Having Access to all 4 games Is pretty nice and Sonic 3 finally getting a re-release after so long Is pretty huge but the game currently has some bugs. Whether It be soft locks or checkpoints not working at all (Happened to me In Sandopolis act 2) while rare still weird this collection was a little rushed what doesn't help is the 40 dollar price tag with a 45 dollar deluxe edition. This game also suffers from a weird Bilinear filter which makes the game look blurry which means I had to mod the game just so the game didn't look blurry. Outside the negatives this is a good way to play the games If you've never played the 4 games or want It on consoles but It's best If you get this on a sale or wait for some bugs to be fixed/

Great to finally have the enhanced mobile versions of the classic Sonics on console, but the package really isn't much more than that. The UI and animated cutscenes are very nice but I'd still say this is a very no-frills package--developer interviews, archival materials, and any other exclusive content would have made this worth the original price tag. The Ultimate Genesis Collection on 360/PS3 remains the best Sonic collection out there, but if only got modern hardware then this is probably the best option.

Sonic Origins is a collection of games that I felt like was lackluster as a veteran of the series. It is a respectable collection that you will have a good time with. I played most of the content offered. It isn’t a bad collection by any means but there were many issues I personally had. Also no physical edition made me furious! I did not experience any bugs or crashes for Sonic Origins!

Presentation: The presentation of Sonic Origins is awesome! Having islands represent each game was a brilliant touch. I like that you can view the islands but wish there was customization to make them more stylized to you. The UI is also very intuitive and easy to navigate. I also like that you can change the music in the menu to your tastes that they have within the collection! You can even change the music to games outside the collection. It’s limited but really good to see. The presentation was knocked out of the park!

Game modes/Gameplay: I like that they added the separate option to do boss rush for each game and have blue spheres for Sonic 3 and K. On a side note you can finally retry the special stages with coins which is good because I don't always get it done on the first try. The classic mode could have been better by adding a rewind option and more classic features to make it feel classic. Also having drop dash in the classic mode doesn't feel right since that wasn't in the classics. For the anniversary mode I wish you could have limited lives instead of unlimited lives. What I think they should have done is just give you a bunch of settings to tailor to your experience instead of having two different modes. In Sonic 1, 2 the drop dash feels stiff. You have to commit to one direction!

Animations: The animations by Tyson Hesse are fabulous and really enjoyable to watch. All the games each have animations and that is awesome! These were really enjoyable to watch as a Sonic Fan and added to my experience. It may not have added to the story but that did not matter to me.

Mission Mode: This is an awesome addition to Sonic Origins! All 4 games have different missions and the sheer variety of those are amazing. My favorite was Sonic 2 where they allowed you to play as Super Sonic that was cool! Some are breezy while some can take a bit to figure out which I like. My only problem is that SEGA locked the harder missions behind the deluxe edition. It is a welcome addition to these 30 year old games!

Museum: As a Sonic fan this was fascinating! Seeing concept art of different sonic games is a dream for someone like myself. I am always curious about what goes behind the development of games. I also really like that you had to unlock these by coins. It made you explore the levels or do the missions which I like so it makes it feel earned! Gives me vibes of the Sonic Mega Collection with this kind of stuff!

Sonic 3 and K music: They butchered the music to this! I know they couldn’t get the Michael Jackson music but come on! They ruined Carnival night zone’s vibe by making the music sound flat and not sounding like you're in a carnival. Ice Age zone was also ruined by this as well. This kills the vibe of some of these great stages. If you like the new versions that’s fine but I personally do not.

Playable Characters: The fact that they did not add Amy or Metal Sonic as playable characters is baffling! These two would have been welcome additions and made the collection more worth it. I liked that you are able to play as the standard 3 characters except knuckles for CD of course.

Conclusion: Sonic Origins is going to be a great time for newcomers of the series but as a veteran it just missed the mark. I had a fun time replaying these classics with never playing 3 and K previously! The new additions made my experience of the classics better but they could have done more to justify its price point and it's value as a veteran. I give Sonic Origins a 6/10! It was clearly well thought out with some of it's additions! I would recommend this for newcomers but not for the veterans of the series. A good way for newcomers for sure but It wasn't for me, doesn't mean it is a bad collection by any means.

