Title: Sonic Origins Plus
System: Nintendo Switch
Price: $39.99
Release Date: 06/23/2023
Prelude
Last year, this compilation launched across all platforms, and I had originally planned to review it with the Switch version I preordered day one, but the rocky state of the launch version and the many, many problems it had really soured me on it, to the point I didn’t even want to touch it much after the first couple of hours.
Well, an update was announced a few months ago, adding new playable characters and new games from Sonic’s Game Gear legacy to the set, along with a bunch of new tweaks and features. With this seeming to be the final version of a compilation I put on my worst of 2022 list, does Sonic Origins Plus make the redemption arc it desperately needed?
Presentation
Sonic Origins ended up being the first Sega Japan-made Sonic compilation since Sonic Gems Collection back on the Gamecube, and that set was a huge favorite of mine due to the lovely style of it all; great remixes, lovely menu design, and very nostalgic, chill vibes all around. So when Origins was originally released I hoped it would manage to recapture some of the presentational vibes given in prior Sonic sets, and in some ways, it does an OK job, with the Plus content adding a tiny bit extra, but even still Origins is incredibly lacking in this regard compared to the two Gamecube compilations.
You start off on a menu themed around the various islands the core four games take place on, and while this is a pretty cute concept, it doesn’t lead to much in terms of an interesting UI or memorable menus. It also looks pretty blurry here on Switch, which doesn’t help. There are also islands dedicated to the bonus stuff like the museum, options, story, mission and Game Gear modes, with the Story Mode one being themed after Sonic Spinball funnily enough (despite that only being a Game Gear game here), but none of these islands really provided much charm, though the museum is at least neatly presented when you go into it, with a variety of concept art, manual/box scans, and animations laid in a tidy tile layout.
Speaking of said museum, that’s where I feel Sonic Origins does indeed shine brightly, as while the islands leading up to it were pretty bland, all that content I mentioned it contains is very interesting stuff! You have some of the classic Sonic documents or key art you’ve seen on the internet many times before, but a lot of concept stuff that was put in here was never shown off before in any capacity, including some pretty neat documents going into the protoypical designs for Knuckles, or level design/pencil sketches of Sonic 1/2/CD stuff.
That, and you have a bunch of the key art for the 16 bit and Game Gear titles, pencil sketch versions of the animations used in this game and the Sonic Mania Adventures web series, and tons of stuff that you can unlock via the in-game coins. It even has a lot of excellent older Sonic remixes unlockable this way, though much to my dismay, you can’t pick one of those songs to replace the generic main menu theme, as that would have been a great way to set the mood for some nostalgic gallery browsing.
As part of the Plus content now, (having originally been a very clunky Digital Deluxe bonus for the original set) you also get to hear the BGM of other Genesis sonic games in this jukebox mode, despite none of them being included in the game itself. With Knuckles Chaotix’s OST being in this jukebox mode as a result, it is a shame that there still remains no way to officially play that game in the modern era. The bonus Game Gear titles are also fully exempt from this jukebox, even when buying the plus content, and that was more sad to me since some of these GG games really have some outstanding tunes of their own.
So, how are the actual games presented in this set? Well, when booting one up, you get a lovely animation meant to show off events leading up to the game in question, which are all done rather well. Sonic 1 has Sonic’s animal friends getting kidnapped, Sonic 2 has Sonic meeting Tails, Sonic 3 has the Death Egg crashing and Knuckles meeting Eggman, and Sonic CD has Amy doing an oracle reading. They’re simple yet cute and the Sonic CD one even manages to be done in such a fashion that doesn’t get in the way of the game’s two major cutscenes; which both have been given some OUTSTANDING upscales that really, really shine, far surpassing the quality of the cutscenes from the 2011 reissue of Sonic CD.
Sonic CD also retains the original Japanese lyrics for that game’s opening, which that 2011 version had to cut for legal issues, but unfortunately the ending cutscene, while gorgeous, is completely desynced from the original game’s audio, which somehow has still not been addressed even in the Plus update, and it completely baffles me as how such a major part of that game was messed up and not addressed for so long. Thankfully, all four games do get a new ending scene akin to the openings that ties into the next chronological adventure, so at least Sonic CD has an extra ending scene that looks to Sonic 2 in a fun way.
