Would be a decent collection with some fun and challenging missions (Though there isn't many) with a cool new story mode and 16:9 but is ruined by lacklustre and short cutscenes though are animated well, Dumb and unesscessary DLC that makes no senese from a business standpoint, poor optimization due to denevo, weaker prototype music, some sprite bugs being unaddressed, game looking blurred and lack of any real customizability, at least the bonus content is decent.

Still if you just want the missions and maybe the story mode wait for a discount, there's many better ways to play the classics thanks too fans and sega delisting them is stupid too.

impressively, all of sonic team's greatest minds have come together to fuck up remastering already great ports of 30 year old games


if you'd love to pay five dollars for expansive day one content such as... the characters moving in the menus, then this is the game for you. integer scaling? fuck you. everything is blurry, play at 320x224 for the authentic Sega Genesis experience. shitty DRM to protect these untouchable, pirate proof genesis games? check. do you like your games optimized, because we don't, god bless whatever rig you're using because it won't get past the title screen. high quality audio? nope, it sounds and loops like shit. also we couldn't get the sonic 3 songs back so here are awful rearrangements of the prototype tracks that sounded fine lmfaooooo. welcome to the museum featuring NEVER BEFORE seen content such as youtube.com sonic mania adventures part 2. it's a 2d platformer but sorry! you're not allowed to bind anything to arrow keys.

you get the idea. somehow, this isn't all of it. sucks because somewhere under the slew of baffling decisions and technical issues is a great collection, but I suppose sonic being run through a shit filter a few dozen times is par for the course now. better versions of these games exist already via Sonic 1 Forever, Sonic 2 Absolute, Sonic 3 AIR, and Sonic CD Restored, but if you want to play the last two legally, you're probably out of luck - because both sonic 3 and CD have been delisted.

at least the cutscenes are boss

Honestly, there are some issues with this collection. I'm a huge Sonic fan, but its rendition of Sonic 3 & Knuckles is bad. The physics are different enough to notice a difference and there is a glitch with big rings once you get Hyper Sonic that makes the game think you only have one regular emerald and sends you to a special stage for some reason, instead of giving you 50 rings as expected. This game was not QA'd well enough for release, and Stealth even said they wanted more time for this game. The new music is also hit and miss. Sonic 3's music is very quiet for some reason too. This definitely needed more time in the oven, as glitches are rampant in this game.

Sonic 1, 2, and CD by and far are great, and there's nothing wrong with them, since they're the Taxman/Stealth/Whitehead ports. The games play well and as expected with no surprises. 3 is the only outlier, and this collection would be great if that had the same quality as the others.

The museum and challenges are a nice addition, but it would have been nice to see the SMS/GG games get some representation there. There are also no unlockables aside from the museum stuff. You can unlock everything VERY easily, so that's a plus to me, and you don't even have to unlock the songs to listen to them (premium versions).

The fact that the original standalone versions of each game have been delisted is honestly kind of crappy. Especially while keeping some on Switch, such as the Ages versions of Sonic 1 and 2.

There's a lot this collection does right
A museum full of music, art, and manuals from the classic games is a nice feature to look through.
A story mode bridging together Sonic 1, CD, 2, and 3&K with brand new animated cutscenes that are super adorable is a nice feature for long time fans.
Each game being updated to a widescreen resolution, with Sonic's drop dash ability from Mania being added and lives being replaced by special coins that allow you to retry Special Stages or unlock museum items are all excellent changes.
Yes for the most part, this is just the Taxman mobile ports of Sonic 1/CD/2 ported to consoles (which includes Hidden Palace Zone in Sonic 2) but this is something we've asked for ages so I'm personally glad at the opportunity to finally be able to play these games.
There's some other extras like a mission mode, boss rush, and mirror mode which are nice extras but don't really do much for me.
Another huge plus is that Big Arms and a proper transition to the Sonic & Knuckles portion of S3&K has been added to the Sonic route of the game (S3&K removed the Big Arms fight in the Sonic/Tails route)