Right now this is the best official ways to play the first 4 classic sonic games. They all run smooth as butter, the drop dash is really cool, and the additional features are all really neat. If you want a convenient way to play all the classic sonic games and you don’t have them, then definitely go for them. However there are little things that make it less than perfect. For one, you can’t play as Knuckles in CD for some stupid reason, and you can only pair sonic and tails in sonic 2 and 3. It couldn’t have been that hard to implement so I don’t know why they didn’t. Another thing that bugs me is that unlike the mobile ports of sonic 1 and 2, you can’t play an existing save with all your emeralds so you can play the game again to try to get more. Again, no reason why that couldn’t be implemented. Of course, the elephant in the room, the game uses the PC music for Carnival Night, Ice Cap, and Launch base. I know they couldn’t for legal reasons, but I personally hate the prototype music for those stages. Pc players could potentially mod them back in, but I got the switch version since I can already play updated versions on my PC.

These are all little things however that I can see them adding in an update or something. While I hate the “patch it later” mentality, they are just cool additions rather than game breaking bugs. If you don’t have access to the classic sonic games and you have the bucks to spare, I’d say get it. This is the gold standard that all collections should be held to.
(yes it sucks that they delisted the other classic games because of this but its not the games fault. Also I haven't run into any bugs idk what thats all about)

apparently the PC port has some issues, but i ran into no issues whatsoever in my playthrough, but i just wanna preface it with a warning to be wary of that i guess.

sonic 1, 2, and CD are pretty standard. they are pretty faithful ports of the taxman mobile versions and feel great. sonic 2 getting cut content brought back will never not be super fuckin cool. sonic 3 is by far the stand out though. this version of sonic 3 fucking ROCKS. so many little things had me excited and freaking out like the updated super sonic sprite, the new idle animation from the beta, and especially the big arm fight returning to sonics story. i also think the cutscenes are absolutely amazing, they're so charming and appealing and work so perfectly. please any future 2d sonic game you make should have these kinds of cutscenes every time they're so awesome.


the museum and mission mode are two of the biggest advertising points, and i think they're pretty solid. nothing mind blowing, i wish the museum had a bit more weird and obscure content but it's still super fun to browse. mission mode was pretty fun to grind out S ranks on but also not like a reason to buy this collection really lol.

the sonic 3 music situation is a bit of a bummer, but i'm not that beat up about it. the rest of the cool shit sonic 3 got completely makes up for it IMO.

i think this collection fucking rocks. it's my new favorite way to officially play all 4 of these games, and my dream of the mobile ports of sonic 1 and 2 coming to consoles and PC has been realized in the best way possible. maybe wait for a small price drop if you're not as much of a loser about sonic as i am but i highly recommend this collection.

Sonic Origins. A game collection that brought over the first four Sonic games to modern hardware. Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. Yes, I said four. That is because Sonic 3 and Knuckles were combined into one complete package. Sonic Origins was announced from the Sonic Central event after the success of the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie. It was announced that yes, Sonic 3 & Knuckles would get its OFFICIAL 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio.

I was excited to see Sonic 3 & Knuckles in widescreen for Sonic Origins. But the thing was, there was no actual gameplay besides the 4:3 ROM video and the others having the Christian Whitehead/Taxman ports of Sonic 1, 2, and CD. And even though we were supposed to get news of Sonic Origins for the rest of the year, we didn’t get to see any of it until on April 20th, 2022 where they dropped the trailer for Sonic Origins. And it looked GREAT.

Link for the Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzHXjAJ86Zw

The game finally came out on Sonic’s 31st Birthday, June 23rd, 2022. And what do I think of it? Is it an atrocious collection or is it a pretty damn solid collection? Well, let’s see!

WHAT DOES THIS COLLECTION HAVE??
This collection has all the mainline classic games, Sonic 1, CD, 2, and 3&K in that order. Yes, I said IN THAT ORDER. You’ll see why. This collection also gives us a nicely animated intro that gives us an idea of the overall presentation of the game. You get to the menu after that, and you are greeted with so many options to choose from in the get-go. You can swap islands, go through an island tour with the camera (sadly present in the Digital Deluxe edition and NOT in the base game by itself), you can view all the islands with the map, you can view the Museum (more on that later), go through Mount Mobius for either the missions or Story mode, AND play through Sonic 1, CD, 2, and 3&K separately if you choose. For each and every game, there is a Classic Mode, Anniversary Mode, Mirror Mode, Boss Rush, and Blue Spheres for Sonic 3 & Knuckles. They all have a slick and amazing UI design that honestly stand out from the other UI designs Sonic games always have, which vary in quality. And to my surprise, the collection’s presentation screams, “Welcome to the Sonic collection you’ve always wanted!” and I am very happy about that.