Cutscenes aside, there is a huge, huge gripe I have with the games in the set, and it applies to all four of the main games, both in the 16:9 Anniversary Mode that brings in the features from the Mobile releases, and a 4:3 Classic Mode meant to replicate the OG experiences as close as they can, and that comes in the form of a horrid, unavoidable bilinear filter that blurs the games and cannot be turned off in any way. In 16:9, this isn’t too noticeable, even less so if you’re playing these games on a HDTV, but in handheld mode and especially on the classic mode, this blur filter is an absolute eyesore, and completely destroys the pixel clarity previous reissues had. The Sega Ages/NSO versions of Sonic 1/2 look sharper, the Mobile versions look sharper, and even the poorly emulated version in the d3t Genesis collection look sharper that this set of games, which considering how these games have gorgeous spritework, to see all that crushed by an ugly bilinear filter is incredibly depressing. You don’t even get a cool CRT filter option like Sonic Mania had, which would have helped remedy the blur filter problem a little bit if one was included.
The last presentational bit to cover for the core four games is also one aspect a lot of people discussed when the original set came out, and is still a hot topic with Plus, and that relates to the BGM changes made to Sonic the Hedgehog 3. See, the original version of Sonic 3 had some weird tracks that sounded a bit different from the vibe the rest of the game had, and later on it would be revealed that these songs replaced older tracks made by Sega themselves, and were presumably composed by Michael Jackson. One song for the Ice Cap Zone also has similarities to an unreleased track MJ’s associate worked on, and for the past decade Sonic 3 has been left off compilations due to the legality of these tracks being a lot more murky with MJ’s passing and the expensive licensing nature of estates.
So for the Sonic 3 version presented here in Sonic Origins, all the MJ songs have been cut and replaced by old prototype versions of the songs Sega originally made for those zones, with some of the songs Sonic & Knuckles replaced being used as well. Thus, the second half of the Sonic 3 portion sounds radically different from the original game, and for the most part I do enjoy these new old tracks, with the new Ice Cap theme giving me Kirby vibes, of all things. Launch Base is pretty OK too, but Carnival Night’s song is just dull. Still, if it was these songs or Sonic 3 being not reissued ever again, I’d much rather take the replacements.
For the Game Gear side of things, I’m at least happy to say the presentation for those games is a bit better than the Classic mode for the main four. The GG titles are forced into a 4:3 window, and while the border options don’t really work well with the GG resolution, turning off that border fixes the problem real quick. There does still seem to be some sort of filter on these games you can’t turn off, but compared to the Genesis titles this filter is much, much lighter and thus I feel that these games look pretty good both on handheld mode or on an HDTV, even though I do wish there was some sort of option to zoom the screen in a bit for TV purposes.
Oddly enough, it’s the audio that gets the short end of the stick here, as each GG title has an irritating echo effect applied to their audio. The core sound is still the same behind that effect, but for some games like Sonic 2 the audio echo makes it feel like the game’s coming directly at me from the center of my Switch Lite, and some higher-pitched sounds in these games are outright painful to hear with this effect on, which makes me wonder why it can’t be turned off, or why these games are louder than Sonic CD. Going into the settings for your console to play audio in Mono fixes this issue for most of the games, but Sonic 2 GG still suffers from odd audio bugs with the volume levels going up and down wildly, making it the worst sounding game of the set.
