Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

Anniversaries are generally supposed to celebrate things.

 

Not everything is worth celebrating.

 

I think there's things you could do to the GG games without having to go full remaster:
-Hack the ROMS to give for unlimited lives
-Rewind mode in the emulator (that would make playing these games so much better)
-Improve the emulator so you can create save states and load them by tapping the shoulder buttons on the controller (rather than having to use Origins unwieldy pause menu)
-Level select for all games (some GG games have level select via cheat codes, but some do not. They could probably easily create this by using a menu that loads up save states for the start of each level).
-2P mode: In Sonic Adventure DX you could run two instances of each GG game, allowing a makeshift 2P mode for all titles (and not just those that supported link cable). It was a bit janky because the music didn’t line up, but I am sure they could suppress the background music in the second emulator.

However, I don’t think Sega is going to do anything. It looks like they only put the GG titles on Origins to pad it out for retail. They seem to only want to focus on quality Sonic titles, so I'm guessing they probably feel the GG titles aren't worth their time enhancing.

 

Not to mention that maybe even say, adjusting the games for a larger aspect ratio or Master System porting or Drop Dash addition could still involve a lot of QA testing to make sure it all still works to perhaps suggest the argument that you might as well go full remaster? If Sega even know some of those emulation hack processes are a thing? IDK, I could be wrong on that. Compared to just popping in to edit out a strobe effect out of modern day necessity (yet also seemingly not minding S2's audio issue or generally a little input lag, even in S1 where I assume the jump isn't supposed to delay like that...) They might not see even just adding in unlimited lives as necessary when they already have savestates for the games. Don't know if the lack of general fan-expressed desire to polish up the GG games in comparison to the Genesis games also didn't help.

I think a telltale sign of their hit it and quit it inclusion would be that they didn't even bother updating the museum to include all their soundtracks. It's a small thing, but that really seems like it should have happened if the Genesis/32X tracks from Spinball/3D Blast/Chaotix were included with presumably low effort standard copies of those songs, it even could've been a bonus bullet point in advertising Origins Plus. It's odd. Not sure if Sega just predicted the eShop was gonna close at some point and threw their existing GG emulator in to have another complete collection of games that were Origins-y with Tails and Fang. Maybe if they figured out some emulation/port of Chaotix/SegaSonic years ago, those games and their contemporaries could've just been easily thrown in like the Game Gear games, otherwise it presumably wasn't gonna happen.

I appreciate the GG inclusion, with its region switching and the platformers all complimenting their Genesis counterparts for the only real time, but I just wish they didn't have the aforementioned audio/lag issues primarily in specifically mostly the main platformer entries besides S1 and Blast, I think.

 

I saw this on Steam Sale recently and thought it would be finally worth the time to get it just for the sake of having it in my collection and trying it out. It certainly wasn’t worth the full price on release day. These are my own thoughts; I haven’t really been following this thread much so I don’t know what people have really said.

All in all, outside of the nice stuff like the animated cutscenes, it just seems to be a disappointment for the sole reason that it could be a lot better, it’s a shame when SEGA and Sonic Team have put massive effort into Frontiers (which I have played a small amount of so far) and Sonic x Shadow Generations, that in between we get rushed, sloppy productions like this. The missions are nice to play, but the base games should have been polished up firstly, yet a lot of the focus seems to be on the extra content instead. Also, previous compilations had save state support, through the ROMs, it would have been nice if something had been done similarly for these new Retro Engine versions. I think that would have been a nice addition. I understand that there was a "rewind" function that had been briefly worked on but was dropped later on.

Added extras like the Game Gear games are fine, but we’ve had them for a few occasions now, what do they have against the higher res Master System games where available by the way? It’s always the Game Gear titles. I would have also included the Mega Drive versions of Sonic Spinball, 3D Blast and Mean Bean Machine, to complete the set, but that’s just me.

My main gripe has been the controller support. I play with a Xbox One controller and I have been frustrated. On occasion, I’ve had the controller think it’s now Player 2 (and thus controlling Tails), and this isn’t just isolated to Sonic 2, it was happening with Sonic 3 & Knuckles, I had to restart Origins itself to get it working again. This is a very sloppy bug that should have been fixed during development. Also, the controller does not work unless it’s turned on before the game starts. If the controller turns off for whatever reason, sometimes I’ve had to restart the game as a whole to get it working again.

I still think they dropped the ball by not having official PC versions of Sonic 1 and 2 when they came out for mobile devices and just about any other platform under the sun. And as for Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it’s a real shame that the development team didn’t get the time they needed to polish it off. I shouldn’t be dying during the Hydrocity Act 1 to 2 transition, but that certainly happened.