MUSEUM - WHAT DOES IT HAVE?
The Museum comes with 3 different menus to start off with. You can view:
The Sounds.
They are the music tracks that came from different Sonic games, both in the regular and premium collections.
The Illustrations.
They are art that you can view at any moment. They range from concept art to variant covers.
The Movies.
They are videos that you can view at any moment, like I will keep saying. But these videos are the intros and outros of the games, with the exception of the animated miniseries, “Sonic Mania Adventures”, a great miniseries that promotes Sonic Mania.

My only criticism here for the Museum was that some of the songs that come from the Music Pack bonus were labeled wrong. And you shouldn’t have to install a mod to fix it. A simple YouTube search should’ve helped out to label these songs correctly. Otherwise, the songs, art, and videos are of outstanding quality.

Now onto the games themselves.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG (1991)
The first game in the entire series that spawned many sequels and other mainline games. Sonic the Hedgehog defined the platforming genre by showing what this character can do at first glance. This is true for the first zone in the game, the iconic yet oddly most reused Green Hill Zone. Green Hill Zone is everything Sonic the Hedgehog aspired to be: Fast, yet had great platforming along the way. But when you go to the zone, you’ll start to notice that the zones go into a little pattern of implementing speed in one zone and platforming into the next. Marble Zone, Spring Yard Zone, Labyrinth Zone, Star Light Zone, and finally, Scrap Brain Zone. My favorite zones have to be Spring Yard, Green Hill, and Star Light for their emphasis on speed. Marble, Labyrinth, and Scrap Brain are mostly platforming. The pacing of these zones can vary from player to player, but to me, it kinda feels like it’s being dragged on and on with the slow platforming, which CAN be VERY frustrating for players that just want to go fast. The bosses of the game are not as hard as they seem to be. But the one zone I was always stuck on and the boss fight I had trouble with was Marble Zone and its boss. Overall, this game is a pretty decent package. 7.5/10.


SONIC CD (1993)
Oh yeah. We’re doing Sonic CD next. Not in chronological order of YEARS. We’re doing this in the STORY chronological order. Sonic CD was worked on by Naoto Ohshima and the rest of Sonic Team in Japan at the same time where Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was being worked on in the United States at the Sega Technical Institute by Yuji Naka after being convinced by Mark Cerny who’s known for his work at Sony for the PlayStation consoles. The game was created for the SEGA CD add-on, and Sonic CD hasn’t been released all that much until 2011 with the remastered version being created by Christian Whitehead, also known as Taxman. Originally, this SEGA CD game was known as the Best Sonic Game of All Time since it was a hidden gem. Now that it’s released for Sonic Origins, what do I think of it? Well…
This game is definitely one of my favorites next to Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Sonic CD is a game known for its fast speeds and exploration since every single zone is very big in scale. Sonic CD is the true sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog, as the worlds, the art design, the sprite work and gameplay feel more on par with Sonic 1 rather than Sonic 2. All zones stand out to me the most rather than Sonic 2 or Sonic 1 because of its art style, level design, and the gimmick for Sonic CD: Time Travel. The main shtick of Sonic CD is to time travel in the past to find Eggman’s Robot Generators as Eggman has ahold of the Time Stones, powerful stones that can give you the Good Future of each and every level once you collect all 7 Time Stones. However, you can complete the game without touching any generators, or if you want the good ending, then you have to destroy each and every Robot Generator. Completing the game without getting every generator gives you the Bad Future of every level, and it will give you the Bad Ending where (SPOILERS FOR THOSE THAT HAVE NOT PLAYED SONIC CD [but who honestly cares anyways]) Little Planet is back to the state Eggman left it in and it’ll be forever chained to the mountain with Eggman’s face on it.
My favorite zones in Sonic CD are Palmtree Panic, Quartz Quadrant, Stardust Speedway, and Metallic Madness. My least favorites are Wacky Workbench and Tidal Tempest. Collision Chaos is just ok.
The Japanese soundtrack is unironically the best soundtrack for Sonic CD. The US version is decent but I’m sorry most of the songs just don’t fit the overall vibe that Sonic CD has.
Here’s a hot take for you! SONIC 1 IS WORSE THAN SONIC CD. There, hope you enjoyed my hot take for this review.
Overall, this is a very well done port of Sonic CD. Definitely one of my favorite ports. 9/10.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2 (1992)
Sonic 1 walked so that Sonic 2 can run, and holy SHIT does it run FAST. Sonic 2 literally improved upon everything that Sonic 1 has done, and the amazing part is that it literally gave us momentum based levels that can make you go pretty fast, Chemical Plant Zone being the best example. Sonic 2 was worked on by Yuji Naka and the Japanese Sonic Team members that were in America with the help of the SEGA Technical Institute (S.T.I.). And Sonic 2 is quite an amazing game. Better than CD, but I still pick CD over 2. Sonic 2 takes the regular speedy gameplay and platforming sections of Sonic 1 and not only groups them together, but it literally EXPANDS upon it and the best levels of Sonic 2 are Emerald Hill, Chemical Plant, Hill Top, and Mystic Cave. I’m glad that Sonic Team and SEGA created a game that many fans grew up with, with examples being Sam Procrastinates and Cobanermani456.
Sonic 2 prioritizes speed over needless and slow platforming. The stages are smaller than Sonic CD’s stages in scale, but they’re bigger than Sonic 1’s stages.
There are really great themes of the stages in Sonic 2, like a casino city, a heavenly Emerald Hill, haunted caves, a hidden palace, etc.
The music for Sonic 2 has been composed by Masato Nakamura of Dreams Come True, and he has done amazing work on songs like Emerald Hill, Chemical Plant, Death Egg Zone, Oil Ocean, and Hidden Palace.
I really do like Sonic 2, but there are a couple problems. The first one (keep in mind, this one has been fixed in a recent patch) was that when you play with Sonic AND Tails or Knuckles and Tails, Tails’ A.I. is completely broken, making you hear his jump sound effect over and over again. He will not despawn and this has been the most ear-grating thing I’ve ever had the misfortune of hearing. This was one of the biggest issues, along with the small issue of the controls being as stiff as Sonic 1, which again, is very fixable with not only a mod, but also in the Stage Select code (S2+S3 by the way). One of the other issues I faced while playing Sonic 2 in Origins was the collision detection. Sometimes I get killed unfairly when I come too close to an object that seemingly CRUSHES me.
Despite those problems though, this is a solid port. I really like it. 8/10