Gameplay
With all that presentational baggage out of the way, once you go to the island-themed menu, Sonic Origins provides a lot of different things to go through and explore, even before getting into any of the games. Of course you have islands for the main four titles (Sonic 1, CD, 2, and 3 & Knuckles), each offering an Anniversary Mode, (the 16:9 mode with all four characters available and infinite lives) a Classic Mode (which shrinks the game to a 4:3 ratio with the original characters only with the original lives system, but does not use the original Genesis ROM version in any way, really just cropping the 16:9 version), a Boss Rush mode, and a Mirror Mode. (which just horizontally flips the Anniversary mode, nothing special)
These are all pretty decent additions to the classic games, with Boss Rush being my favorite of the batch, but I still find the Classic Mode rather disappointing, since it doesn’t use the Genesis ROMs and still forces some of the Anniversary enhancements on, such as improved framerate and graphics for the special stages, plus it’s the only way to play the classic games with a life system. It also is by far the mode that makes the blur filter stand out the most, and is really irritating to play through once you notice that filter, especially in handheld mode.
Luckily, there are a lot of other things to enjoy outside of these new modes, from the aforementioned museum mode, the options menu with the ability to toggle between NA-PAL-JP regions, and a mission menu, which includes a super cool Story Mode, (conjoining all four games into one long adventure as Sonic, though sadly you can’t seem to play it as the other characters) the titular Mission mode, (fun time attack challenges with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles across the four games, though the level design in these challenges are rather lacking) and the new Game Gear titles, plus a bonus image unlocked by completing some very simple in-game achievements across the main four games.
With all of the extras out of the way, let’s go into each of the games, and focus on how well they play and if any major bugs I noticed from last year were fixed.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG- The original game that started it all! This is still a pretty fun platformer, and while the series is known for speed, rushing head-first into stages in this game will lead to almost certain death. See, Sonic 1 goes for a more calculated approach with its level design, and the original version of the game just have you holding down on the D-Pad to roll into a ball while moving, letting Sonic use his momentum to take out enemies while platforming and nabbing rings was the main goal.
Here in Origins, you get the Drop Dash from Mania along with the Sonic 2 Spin Dash for Sonic, along with being able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, who add a lot more variety and makes some of the trickier, platform-heavy acts much easier. They even added new routes for these characters, which is pretty neat to see, and they’re incorporated seamlessly.
From the iconic Green Hill, the painful lava of Marble Zone, and the delightful Star Light Zone, Sonic 1 has a decent amount of zones that I feel mostly hold up today, and the special stages are a fun challenge. The rotating maze is a bit faster now since it seems to have gotten a scaling boost of some kind, but the retry feature with Anniversary Mode helps to make them a lot less annoying if you fail, which is a good thing since Sonic 1 is surprisingly limited on the amount of times you can enter said special stages!
Even more rad, is that while the core game still uses six emeralds and the typical setup it always did, there are in-game cheats you can enter to customize the experience a bit more, and add elements from later games into the mix. Why these aren’t settings in an options menu I won’t understand, but they allow for Sonic and Tails to play through the game together like in Sonic 1, elemental shields from Sonic 3 to replace the usual one, and even a seventh emerald stage with Super Sonic being usable in Sonic 1, which is super fun to goof around with!
Unfortunately, it still seems that Sonic and Tails are a bit buggy to use in this game, as clearing the final special stage with that character combo will crash the game, even a year after launch. Still, a big gripe I had at launch was the drop dash feeling very clunky and not practical at all, and it seems something was tweaked to make it feel so much smoother now in Plus. Not as smooth as Mania mind you, but smooth enough that playing around with it adds some extra depth to a 30 year game that I was surprised to see. Sadly, Classic Mode does not disable the spindash, even though it disables everything else, so you won’t be able to recreate the 1:1 original experience with this game if that was your preference.
SONIC CD- Oh no… Well, let’s start off with the good things people will notice right away. While CD’s 2011 port added Tails to the mix, Origins Plus adds Knuckles and Amy to the roster as well, plus new routes in each of the zones for Knuckles to make use of, which in turn leads to some small level design changes that makes the characters shine here, and for Knuckles in particular Sonic CD becomes a ton of fun to mess with, as his glide and climb techniques allow for the game’s abnormal level design to be better explored, and makes getting to some of those tricky teleporters a lot easier. I was initially hesitant on new routes being added to an old game that felt fine enough without them, but they don’t impede the original experience and playing as Sonic/Amy with the original path was still fine.
