Sonic Origins Collection - General Thread

Thank you. Segas huge chart made it unnecessarily confusing.

 

Regional offices need to justify their budgets somehow. I originally planned to write my master’s thesis on why a more globally cohesive marketing strategy would be better and more cost-effective for Sega. It ended being a broader analysis of different strategies for marketing Japanese games in west and which strategies are effective depending on the budget and potential audience size. I ended up switching because they’ve thankfully moved closer to that model recently with PSO, Yakuza, and Atlus games receiving worldwide pushes.

 

I finally saw the trailer. I am impressed, and I was not disappointed: BONAFIDE NEW CONTENT. It looks like there's going to be a "hard mode", which sounds like slight layout hacks ala Encore Mode in Sonic Mania. I'm also curious as to what they meant by missions: are we talking stuff like "S3K: The Challenges"?

This year has all the trappings and trimmings of being a good one! Hot dog!

 

Accuracy to the original in certain respects definitely matters to a "definitive" experience in my opinion. Tails being able to fly in Sonic 2 is obviously not accurate to the original game, same with other features that I'm perfectly okay with. But there are things that, from my perspective, should be kept accurate because there isn't any reason for them not to be outside of laziness, ignorance, or simply thoughtless decision-making.

The collision skip in Sonic 2 being referenced is not the only issue, and honestly it isn't anywhere near the most important of the problems I have with the remakes. It's just an example of players being forced to potentially play the game differently than they did before. Personally I don't even use that exploit 99% of the time I play the game, but it's not a "high level" skip by any means if you're referring to the precision needed. A friend of mine (who is bad at Sonic games) did it basically on accident just like two weeks ago. If virtually every one of my complaints ended up being addressed with the exception of restoring that missing collision in Emerald Hill, I'd be fine with that for the most part. It would still be preferable to allow players to fly through that ceiling, but if that were the biggest inaccuracy in Origins it wouldn't really be much of an issue. At least it's technically a bug fix. Other stuff like fixing the broken graphic orientation of the Chemical Plant/Death Egg doorways is good. Removing the speed caps is good since they can cause legitimate problems in gameplay.

My biggest issues are alterations or inaccuracies that change how I experience the game internally, beyond simple quality of life things, that don't actively fix anything that was broken. Changing the palette-based fades to a simple overlay of a black/white screen that isn't correctly timed to the fades in the original game is not fixing a bug, and it changes the visual feel of the fade-in/out effects in a way that I don't care for. Changing portions of layout/object placement so that, for instance, I can't find a secret invincibility monitor near the beginning of Chemical Plant, is not fixing a bug, and it forces me to play the game differently than I normally do. Making the Green Hill boss invulnerable until it begins swinging its wrecking ball is not fixing a bug, and it forces me to play the game differently than I normally do (and it makes the intentionally placed hidden invincibility monitor right before it less useful). Changing Sonic 2's end credits doesn't fix anything, it's just an unnecessary addition that actively takes away from the flow of the sequence (moving the title to the corner of the freeze-frame shot instead of being at the end of the credits timed with the music).

Boss arenas being poorly reoriented for widescreen is something that would probably need a lot of consideration to fix in every case, but I still find those changes objectionable because even just locking Sonic's movement to the middle 4:3 portion of the screen with invisible walls would be better than what we got. Like I already mentioned, I'm hoping they put some effort into fixing more of those in Origins.

Also, regarding the Carnival Night Zone barrel, I'm pretty sure there are other barrels that function in the exact same way prior to the "barrel of doom" moment.

 

Thank you man- you're doing God's work

Honestly it makes me sick seeing people all over the Sonic community spreading misinformation about Origins just to try to make it fail. We need to combat that as much as possible.

 

Knuckles campaign in S3&K takes place after Sonic’s campaign so I hope that it’s a part of story mode.

 

Probably not tbh

 

I really doubt that, but I'd find it cool to Story Mode have slightly difference on the level layout for some stages. If that's not possible then I'd love to at least have X character for Y stage.

 

With so many posts, I needed two sessions to read all the pages, so I don't even know what should I have to quote or what I wanted to reply to. These are the things I can remember:

- Again, that thing with spindashing upon landing with Knuckles. Seriously, what has me surprised is that was a thing in the first place and someone noticed it. I guessed the barrel of doom yet I never thought of that. How can it be so bad to lose it? (To all speedrunners: it's a rhetoric question.)

- About the screen filters: I ignore them. The only filter I'd need is one that made those blending and transparency effects for waterfalls and tubes which only happened on old TVs; losing image quality through blurring or fake scanlines isn't cool in my book.