Now the collection does have some big flaws
Tails and Knuckles are playable in Sonic 1 but for some reason Knuckles isn't playable in CD
Carnival Night, Ice Cap and Launch Base Zone have had their music changed from the original Sonic 3 release due to the issues surrounding Michael Jackson's involvement on the soundtrack. While I understand why these songs had to be changed, I really don't vibe with a lot of the new music, Launch Base ESPICALLY AS IT DOES NOT FIT AT ALL. I don't mind the new Super Sonic theme but that was an unnecessary change for the sake of using something different from the Sonic & Knuckles invincibility theme.
The museum includes music from Sonic Spinball, Sonic 3D Blast, and Knuckles' Chaotix and I love that but it's also like, you included those games full soundtracks but not the games themselves? Like a rerelease of Chaotix would've been really nice, even if it was just the original game.
It also would've been nice if they included Mighty and Ray in these games as well. They borrowed the drop dash from Mania so including those two as bonus characters would've been a nice treat (honestly have the feeling they'll release an enhanced version of this game alongside a physical edition down the line just like they did with Mania)

While I have nitpicks with this collection, it is ultimately the best versions (music from Sonic 3 aside) of the games that defined my childhood and that remain some of my favourite games today, so in that regard, I have so much to love here. It is just unfortunate that there's a few missed opportunities that means this falls short of its potential

Los Sonic clásicos tienen un motor de físicas muy bueno y su principal baza es el poder aprovechar la arquitectura y elementos de sus niveles para construir impulso, pero siempre han tenido un problema en cuanto a su diseño, que castigaba al jugador por ir rápido, algo irónico si tenemos en cuenta que la razón por la que pretendían venderse estos juegos era la posibilidad de avanzar deprisa. Esto era debido a limitaciones técnicas, pues la resolución de la Mega Drive no permitía en sus juegos un amplio campo de visión. La velocidad que puede llegar a alcanzar Sonic no encaja con la escasa visibilidad que hay en pantalla, porque si vamos rápido no tendremos apenas tiempo de reacción a los obstáculos que se nos aproximan, de manera que navegar a toda velocidad terminaba recayendo más en jugar varias veces sus niveles memorizándolos. A alturas de Sonic 2 y de Sonic 3 & Knuckles, los desarrolladores probablemente eran tan conscientes de ese problema que diseñaron secciones de velocidad específicas para que el personaje vaya rápido sin necesidad de que el jugador toque un solo botón, siendo más unos momentos semi-cinemáticos en los que obtener algunos rings que otra cosa, además de que están separados de las secciones más plataformeras.

Sonic Origins era una oportunidad de brindar a estos juegos un más que amplio campo de visión horizontal y vertical, especialmente porque los sistemas actuales tienen pantallas con resoluciones más grandes y no aprovecha eso. Han rehecho los juegos con un nuevo motor, molestándose únicamente en ampliar la pantalla a 16:9 y modificando en el proceso algunos de los combates contra jefes, de manera que sus problemas de raíz persisten. De hecho, los juegos que presenta están más estropeados, pues hay errores de colisiones que nos llevan a poder quedarnos atascados en algunas partes de su arquitectura y las físicas han sido alteradas, de forma que no alcanzaremos algunos lugares por medio de la velocidad, de la misma manera que en los originales. Sonic CD ha sido arruinado al poder abusar de la mecánica del Drop Dash para viajar en el tiempo, por lo que el valor de los escenarios a recorrer disminuye porque así deja de ser necesario buscar zonas adecuadas para mantener la velocidad durante un tiempo, además de que sigue siendo irrisorio que las versiones del buen futuro sigan estando plagadas de trampas que dificultan la navegación. Entiendo que esto fuera así por limitaciones de la Mega CD, pero se podrían haber rediseñado esas versiones de los escenarios en este, haciendo que la movilidad por ellos sea más cómoda como recompensa por haber cambiado el pasado, y no una simple reskin del mal futuro sin enemigos. Por otro lado, Sonic 3 hasta tiene un bug enorme en el que te quita todas las emeralds.