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 & KNUCKLES (1994)
Finally. We’re at the game I consider to be up there with Mania as the best Classic Sonic game of all time. The zones are much more memorable than Mania’s own 4 original stages, the sprite work is absolutely fantastic, the music slaps, and it definitely has the best “Show Don’t Tell” story. The story picks up after Sonic 2 where the Death Egg crashes into Angel Island, right in the Hidden Palace Zone. Eggman is furious about his loss to Sonic, and just as he was throwing a tantrum, he comes face to face with the Master Emerald and its protector, making his first appearance here, Knuckles the Echidna. Knuckles demands answers as to why Eggman is here, and Eggman tricks him into believing that Sonic and Tails were the true villains and that he tried to save the animals and take back the Chaos Emeralds. Their new plan is set into motion as Sonic and Tails arrive on Angel Island and Sonic turns super as he arrived to the island. But Knuckles pulls a cheap shot and punches the hell out of Super Sonic, making him turn to normal. Knuckles takes the Chaos Emeralds back and laughs in Sonic’s face as he goes off. From there, Sonic and Tails recollect the Chaos Emeralds as you play through the game, and they end up at the Big Arm boss. After defeating the Big Arm boss, the Death Egg crashes into a cave (where Lava Reef Zone is) and Sonic and Tails collect the Super Emeralds in Mushroom Hill. They make their way to the Hidden Palace Zone and Sonic fights Knuckles, only to end up winning and Eggman takes the Master Emerald. Knuckles, feeling betrayed, realizes that Sonic and Tails only had the Chaos Emeralds because they were stopping Eggman’s evil schemes. So he decided to help our heroes go through Sky Sanctuary and into the Death Egg. From there, we beat the Death Egg Robot and enter the final zone, Doomsday Zone. Sonic takes back the Master Emerald as Sonic’s ultimate form, Hyper Sonic. This story is very simple to understand, and it’s a lot of fun to go through.
The way to get the Chaos Emeralds in this game are to find the big rings that are hidden in each level. Finding one takes you to the newest Special Stage named the Blue Spheres. You run over the Blue Spheres and do that with all of them to get the Chaos Emerald. Run over the blue spheres in an outline, and when you complete it, rings will appear and you can get them.
The gameplay is what you’d normally expect out of a Classic Sonic game: You run forward, use the roll/spindash to gain momentum from slopes and go as fast as you can throughout the levels. And with the Drop Dash implemented into Anniversary/Mirror Mode, you can get that quick headstart.
Sonic 3 and Knuckles used to be separate games, because SEGA and Sonic Team did not have enough time to completely finish Sonic 3 and Knuckles, so they released Sonic 3 first before releasing Sonic & Knuckles with a Lock-On cartridge.
Worried about save states? Origins has you covered with its autosave feature AND Sonic 3 and Knuckles implements the same system for when you boot up the game.
The soundtrack absolutely slaps.
Super/Hyper Sonic controls very smoothly, but it can be a bit scary as his movements are much faster than normal Sonic and with Hyper Sonic, you can do a double jump.
This sounds all well and good, right? Well, that should be the case, but… right before release, Katie did announce on a Sonic the Hedgehog Official live stream on YouTube that they would redo the prototype tracks with Jun Senoue doing the work. However… even though Jun makes a lot of great music, the one thing he’s most known for besides him being part of Crush 40…he’s on the soundtrack of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1 and Episode 2. The soundtrack and sound design for all games, not just Sonic 3 and Knuckles, sound all muffled and not as crisp as it should be. The remastered tracks are not as bad as I originally thought, but my least favorite songs HAVE to be Carnival Night Zone and Ice Cap Zone. The prototype music on the Genesis sound chip before Michael Jackson and Brad Buxer were involved should have been the songs used for Sonic Origins. This remastered take on S3&K will still receive a good score of 8.5/10, because the only things that weigh it down for me is the soundtrack and sound design of it all.

