Sonic Origins Plus (PC)

By Daniel Parker 25th Jul 2023 | 5,333 views 

  

One of my oldest memories is of a trip to Circuit City to get a SEGA Genesis. Along with the console, we picked up Tommy Lasorda Baseball, Quack-Shot: Starring Donald Duck, and a pack-in game called Sonic the Hedgehog. Still enjoying the Genesis today, I'll sometimes go back to those three titles, as well as the many others I've collected over the years, including the entirety of the Sonic series released on the platform. The original Sonic 16-bit titles are some of the best games to be released on the Genesis. 

     

Each one also had a significant place in my collection for one reason or another. Sonic the Hedgehog was the first platformer that I have significant memories playing. I never had the CD add-on, so Sonic CD was my first boxed, non-educational PC game. Sonic & Knuckles was the second Sonic title I owned, as it came packed with my new Genesis console in 1994. Borrowing Sonic 2 from my cousin, I exclusively played as Knuckles... and he never saw his copy of Sonic 2 again, now that I think about it. For various reasons, it took a while to track down Sonic 3. Although I'd rented it from Blockbuster when it was new, I wouldn't actually have my own copy of the game until 2002.

   

Needless to say, I enjoyed each one, but when the Sonic Origins collection was announced I wasn't impressed because it didn't seem to add all that much; I didn't even purchase it until recently, and to be totally honest not even the "Plus" DLC has converted me.

  

   

Until Origins, the best of the Sonic re-releases were found in the SEGA Genesis Classics Collection, as there was nothing that stuck out as being seriously wrong with the emulation. It sounded great, played great, and even included some titles I didn't already have on the Genesis originally. But now that we have Origins, SEGA is doing what many companies have done: delisting older versions of games from most online storefronts. So for people who haven't already purchased the older Sonic games, they're not really obtainable outside of Sonic Origins anymore.

   

With the new Plus DLC, we finally see Knuckles as a playable character in Sonic CD, as well as Amy in each of the revamped games. The upgrade also adds a dozen Game Gear titles that very few people wanted and even fewer will care about after playing. Not only do many of them have sound emulation issues, but there are superior Master System versions of them as well (it makes no sense to therefore include screen-crunched Game Gear versions). There's also a weird trend that no Genesis emulation is included in this collection. So there's no Sonic 3D Blast, while other games, such as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Sonic Spinball, are only available as Game Gear titles.

   

  

What's even weirder is that there are Classic modes available for most of the titles in this package, but they fail to make the games feel like their original versions. In each of them, I've noticed various small changes, like added sound effects (which tend to be annoying), or the removal of voice lines and the idle death from Sonic CD (Sonic would originally jump off the stage after impatiently waiting for the player to press a button), although if you've not played the originals before then you're unlikely to pick up on these. There are also invisible ceilings where there weren't any before, which I'm tempted to say are bugs. All Classic mode really does is restore the life counter and overlay 4x3 bars onto the screen.

  

The primary game mode in Sonic Origins, Anniversary mode, may also be a bit jarring for some players. Instead of having a set of dip switches, allowing people to play the games as they see fit, Anniversary forces the 16x9 aspect ratio and removes the lives counter, replacing it with coins. If you don't want to play with coins, your only option is the previously-mentioned Classic mode. It makes no sense that there's no way to play this collection in 16x9 without coins.

  

   

Certain changes are much more understandable and in some cases praise-worthy. Playing in widescreen and being able to see more of what's in front of you in these fast-moving platformers is great. And, if you take a hit, unlike in the older games, there's no slowdown. Robotnik appearing in Flying Battery when playing as Knuckles was an error in the original game, as that stage was intended to come after Angel Island and not Mushroom Hill as it does today. This has now been resolved. It's also fine for some of the Sonic 3 tracks - which originally included works from Brad Buxer and Michael Jackson - to not be included if that was what needed to be done to include Sonic 3 in the collection.

  

The issue is that, while some of these changes to the original games are welcome, others are poorly implemented. The tracks used in place of the Brad Buxer and Michael Jackson themes would be good - they existed before the two came on board after all - but the instrumentation used in this collection is entirely incorrect and out of place. It means the replacement tracks don't sound anything like they would have if they'd been used in the original games. I've actually modded the Brad Buxer and Michael Jackson tracks back into my copy of the game because otherwise it makes Sonic 3 almost unbearable for me. For reference, below is how it should sound versus what we have in the collection. 