Pero ahí no acaba la cosa, también han incluído modos como el de misiones, el modo espejo o el boss rush, que no aportan nada significativo a la experiencia, por lo que están para inflar el producto con más contenido, diferenciarse así de otros recopilatorios y justificar el precio que cuesta, pero no es un contenido sustancial, sino un complemento vago. También han implementado un sistema de monedas con el propósito de sustituir las vidas, siendo su uso el de tener varias oportunidades en las fases especiales y el de poder desbloquear coleccionables, pero se va al traste cuando puedes ir al modo debug a farmearlas hasta el cansancio y así obtenerlos más fácilmente. Es insultante que uno de los incentivos de reservar este título antes de su lanzamiento era que te dieran 100 de este tipo de monedas de regalo y que el juego permita este abuso de farmeo, además de que hayan hecho la guarrada de que por 5 euros más puedes conseguir una versión que trae contenido que no es otra cosa que superfluo. Cabe mencionar que las fases especiales, al tener la posibilidad de reintentarlas tantas veces como te permitan las monedas que lleves, pierden completamente el riesgo de poder perder en ellas y, por tanto, devalúa como consecuencia la obtención de las chaos emeralds.

En general, este recopilatorio me parece un despropósito. Se nota que los desarrolladores tienen mucho cariño a estos juegos y por ello cuenta con una presentación cargada de atención al detalle, sí, pero de poco sirve cuando la experiencia es inferior a sus versiones originales de hace 30 años y otros relanzamientos.

I will say this is indeed 4 classic Sonic games, and on a very basic level they do function (sometimes), but this collection is not really worth the money whatsoever in its current state.

First off let's go over the content you get shall we? You get a new challenge mode, a story mode connecting all 4 games into one cohesive story, a museum with music, artwork, and all kinds of other goodies, and a few other neat features. These are cool and what I expect from any collection of this caliber, BUT a lot of these features come off as feeling rushed.

The music in the museum (especially the DLC music) is not recorded correctly from the Sega Genesis and a lot of the music is not labeled correctly making it difficult to kind certain tracks without skimming through every song in the menu. Door into Summer is now Midnight Greenhouse, The 3D Blast Invincibility theme is just the boss music, etc. And a lot of the "Premium" music is just Sonic Generations and other modern Sonic remixes from past games (again not being labeled correctly). Would it have been so hard to include something like the Sonic Arcade techno music since those were a lot more nostalgic of that era? Or the Sonic Boom/Virtual Sonic CDs? That would have been great even if they weren't playable in game.

The story mode I generally have no major complaints about it's a pretty cool mode that new players and old players will get a kick out of playing. The boss rush is also fine and offers a cool challenge (especially for Sonic 3K) to run through. Mirror mode is... ok. My biggest problems lie in the Anniversary and Classic modes. Anniversary mode is a version of Sonic 1-3K with no lives, coins you collect to use in the museum, and no continues. This is fine as an accessibility option and I don't blame anyone for using it over the original gameplay style, but I don't like how Sonic Team didn't give a fleshed out options menu for the 16:9 mode to have the old live and continues system. It's really weird they didn't include a feature like this because every other fan port and the mobile versions have it. Again I am perfectly ok with an accessibility mode and I think it's a great idea, but please let me use lives and continues in the remastered aspect ratio!

The challenge mode was the most intriguing to me out of most of this games new features. I wanted to see all the creative ways they could design new classic Sonic challenges and levels, but sadly these felt very rushed and many of the challenges felt like they were designed by an AI. Sonic 1 by far has the best challenges of the lot, but the rest ESPECIALLY SONIC 2 are just so annoying rather than being challenging.