WHAT ELSE DOES THIS COLLECTION HAVE??


MISSION MODE
Sonic Origins brings us other new content besides the Museum and the games we’ve discussed in my review. One of these is Mission Mode. Mission Mode is a set of levels with objectives that you need to complete in a certain amount of time to get the most coins possible in this game. With Mission Mode, this could be a great way to max out your coins (and another way is possible, which we’ll get to, don’t worry). Mission Mode is basically a Tutorial Mode on how to use the characters for the game properly, and this can really help out someone that wants to use a certain character. With the Sonic Origins DLC that came packaged with the Digital Deluxe edition, there are much harder missions to complete. And these hard missions are actually PRETTY DIFFICULT, which makes Mission Mode my absolute favorite mode to go through. I love this mode so much.

STORY MODE (SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ IT!! [But who would actually care about spoilers from 30-year-old games.])
Story Mode is all the games in its chronological story lore order, and the games are in order: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. And in between each and every completion of the game, you are given an opening and ending cutscene. For Sonic 1, you are taken through the start of Sonic’s adventure where Sonic’s flicky friends are being attacked by Eggman’s robots, and the ending cutscene has Sonic finding out about the six Chaos Emeralds he’s got and he goes off on his next adventure. Sonic CD opens with the same animated cutscenes with Amy and her tarot cards, and it also has the Toei animated opening intro and outro. The outro sees Sonic going on the plane to the next island while Amy predicts that Sonic will be joined by a two tailed fox. Speaking of, when Sonic 2 begins, we get to see Miles “Tails” Prower for the first time before he joined Sonic. They go on their journey to collect all Chaos Emeralds, and Tails helps Sonic get to the Death Egg. He fights the Death Egg Robot, gets saved by Tails, and the Death Egg crashes into Angel Island, where the Hidden Palace Zone is, thus kickstarting Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. Knuckles is tricked by Eggman into thinking that Sonic and Tails are his enemies and are willing to hurt and destroy anything or anyone they come across. So Knuckles decides to help Dr. Eggman with his plan. After the big adventure that is Sonic 3 & Knuckles, they end up at the Hidden Palace Zone where Eggman stole the Master Emerald as Sonic and Knuckles had their big brawl. Knuckles finds out at that moment that Eggman is a liar and helps Sonic and Tails stop Dr. Eggman. The Death Egg is destroyed afterwards, and that is the entirety of the Story Mode.
Story Mode is essentially a marathon of each and every game, like how the Egg Shuttle was all the levels in one go in Sonic Colors. It’s generally well thought out, no doubt about it, but a big missed opportunity would be to have some cutscenes play out in-game like with Sonic and Knuckles clashing. Story Mode is still pretty good though, so I’ll give it a pass this one time.