As for the replacement music tracks in Sonic 3, all they had to do was take them from the prototype and call it a day and people would have been satisfied as opposed to these “early versions” or whatever excuse people want to make. After all, I think most people expected the ball would start rolling after it was clear that there was a possible avenue to making this port be possible all along.

And the less said about that Super Sonic music track the better, it really was the most unnecessary thing to be added and is just a great example of why Jun Senoue needed to stop getting involved with “classic” music, back then we had no idea that he was going to be involved with Superstars and do more of the same unless someone else arranged it into something much better, we didn’t know it would have got worse later on, the soundtrack for that game is really all over the place. I have not yet got my hands on Superstars but again, when the right sale comes up, I will get around to it in the future. I still have Frontiers to go through and I haven’t bought Sonic x Shadow Generations yet. As per Origins and Frontiers, when the opportunity arises to get it on sale, I will get around to it.

But yeah, that’s my thoughts on it all. I don’t think anyone was expecting anything to the level of, say, Sonic 3 Complete for example, or even Sonic 3 A.I.R. but there’s been a lot of missed opportunities here and hopefully one day SEGA sees the light and gets S3K patched up, especially if they look at releasing to mobile devices in the future. Quite a lot of these bugs are rather unfortunate. For the general player, most people really wouldn’t care about its general presentation, but if you’ve played these games for years and seen what hack, mod and fan game developers have done over the many years I have been following this stuff, then yes you would want something a little better.

 

I'd love for S3&K/general patches to continue, but Origins' Steam database not showing anything but the latest release for over a year now doesn't instil confidence; if there's precedent for the non-public updates tab suddenly reappearing much, much later for what also needs to receive updates on several other platforms, I could be wrong. They could also just make an updated release on mobile, but then that kinda devalues the draw of the expensive collection in no longer having that "best" version, at least if done anytime soon.

The "excuse" of the songs actually being early prototype versions comes from compelling evidence, from not sounding like Senoue's usual "so retro" Sonic 4-esque music (unlike the Super theme) to Ice Cap being almost identical to the leaked prototype to using an old version of Universal Sound Bank found in other prototype tracks. It's entirely possible that was just the latest prototype Sega or Jun still had access to, perhaps not even knowing about or needing to officially verify the prototype that was leaked before Origins was announced.

The Master System versions have gotten dealt a bad hand, only appearing on Wii Virtual Console I think. Presumably the Game Gear games already having time-tested emulation and relatively lesser availability compared to other options made them an easy throw-in, but I've also heard potential factors like the Master System versions not releasing in Japan (at least initially) and that they were often released first and thus technically slightly less polished versions. Not to mention only half of them got those versions in the first place, and one of them was a significantly worse TecToy version I'm not sure on the legalities of, and that's more to stipulate for what's supposed to be an easy inclusion. But then again, Origins also offers the different region releases of the games, slight differences and all.

 

I'd definitely agree on this point - remember, Sonic 3's development was very locked down compared to the previous two games, so they weren't just sending out builds willy-nilly anymore. This build was sent out specifically for pretty much the only in-depth magazine preview of the game and never returned; it's entirely possible that the fact that it wasn't sent back means this build is no longer present in SEGA's archives. If that's the case, it's also possible that the build they sourced the music from is the latest one they still have access to from before the music was replaced - this idea is corroborated somewhat by the Sonic & Knuckles Collection tracks matching up well with these versions, suggesting that even back in 1997 they considered their build the 'most complete' source for the alternate music.

 

Yeah I still feel like this collection is missing something with the absence of Spinball, 3D Blast and Chaotix at the very least. Throw Mean Bean Machine and the SMS versions of Sonic 1, 2 and Chaos in there as well, it just boggles me how overt the references are in the game to those three specifically despite them not being included.

 

Especially now with Spinball and 3D Blast losing their Steam releases. Sega still can't make a 32X emulator for toffees after Gems Collection missed the boat, but like that it'll still reference Chaotix in a collection that doesn't have it, even for profit with the music DLC. And without that (and Sonic Eraser), you can't sell a "complete" collection of them like the mainline classics or Game Gear games (especially after the music DLC included them), even if the latter has its literal or spiritual equivalents to those spin-offs.

 

SMS chaos seems caught in music trouble, given Gigalopolis SMS is pretty much straight stolen from a KORG demo song and was replaced in GG likely for this reason

 

Boy, classic Sonic games can't catch a break with that, huh?

 

I am perfectly at peace with Sonic Eraser being lost to time, lmao. I'm glad it's archived for preservation's sake but I wouldn't ding a Sonic collection for being "incomplete" without it.

Yikes, I had no idea about this. Curious that it was able to get a Wii Virtual Console release, though maybe Sega wasn't aware of this at the time. (Also very glad I snatched those up before the Wii Shop went defunct)