You also have the option to toggle between the US and JP score, along with a time attack mode and a set of unlockable gallery options. These are weirdly chopped up menus from the 2011 port, and are a bit obscure to access, but once you do these options are fun to work with. Unfortunately, this is where the many problems with Origins‘ version of CD begin, and makes it what I feel to be the worst ported title in the entire set; a huge fall from the 2011 port’s mark of excellence.
The first issue being that these unlockable CD bonus options can and will randomly start to lock themselves again, seemingly out of the blue, for no reason, and I couldn’t figure out as to what caused it. The other huge issue comes from the accuracy of the audio, and just how so much of it is off, both compared to the prior port and the other games in this set. The ending desync I noted earlier is one thing, but the in-game audio is overall real quiet, with even the sound effects being a lot quieter and weaker than those of the other 3 games. Considering how Sonic CD has some outstanding music, having it all muffled and quieted here was a huge shame to witness, and this was not fixed one bit in Plus.
Still, the core act-by-act playthrough manages to be entertaining, and the 16:9 really benefits the game here. The platforming focus on Sonic 1 is even more amplified here, only with a lot more exploration and no more pits to fall down! (until the absolute final stage, anyway) The time travel mechanic comes into play for destroying a bunch of robot generators in the past as a new way of getting the best ending, or going for special stages with 50 rings ala Sonic 1, though this time they’re way more fun, with a 3d rotating arena as you chase down wild UFOs.
I’ll admit, the quality of this port was the biggest reason I bounced off the original Origins set in 2022, as playing CD in classic mode after a recent play on 360 was just way, way inferior to both that port and the original Sega CD version even, and not just due to the blur filter and audio inaccuracies, but also due to the weirdness of reusing partial menus from that 2011 port, while also trying to incorporate the new kind of menus Origins uses and combine both into a weird mess that doesn’t present this game with any sort of respect at all. While it is nice to see Knuckles incorporated here, that still doesn’t excuse the fact the rest of this port has basically been the most neglected since launch, and seeing how this was the game that kickstarted Whitehead’s work on the Sonic series, the slapdash job here really feels like an insult to this game’s legacy.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2– The hit sequel, made in the USA by a team of both the JP staff and STI members! This added the spindash to the mix, allowing Sonic and his new friend tails to get a quick burst of speed and roll through enemies, leading to some very fun level designs with speed as a bigger focus. Knuckles was originally added back when Sonic and Knuckles came out, and now Amy adds her Sonic-like techniques to the mix, so the playable roster here is solid.
You can even have Knuckles or Amy tag along with Tails if you so desire, but as a CPU buddy he kinda sucks, and while a second player can control him, this game is far from an ideal co-op experience, with the other player almost certain to be thrown offscreen, doomed to come back again and again as an immortal god who can’t die. At the very least, he makes bosses a bit easier!
The special stages this time around are entered by taking 50 rings to a checkpoint, and upon going into the stars, you race down these half-pipes littered with rings, which task the player with collecting higher and crazier ring totals to obtain the chaos emeralds buried within. This version of Sonic 2 re-rendered these stages in a smoother 16:9 60FPS setup, which helps a ton with visibility, and since the later special stages can get outright cheap with their thresholds, this is a godsend, especially with the coin system allowing you to retry these stages over and over until you finally nail them. Honestly, of all special stages in this entire collection, Sonic 2′s special stages are the absolute worst, so the leeway is much appreciated.
If you do nab all seven emeralds this time around, your character can transform into an invincible version of themselves upon getting fifty rings, letting you breeze through these stages be your reward for dealing with those awful half-pipes, and having gone through this game again, I do find most of the zones in Sonic 2 to be decent fun. Emerald Hill, Aquatic Ruin, and Casino Night are super fun to explore and speed around in, though some terrible level designs in Chemical Plant and Oil Ocean Zones still stick out like a sore thumb, even with the added widescreen and visibility.