  

   

Amy has been added to each of the main games retroactively. Which, on its own, is a plus (no pun intended). But her spindash sprite is too small, so it doesn't make visual contact with the floor. Her collision detection is also smaller than the other characters, so she doesn't go through some of the stage's obstacles as smoothly as the others, and even gets crushed under spikes where another character would stop next to them. As mentioned previously, lives have been replaced by coins for Anniversary mode, and while that doesn't bother me per se, the issue is that you're awarded too many coins without needing to spend them. An extra life should really cost 10 coins at least. Restarting a special stage, which is something that can also be done in Anniversary mode, should cost 10 coins as well. Instead, both of them cost a single coin, so you end up with an overabundance of coins that you will never, ever spend.

   

   

As with many collections, a Museum mode is included, which lets you spend your coins on various different artworks, animation clips, and music. The music can sadly only be heard in the museum mode itself, but some of the artwork is intriguing - seeing what Death Egg Zone was intended to look like in Sonic 2 was very interesting, for example.

   

Speaking of Sonic 2, it's perhaps had the most work done to it here. The aforementioned Death Egg Zone was scrapped from the game, with the exception of the final boss battle, as were a number of other zones, for various reasons. Sonic 2 is the only game in the Origins collection to feature a scrapped zone, in the form of Hidden Palace Zone, which was another stage resurrected for Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The reason behind Hidden Palace Zone's original deletion from Sonic 2 was that it was a water level with an infinitely looping elevator in the stage, which resulted in various bugs.  However, for those who are looking forward to playing the stage, keep in mind that for reasons unknown to me, it incorrectly uses Mystic Cave's 2-Player Versus Mode theme.

  

   

The updates don't end with the addition of a new level, though. The Half-Pipe special stage has also been remade in 3D, which is another great inclusion. You'd expect the Blue Spheres special stage to be remade in 3D as well, as it was another optical illusion on the original Genesis hardware, but that proves to be yet another missed opportunity for this collection. I was actually quite confused when I first played a Blue Spheres stage here; I was certain it would be in 3D and was looking forward to playing it. It is at least 60 FPS, just as the rest of the collection is, excluding the Game Gear emulations of course.

   

Like Sonic 2, Sonic CD was another title with a high-profile level removed. It had been dubbed "R2," as stages in that game were originally called "Rounds." It was intended to be an ancient ruins-themed stage, much like Marble Zone in Sonic 1, or Marble Garden Zone in Sonic 3. The level didn't meet the standards of the rest of the game and was ultimately cut, however it does still exist in the animated cut scenes used in the game's credits.

   

But again, there are other small issues with Origins that add up to a noticeable problem, at least for me. I don't like playing classic Sonic 1 with a drop dash. Or spin dash. I also don't understand why the insta-shield from Sonic 3 is never included as a retroactive option. Sonic 2 added the spin dash and Sonic 3 added the insta-shield, but the insta-shield is included as an afterthought (if at all), just as was the case in Sonic Mania. Why not add everything to all the games? Why not add super peel-out? It's in Sonic CD. I get that the spindash is more effective, but the super peel-out still looks cool.

   

   

Another significant addition is the new animated scenes that provide transitioning between the games, and there are new in-game sprite animations for story purposes too. However, as these games have been rebuilt from the ground up on the Retro Engine (the same engine that powers Sonic Mania), these aren't the same 16-bit games from the Genesis era.  I would have loved to have seen a tile editor or a level maker included, to really shake up this collection, as there have been so many Sonic collections over the years and Origins feels as though it's lacking something.

   

Ultimately, the changes detailed above are fairly minor, but if you're looking for the definitive way to play these classic games then Sonic Origins Plus only meets that threshold because the other options have now been delisted. It would have fared much better had it given players more options; being forced to do one thing or another based on rigid Classic or Anniversary modes is really far from ideal. I may continue to play Sonic Origins Plus, as I do like the widescreen option and the lack of slowdown, but on the whole it doesn't really feel worth the asking price of $40.