Now the games themselves. This is the part you'd think would be the easiest to not screw up? There is already source code for Sonic 1, CD, and Sonic 2 available to Sonic Team from Whitehead's mobile ports and features like the drop dash have been done perfectly in the rom hacks like Sega Ages, but NOPE somehow Sonic Team screwed it up. The drop dash feels so jank on these games almost as if they are just a modified spin dash. At the peak of your jump using the drop dash you drop off all of your speed and lose a lot of your control mid air, and not to mention the 2 frames when you land that you are vulnerable because of how this version of the drop dash plays the spin dash animation as you land! It's horrid! And not to mention the blur filter put over the entire game! No pixel perfect, no CRT filters, no nothing just bad anti aliasing you can't turn off. Don't worry tho you can turn off AA...only for the menus! And Sonic CD loses a lot of it's charm as they either forgot or didn't both to include Sonic's voice acting when he gets a life, gets a continue, or when you do the "I'm outta here!" easter egg (WHICH WAS IN THE WHITEHEAD VERSION!).

Sonic 3K is a very special case as it was probably the higher quality of the ports in this collection. Headcannon included new animations, the drop dash functions correctly in this port, and there are some neat new features that other versions don't have like added sfx to make the game feel more cohesive, BUT this isn't a port without flaws. For some reason the special stage music doesn't speed up every time your speed increases which threw me off as I usually use the speed up to tell how fast I am going. The music was destined to be replaced and I understand why, but idk why they couldn't just use the superior prototype music. The music for Carnival Night, Launch Base, and Ice Cap sound so distracting compared to the rest of the soundtrack.

There are a lot of other things I could talk about like the amazing new animated cutscenes from Tyson Hesse or the new restored Sonic CD animations from Tanks, Quazza, and Brady Hartel, but my final thoughts on Sonic Origins in general is disappointing. Fans have made much better and intuitive ports of these Sonic games with more options and features than Origins has. And with the scummy deluxe edition selling content already in the game at launch and the insanely high price tag I can't really suggest this collection to anyone especially people playing on PC.

sonic 1 has the biggest improvement, with the drop dash speeding up the slower level design
sonic 2 has the biggest downgrade, with tails jumping being all you’ll hear past the first zone
sonic 3 is basically unchanged and a fine way to play the best game of the trilogy. shame about the music though
sonic cd is still designed by a pack of chimps
none of this matters though when considering this rushed collection of ports has been given a 40 dollar price tag
buy it if you like sonic, emulate it if you are normal

Ever since Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2 got the Taxman treatment in 2013, I've been aching for home console ports, just as was done with Sonic CD. For whatever reason, Sega opted to keep both titles strictly confined to mobile phones and Android devices. Nearly ten years later I'd all but written off the possibility of getting the original games in 16:9 on a home console or PC, and it would seem more resourceful fans felt the same way if projects like Sonic 2: Community Cut and Angel Island Revisited are any indication.

With the announcement of Sonic Origins it seemed Sega was finally prepared to fix all that, with a ground-up remaster of Sonic 3 & Knuckles to sweeten the package. But anyone with as much of an affinity for these titles as I have has probably lived long enough to build a well developed level of cynicism towards Sega, a company that is seemingly incapable of stepping out of its own way. Suffice it to say, Sonic Origins delivers on the bare minimum with so many compromises that you have to wonder if it's worth it at all.

The Taxman remasters are ostensibly here, reworked for this collection by the fine folks at Headcannon. For the most part Sonic 1, 2, and CD play fine and come out the least scathed, though there's some odd things about each. Sonic 1 and 2 feature the upgrades from the mobile game, like the inclusion of elemental shields, or the seventh emerald in Sonic 1, but these options are buried in each game's level select rather than baked into the main menu, which is a frustrating level of obfuscation. CD appears to be a straight port of the Taxman release rather than a rebuild as evidenced by the Taxman version's bespoke menus being present. A consequence of this is that switching between the American and Japanese soundtracks requires you to launch into the anniversary mode and toggle between regions in order for your choice to reflect in the Classic and Story Mode versions of the game. Also, you can't play as Knuckles in CD because he wasn't in the Taxman version, sorry!