BOSS RUSH (ALL GAMES)
Boss Rush is a mode where you fight all the classic games’ bosses to get the fastest time possible. It’s quite a lot of fun and sometimes, you could enter a boss with NO RINGS, which means that you have to be as PRECISE AS POSSIBLE to try and not get hit. Sonic 1’s bosses are easy to fight against, ditto with Sonic CD’s bosses. Sonic 2 gets a little more challenging, but Sonic 3’s Boss Rush is one that I’ve raged at and played the most. With Sonic 3, you have the Insta-Shield, which is needed to protect yourself from hitting the boss at a wrong angle. And you can get coins from beating the Boss Rush, not just in Mission Mode or in-game. Boss Rush is pretty fun. I will say that it can get pretty challenging to fight them one after another, but it’s a fun kind of challenging.

NEW BLUE SPHERES
For Sonic 3 and Knuckles in the Main Menu of Sonic Origins, there is an option to play Blue Spheres by itself, not just in the Sound Test screen. Remember the Lock-On Technology that the Sonic and Knuckles cartridge had? Implementing Sonic 1 into the lock-on cartridge allows you to play 134,217,728 blue sphere stages, which is INSANE. There’s a lot of level codes to where you can enter it in and play the level.

New Blue Spheres mode is actually really fun and I’m pretty biased for these types of special stages in classic Sonic games. I like the Blue Sphere Special Stages a lot in Sonic 3 and Knuckles. I got really not much else to say on these.

MIRROR MODE AND CLASSIC MODE
MIRROR MODE.
- Mirror Mode is cursed. You play any game essentially flipped horizontally, making everything backwards. It’s pretty weird to see it flipped, and playing it backwards feels really weird to play, especially when you’re not used to playing the game backwards. It does make it a little more challenging. And I’ve played all the classic games in Mirror Mode on Nintendo Switch and PC.
CLASSIC MODE
- Classic Mode actually sucks here. Yes, it’s 4:3, and yes, it adds back lives which is cool. But this is not the definitive way to play the classics in its native 4:3 aspect ratio structure. What SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED is that the emulated roms are the Classic Mode of Sonic Origins. Too bad that may never happen though, because SEGA delisted the roms from Steam and the Xbox Store on May 20th, 2022. What was the point of that!? I mean, I get it, there is an overabundance of the games, sure, but the only way people would play these roms would be to actually emulate it (KEGA Fusion is best for this by the way), and if you already have it, you can play it on Steam as part of the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive Classics. Classic Mode features the remastered visuals, and for Sonic 1, the Spin Dash remains as part of the game. But the thing is, Sonic did NOT have the Spin Dash in Sonic 1. He got that ability in Sonic 2. Classic Mode is the worst part of the game hands DOWN.


And that’s my review on Sonic Origins!
I’m going to be very honest here. While I do love this collection so much, and that I have a COMBINED TOTAL of 87. 5 hours on this collection (65 hours on Switch, and 22.5 on PC)…I think it shouldn’t be a surprise to say that I’m pretty mixed on this collection. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great collection! No doubt about it, but the issues it has still weigh it down from being one of the better collections. Mega Collection (and its Plus variant PS2) are the best Sonic collections that have been released thus far. I’ve had a lot of fun with any Sonic collection I’ve played, even the Sonic Classics Collection on Nintendo DS. Sonic Origins is no exception to the rule. I love Sonic Origins, but it’s not the best collection. It’s a very good one! But it’s for sure not the best one out there for you to play right now. I will say though, I was one of the few people that actually got all achievements on Steam!

Now that’s something to be proud of. :)


FINAL SCORE:
7.5/10
Grade: C+
3.5 Stars.

Hm. This game is certainly something, alright. I guess I'll preface this by saying that if you have never played a sonic game before, this will definitely be the easiest way to go to enjoy those games. To a casual fan, this is a great way to enjoy the classic sonic series. However, as a more serious sonic fan, this compilation is so, so, SO agonizingly close to being a definitive experience for all these classic titles, but falls just barely short of actually taking those titles from their fan-developed counterparts. A compilation that is somehow less than the sum of its parts is a very strange thing indeed. You get the Taxman remastered ports of sonic 1, 2, and CD here with the drop dash included, plus a brand new port of sonic 3 & knuckles also with drop dash support and in widescreen for the first time. The games all play perfectly fine but there's just a bunch of tiny little annoyances that add up over time, such as tails' AI not really working all that right and you constantly hear him jumping and smashing into things offscreen which can be annoying, theres some occasional bugs and whatnot, and they absolutely BUTCHERED the audio in sonic 3, using lower-quality audio recordings of the game audio plus worse re-recordings of replacement tunes for the licensed tracks. By all accounts and purposes especially considering how much I love sonic, I should have absolutely loved this compilation, but instead I just found myself kinda eh on it.