Origins. They'll probably decide to chop up Origins and sell the individual games with the most minor and inconsequential changes/additions. The overall total cost be more than Origins if you buy all the games, but you won't get the extras such as sorry mode, mission mode, playable Amy and animated cutscenes.
There are 40 32X games (including games that require Mega CD), you could put the whole damn 32X library on a 32X mini
I'd be down for this, and that's... really sad. Sonic Origins shouldn't be missing so much from the initial ports. A bunch of that missing stuff is why I'd wanted them on other platforms in the first place.
Honestly, that's still more consistent than with the mobile ports, where the Sonic CD menu was done basically in-engine but the S1 and S2 menus weren't -- I'm less frustrated at the character select menu for existing, since it's fine, but more frustrated at the lack of any sort of clear save file options a la Sonic 3's zone select and the fact that stuff like the Sonic CD soundtrack select still takes you into that menu instead of having a similar popup.
The mobile ports weren't a single package though, and each game offered multiple save files. Origins is a mess, having a pop-up menu for S1/S2/CD and noactual save files as you say. Plus there's the whole issue with the character sprites on the menu not matching the game. It just feels so half-arsed. If SEGA cared, they'd have gone ahead and implemented an S3 style menu into each of the games. Multiple save files, replay levels from a completed file, full choice of characters etc etc. But nope. They did the easy option instead.
The lack of consistent S3-style saves really hurts the replay value of Origins for me vs. the mobile ports and decomps (minus CD). Players shouldn't have to resort to codes in order to access level select in this day and age. Fingers crossed that the modding community can make this possible in the future on PC.
I think at the moment it's tricky to fix the save file stuff according to the UltraFix folks? Can't wait for their next update to roll out this month, also. I've long thought that Sonic Team struggling with RSDK was why bits of Origins were the way they were. I'm guessing why the save system works as it does in S1/SCD/S2 is because that's in part how SCD's functioned in that you could only retry the final level of a completed save rather than have a level select like S1/S2, and they just made all three games work like that because they didn't know how to change SCD's to work like the others, while S3&K of course went its own direction. Plus the fact there were only 2/3 jump buttons pre-Plus presumably because one of them was just used for the Super transformation button instead of just having 4 buttons for all like Mania. And of course Origins' odd fake Drop Dash for the non-S3&K games, too. But I think I've also heard that the Plus stuff wasn't actually handled by Stealth/Headcannon outside of the sprites and tweak suggestions, so IDK. What kinda Mania features? More cheat codes like Mania/Origins!S3&K had? As in stuff missing from the mobile versions? Which minor issues are those? My conspiracy theory as to why 3D Blast and Spinball are still absent even thought their literal Game Gear counterparts aren't is that, even two decades on from the last weird Sonic collection that specifically acknowledged but didn't include Knuckles Chaotix, Sega still hasn't gotten around to making a proper 32X emulator, and thus they can't include a "complete" collection of all the weird Genesis spin-offs for Origins like they would the 4 mainline Genesis/Sega CD entries and the Game Gear titles. Same with the arcade games that would need SegaSonic's trackball problem to finally be addressed. It would fit Sega being slapdash with the collection if they wouldn't include a bonus game that required significant effort like that. Or IDK, maybe they just didn't want to detract from those games' current presence on other platforms again; SXSG shows they'd still kinda take down a previous release of a newly rereleased game if they could. IDK if maybe a couple other things could also come down more to deliberate choice, albeit a contentious, misinformed one. Like only wanting to present S3 in its complete form, that being the only proto-S3&K MJ-replacement music they had left or perhaps just wanting to give the option of 4:3 for the RSDK versions at all if so desired by the player. Though they could have been more inclusive of options in that regard like not sticking Coins/Lives to either mode. And it could've also been not wanting to try and un-MJ the S3&K Genesis ROM when we perhaps wouldn't have had to wait for a newly remade from scratch version of the game to finally see it be rereleased if that was a possibility.
If a rerelease of Chaotix were to happen, I think SEGA should just straight up port the game from the original source code.
No, I was referring to things missing from Origins that had been in the TaxStealth ports - mainly (if not entirely) clearable saves, like some folks have mentioned.
Ah. From what I can remember there's also: - Lives/lack of Drop Dash in widescreen (Lives/Coins also being absent in widescreen debug mode post-patch, though oddly lives appear in S3&K's Random Item Box) - Somewhat broken ultra widescreen available on certain phones - Title screen copyright text being changed (being thorough) - S1/S2 2013 soundtracks and SCD Japanese restored loops/voice clips - S1/S2 original Time Attack, S2 Boss Attack Zone and completed game score/S2 Hidden Palace Zone being part of it - S1/S2 debug mode touch screen left/right buttons and S2 exit back to level select lives press - S1 Sonic & Tails being a default option (initially crashed Origins with the 6 Chaos Emeralds before getting patched) - SCD menus/in-engine pause menu - SCD zoomed-in/instrumental-only cutscenes with ending SFX (Pencil Test is still zoomed-in, even in Classic Mode) - SCD sharp/soft/pixel smoothing filters - SCD Tails/Time Stones being carried over to level select/default Tails in sound test level select? - S2 Proto Palace Zone and Hidden Palace Zone not being level select accessible only via PPZ's former method (another instance of Sonic Team being awkward with RSDK) - S2 online multiplayer, debug mode option to play multiplayer online and option to play as the same character? - Formerly the lack of a third jump button before being patched back in (Super transformation now also having its own button) - S1/S2 Roll lock being patched out (again, thorough)
