Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

I feel like people are a bit too harsh on it. It's easy to say it's not as good as fan ports because those aren't constrained by time, money or greedy higher-ups. By those standards, no port or remake can be. It's a solid enough collection I can at least recommend it now after all the patches, even if it's flawed (the state of the new Sonic 3 songs are a crime against nature).

 

The fan ports that are better than it in question are direct ports of the mobile ports with no changes. Don't make me laugh. The only one that's an unfair comparison is A.I.R

 

You mean Forever and Absolute? I'm looking on the site, and

 

What? I'm talking about the vanilla decompilations, lol. Those are still less buggy than origins

 

I had no issues with Origins, but I only played it 1 year after the Plus release. I had a nice time.

 

Then my point about time and money is still relevant. Things can break, and often do, during the porting process between two very different pieces of hardware. Or when you have to stick it inside of another game.

There are some deliberate changes I'm not a fan of mind you, like the worse audio for no good reason, but the rest of it is what happens when you rush your developers.

 

If you're not like, ridiculously obsessed with classic Sonic, then Origins is fine. I play it from time to time if I can't be bothered to dig out my controller for an older console I have the games on. It's convenient.

If, however, you're either a classic Sonic speedrunner or have otherwise some muscle-memory for how the originals play, Origins kinda sucks. It may be convenient for me, but I fall more into this camp if I'm honest.

And comparisons with Sonic 3 A.I.R. are indeed basically unfair. That shit's the GOAT.

 

Is there another version of Sonic Origins that I don't know about? Not only does it not have the best versions of the games in any collection, with the exception of S3K (for obvious reasons) they're all downgrades from the previous Retro Engine versions, which themselves are not the best way to play these games.

The only positive is the museum.

 

Not to mention you can find most of the museum stuff online anyway IIRC

 

I'd have less of a problem with this view if fans weren't dogmatically claiming for over a decade that the Retro engine versions were objectively better in every way and it was outrageous SEGA didn't port them to console. It's just absolutely wild to me. I know these versions are worse than the Mobile versions in features, but the fandom went from all claiming in unison that the Retro Engine versions were by far the best version to just deciding one day on a whim that actually the Retro versions aren't good and speaking as if they always thought this and never changed their mind. SEGA fulfilled a very large fan demand and the fan response to it was completely juvenile. Utterly tedious. It's stuff like this which makes me understand why publishers often ignore fan requests.

 

maybe different people said different things

fandom isnt a monolith

 

It's kind of like how a lot of fans really wanted Ian to write for the games, and then when it happened the fanbase's reaction was pretty split.

 

You do get a general consensus in fandoms and I find it annoying when people deny it when it is inconvenient. These consensus can change but over the last 15 years the consensus has been that Sonic 3 and Knuckles is the best 2D Sonic game. And maybe the best Sonic game in general.

If you are going to tell me now that there was never a consensus in the fandom that the the mobile retro engine versions of the Classic games were the best versions then you are just lying either to be a contrarian or hide the fact you were wrong in your initial beliefs. Just go re-read this thread when the game was announced and virtually everyone praised the Retro Engine versions as the best versions. There was one person I remember who disagreed and he was absolutely blasted down by everyone here.

 

Times have changed.

 

I think the issues with Origins are exaggerated in this fanbase and on this board in particular. It's got problems for sure, and the collection deserved a lot better. But Origins is still a fantastic way of playing Sonic 1, 2, 3K and CD.

The mobile remasters were always lauded with demands that they get ported to other platforms. I know that fandom isn't a hive mind, but come on. Who didn't want native ports of the Classic games running in widescreen? Origins delivers that, and not with some huge asterisk either. The games are virtually 1:1 with the originals with enhancements. Whenever people point out what they perceive to be big issues that ruin Origins for them, I just think they're usually (not anyways) really niche things that the majority of players won't recognise.

Sadly SEGA did the job mostly in-house and on the cheap. This means that no existing problems with the mobiles were addressed and new ones were introduced, the menus were rubbish, the drop dash was added sloppily to 1, 2 & CD and the replacement music in 3K is embarrassing. The best part of Origins is 3K (audio notwithstanding) because Headcannon was able to build on years of experience using their engine to create the port. But SEGA being SEGA had little regard for quality control. Origins is is good despite despite SEGA's lack of care, but really ought to have been much better. And in the time between the mobile remasters and now, fan efforts have come about to raise the bar when SEGA themselves wouldn't.

I can understand being disappointed with Origins. But it gets more hate than I think it really deserves. It's still a great way to play the Classics and it's the most accessible by far.

 

It's only the most accessible because they removed the other (better) accessible versions of the games.

 

Origins is exactly as accessible as the emulated versions were before in a literal context, and the additions it adds makes it significantly more accessible (and better) than before. They shouldn't have delisted the individual games, but at this point there isn't a massive contingent of people who are missing out by not being able to play them in one specific Steam-centric manner.

 

I was actually referring to emulators and projects such as S3 Air. Personally I prefer Origins to the versions of the games they delisted and don't think that storefronts should be cluttered with multiple versions of the same games. That's confusing. The Origins versions, with widescreen extra characters and the removal of lives, provide something that's both readily accessible and more friendly to modern play habits. It's nice to have everything in one package that should in theory be future proof. Meanwhile, there's something like 3 or 4 ways to play S2 on Switch, and they're all just slightly different, one of which has been delisted? Bloody ridiculous.

What Origins should have done is include emulated roms for Classic mode alongside the remasters. I've no idea why they didn't do this. They've never shied away from roms and emulation before, so why now? Just do both. Everyone would be happy.

 

Sonic 3 & Knuckles would be conspicuously absent, and Sega didn't start releasing emulated Mega CD games until M2's Mega Drive Mini 2.

 

Why would 3K have to be absent? Because of the music? There's no reason S3K couldn't be emulated and the music replaced by being streamed separately. That's exactly what Classic Collection on the DS did (for issues of processing power, not to replace music). Far less difficultly involved there than actually modifying a rom to replace the music.

As for CD, true it would be more difficult. But again, not outside the realms of actual possibility for a company that cared about creating a definitive collection.