- I think the edition/DLC table on the website is quite comprehensive as it is. There's the base game, there's some bonuses for pre-ordering, and there will be a couple of DLCs after release, the music pack and the fun pack. You can get the pre-order bonuses through normal gameplay or the fun pack in the case of the visual bonus, and you can get now all the DLCs with the Digital Deluxe edition, which will probably become unavailable after the game is released and the separate DLCs become available and more expensive as a total purchase. Besides cosmethic changes, I don't think you'll lose anything meaningful by buying the base game after release with no DLCs, you'll just have to unlock a couple things on your own (which I would do anyway, since I would always play standard modes before trying the other ones). If you do want those extras, however, better buy now than get them for a higher price after release, though you'll probably be able to buy them when discounts come and the extra cost of the DLCs becomes irrelevant compared to a half-price, for example.

 

On the topic of accuracy: I just hope that Knuckles will have green shoe cuffs (instead of yellow show cuffs) when playing as Sonic/Tails. I think people might have forgotten about the palette issue because of Sonic 3 Complete fixing it, but nonetheless I'm slightly worried that they'll give him yellow shoe cuffs in cutscenes for the sake of accuracy.

 

@Dek Rollins Sorry to cherrypick your comprehensive reply, but I’ve seen you bring up the credits a couple of times now - what precisely is the issue there? I remember them being different but not particularly what the difference was. I figure it’s per necessary to edit them in the first place to credit those who worked on the remaster but I hazard that your beef with them isn’t so intrinsic as that.

 

The irony lol.

 

They didn't add remaster credits, so yeah that's not what my beef is. Ignoring the inaccurate fade effect, there are two additions and one text alteration to the ending sequence which results in basically four changes. The text change is the replacement of "Sonic 2 cast of characters" with "Sonic 2 staff credits" when the credits begin. I always thought referring to the developers as the "cast of characters" was really neat, and changing that to just say "staff" feels like they intentionally sterilized some of the game's inherent charm.

Over the "presented by Sega" title card right at the end of the credits, they reposition the text and stick a little animation of the damaged Death Egg falling toward Angel Island in the middle of the screen. It's incredibly out of place in my opinion.

Then, replacing the "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" title that originally popped on screen timed to a music cue, is a fade in of angry Eggman jumping up and down in front of the wreckage of his robot, with a Knuckles tease to the side. In doing this, the aforementioned title was transplanted to the bottom-right corner of the final freeze-frame shot before the fade to black and credits role.

For easy reference, here are video time stamps for: original end title; remake freeze frame with title; remake end screen. The attempt at stylistically mirroring the Sonic 1 ending sequence just doesn't suit Sonic 2. They were made to be different and they should stay that way.

The ending of Sonic 2 is very special to me and to see it not only altered, but artistically compromised in some way just for the sake of adding lame teases for the following game, really bothers me. This is once again something that probably isn't an issue for a lot of people (especially since it doesn't affect gameplay), but it is for me. I hope Origins reverts the sequence to how it was in the original, but I doubt it will.

 

It’s very disappointing that the headlines are about the DLC drama and not members of the Mania team returning. Unfortunately this is Sega’s fault as they are the ones pulling this dlc & denuvo shit, NOT Headcannon. Also, Sega didn’t include the Headcannon logo in the original trailer (unless I missed it). Yet again Katie had to tweet out information that should’ve been in the trailer. I suspect that this drama will fade and the game will sell great... but this should be a really sweet moment rn but Sega mucked it up and the press is over exaggerating fan complaints.

On a positive note the Origins trailer, at the time of this writing, has 719,527 views on youtube.

 

The moment any of this becomes about who's working on it is the moment any discourse starts to get a little too personal. I think it's better off referring to the project as it is than the people who made the project.

 

*Nintendo releases 3 Mario Games with absolutely no upgrades or changes for $60*

Fans : "Real shit?" (proceeds to push sales to 10 million copies even with a limited release window)

*SEGA releases 4 Sonic games that are fully remastered, adding in many new QoL features and modes to make the experience fresh for $40*

Fans : "I'm so tired of this companies trying to take advantage of the consumers by overcharging for their products!"

Am I missing something?

 

To be fair people also criticised it for being a lazy job (comparing it with Crash and Spyro remakes) and the stupidity of making it limited time (including the digital version)

Personally I think the most baffling move of Origins, if the colection is also targeting new fans from the movies as Sega claimed, is the lack of the physical version. Your not going to reach that market easily this way.

Then again those idiots from the marketing thought a chart was a good idea. You are supposed to make the sale easier, not harder you dumbasses

 

Sorry but were you even *on* the Internet when 3D All-Stars was revealed?