A super cool addition in this version is that of the Hidden Palace Zone, a cut level from the original Sonic 2 that became a fleshed out, one-act zone here, and it’s well designed, even with a brand new boss! While I still feel that the Sega AGES port of Sonic 2 is a bit more fun to play and has better quality of life, this port isn’t that bad, especially with those redone special stages.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 & KNUCKLES- The long in retirement, but super popular third installment finally makes a comeback, albeit with some music edits. Right off the bat this port feels much more polished than the prior three games, and that seems to be because this version was commissioned specifically for origins, and doesn’t come from an earlier mobile release. Per usual, 16:9 support and new characters were added, and to my delight, the original save screen was kept! So were the multiplayer maps, surprisingly enough. Even more of a relief, the controls and polish here feel much tighter and polished compared to the other ports in Origins. It honestly bewilders me to see how sloppy the CD port turned out, and then jumping into 3K with a relatively faithful experience, polished up in a lot of the ways you’d want a 16:9 port to be.
The special stages here are the blue sphere levels, which while an eyesore originally, seem to have been widened out in a way that makes them a lot less harsh on the eyes thanks to the improved aspect ratio and scaling, along with being a lot less harsh in general. There’s even a ridiculous amount of bonus levels of this game to play to your heart’s content, so if you like the spheres, you can go nuts!
Otherwise, Sonic 3 and Knuckles is a pretty excellent game, polished up faithfully with the huge, combined adventure still just as fun to play as it was on the Genesis, and Origins Plus easily makes for the definitive, official way to play it. My only real gripes with this port are the odd renditions of the new stage themes, along with the inability to play both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles by themselves; you can only play this as a combined adventure, which gives you less choice than older compilations, but in terms of the combined experience, this port was done very well, and makes me look down on the other 3 ports with how slapdash they feel in comparison.
SONIC’S GAME GEAR COLLECTION– Twelve games came out for Game Gear that featured Sonic in some way, shape or form, and to write about all of them in-depth would make this already long review even more nightmarish to write, so I’ll just treat these more as rapid-fire titles, despite me considering a lot of these to be the best games in the collection, and worth the price of the Plus upgrade alone. (That being said, make sure to go to the in-game options menu and remap the controls, since for some reason, this set defaults the Game Gear button layout to be a backwards format…)
Seriously! You may think Sonic 1 and 2 are just 8-bit demakes of the Genesis games, but they’re both original titles with their own unique level designs, bosses, worlds, and game mechanics, and I honestly find both of them to be way more enjoyable than their genesis counterparts. Sonic 1 GG in particular is just a really solid platformer, with outstanding music by Yuzo Koshiro, a fun way of nabbing the Chaos Emeralds by hunting them down in the zones rather than going through a special stage, and pretty fair level design that doesn’t throw much nonsense at the player, even with the expected Game Gear screen crunch, and I would rather play this over the Genesis title any day of the week.
Sonic 2 isn’t half-bad either, but the screen crunch hurts this one a lot more, and makes it the only game where I’d prefer if the Sega Master System version was available in some fashion, since this game still has some neat level designs and gimmicks that I liked more than the ones found in the Genesis Sonic 2. And no half-pipe nonsense, yay! This game is insanely tough, but with memorization and practice it is very viable to get the true ending, even without using save states, and a very satisfying challenge once you do. Shameful audio emulation, though.
Sonic Chaos and Sonic Triple Trouble are two more of the platformers, and both are decent fun. Sonic Chaos I like a lot just because the game is so breezy, but not in a way that makes you fall asleep. If you wish, you can just go fast as Tails, enjoy the ride, and clear the whole experience with little trouble, since he can’t even get Chaos Emeralds! Or you can be Sonic and hunt down the special stages for those emeralds, and make things a bit trickier, but still very casual. Triple Trouble on the other hand makes things feel the closest to a Genesis title in terms of level design, and if that’s up your alley then this title will likely be your favorite. I do enjoy the platforming here at points, but just like some of the Genesis games, some of the special stages can be a real pain in the ass, and some zones are pretty boring. Still, the bosses here are pretty creative, so I’ll give Triple Trouble that at least.
Finally, we have Sonic Blast to end the platformers, and this one is easily the most divisive among Sonic fans, mainly due to how it looks completely hideous and was clearly trying to ride the visual popularity of the Donkey Kong Country games. It feels sloppier, Sonic and Knuckles are the playable cast this time around, and the zones are some of the most generic to ever grace a Sonic game, with Blue Marine Zone being the absolute worst when it comes to getting lost. Still, due to being a Game Gear game, these levels aren’t that long at all, and the Chaos Emerald stages are pretty easy, so I don’t find this to be the worst of the platformers, or even the worst of the Game Gear games, as Sonic Blast just manages to be incredibly average, serving as a fine game to spend an afternoon with, but nothing more.
The GG Spinoffs on the other hand? Whoooooo boy, we have a big mixed bag. You have two Sonic Drift titles, with the first one being a very basic kart racer, with the sequel adding actually interesting track designs, two Tails games, with Skypatrol being a fun autoscrolling adventure with a grapple ring mechanic, and Adventure being a weird, clunky attempt at a metroidvania, Sonic Labyrinth, a really fun puzzle-like game that does the whole “find random items and exit the stage” deal better than Sonic 3D Blast ever did, and then actual demakes of Sonic Spinball and Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. Mean Bean is just a reskin of the GG port of Puyo Puyo, and the game is still as addictive as it ever was, even in an 8-bit form, and was one I proudly spent nearly a dozen hours on during the 3DS era.
Spinball GG on the other hand, is without a doubt the worst Sonic game I have ever played in my life, with the already bad level design of the Genesis version being made even worse, along with terrible slowdown, clunky controls, miserable music, and just being a horrendously boring experience where every second spent is another second of my life I wasted that I could have done something remotely fun. The Genesis one at least had some decent ideas, but this demake is just horrid, and easily the game of the set to skip at all costs unless you want to inflict pain on yourself.
Still, 11/12 decent to great Game Gear titles leads to a good value, and a fun bonus worth the $10 upgrade, with Amy in the main four titles being an alright addition, but these bonus titles easily add more value to the set as a whole, and I just really wish that damn stereo mixing was done a lot better than it was.
Conclusion
In the end, while Sonic Origins Plus definitely improved some aspects that really bugged me about the original set from last year, with the Game Gear lineup being the best addition by far, and Amy being surprisingly fun to play around with, I still found Sonic Origins as a whole to be a very middle of the road set. On one hand, you have absolutely easy and accessible ways to jump into these four games with almost everything you could possibly want from them; restored levels, new characters, easier balancing, new modes, and a bigger view.
But on the other hand, this set is just so weirdly made, with some games being way more cared for than others, with CD in particular feeling like it was left in the dust before the Plus characters got added, and so much silly decisions being made that go against what some other compilations aim for. Why is there a mandatory blur filter on every title, when these games have some of the best pixel art on the Genesis? Why is the button mapping for the new Game Gear titles reversed, in such a way that doesn’t even make sense for other platforms? Why do the new modes like Mission Mode and Boss Rush feel so weird compared to the in-game bonus content like the new zone in Sonic 2 or the new characters? And most crushing to me, why is Sonic CD so quiet and sloppy?
A lot of these may come off like silly nitpicks, and for the most part you’d be right, but considering how this is meant to be the definitive collection of a classic series, and how it does a lot of really cool things… Seeing other aspects fall short of even the versions available via Sega Ages just really disappoint me, and while I don’t think a kid jumping into the Sonic series for the first time via this set will come away disliking any of the games, I do feel that compared to the Mega Collection I grew up with, the spit and polish to make this feel like the ultimate museum for a celebrated franchise is just not there.
Come for the low $40 price for everything (though for prior origins owners who went digital deluxe, you actually spend more in total to upgrade, which didn’t help ease the burn of that original release at all) and the new characters, and maybe stay for the Game Gear gems, the excellent port of Sonic 3, or the mission mode.
I give Sonic Origins Plus a 5 out of 10.
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