The drop-dash has also been added to each game, but the implementation into 1, 2, and CD seems dodgy at best. There's a brief moment in the animation that gives the trick away: for a single frame the moment you touch the ground you can see Sonic curled up, mid-charge for a spindash. It's an interesting way to fake it, but it also causes the drop dash to feel distinctly off, and I found myself disregarding it outside of one specific use case in CD where you can simply drop dash back and forth to time travel more reliably.

The main attraction of course is Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which hasn't been rereleased for quite some time due to legal issues concerning Michael Jackson's contributions to the soundtrack. At this point you've probably heard the whole story and all its twists and turns, and I actually have to wonder if Sega would have remained blithely unaware of the problem if not for the story gaining more and more attention online. The solution was to remove these tracks and instead use those found in the beta version of Sonic 3, which themselves are used in the original 90's PC release of the game. Personally, I don't think these tracks ever fit in the first place. Their melodies sound inconsistent with the rest of the soundtrack's style, and outside of Carnival Night, they don't really match their levels either. Ice Cap is a poppy upbeat tune that betrays how isolated and cold the level is, which is something Brad Buxer's reuse of Hard Times captured perfectly. The audio quality is also piss poor, but really all of Sonic 3 sounds weirdly muffled here, with the exception of the new Super Sonic theme which pipes through crystal clear. This isn't too surprising as it's very obviously not using the Genesis sound font. I am perplexed by why it's even in the game, as the original Super Sonic theme is still present in this collection. Was it to alleviate how annoyingly short the original theme's loop was? If so, replacing it with something that sounds gratingly similar to the music from Sonic 4 doesn't seem like much of a solution at all. I am begging someone to keep Jun Senou away from synthesizers.

Music aside, Sonic 3 is buggy as hell. I had the game lock up multiple times on PS5, and Sonic has a nasty tendency to stop moving entirely when hanging from objects like vines or monkey bars. A couple times I had to restart the PS5 because the game became completely unresponsive. The rest of the games are much more stable by comparison, though Sonic 2 has an issue with Tails failing to rejoin the player after scrolling off-screen, resulting in constant jumping sounds, and an audio bug with the drop dash that causes a high pitched chirp out of the right channel that sounds like a smoke detector beeping.

There's some cosmetic changes to Sonic 3 as well, including an impressive amount of new sprites to fill in some of the gaps present in the original sprite sheet. Things like Sonic facing forward and looking up, and a few tweaks to cutscene animations. They look quite nice and only really stand out if you're intimately familiar with the original. More broadly, special stages are redone in each game, allowing for much smoother scrolling. This cuts down on the difficulty of collecting Chaos Emeralds tremendously and is a welcomed change.

There's a variety of other modes on offer, including a Classic mode that allows you to play each game in 4:3, mirror mode (which isn't a wholly original idea, but a fun novelty), and boss rush. Tying each of the games together is story mode, which allows you to play the Anniversary edition of each game in chronological order with newly animated cutscenes serving as connective tissue. These cutscenes are by the same people who did Sonic Mania Adventures, and they're really great. Humorous, but a bit more serious and true in tone to the games. And if you aren't completely burned out by this point, you can jump into the mission mode, which allows you to take on bite-sized challenges in remixed levels from each game. These aren't terribly difficult and I S-ranked most of them on my first attempt, so don't expect to get much more than an hour of out it.

Rounding out the collection is the museum, which features an audio library, illustration gallery, and movies which can be unlocked when certain conditions are met or via the use of coins earned from missions or Anniversary mode. Most of what there is to unlock you've probably seen by now, but there's a few gems in there. I wish they found more concept and game plan documents to throw in as opposed to style guides, but considering Sega has lost track of a lot of masters over the years, it wouldn't surprise me if their backlog of design docs is similarly limited. The audio gallery is a bit underwhelming, however. There's so many Sonic games with excellent soundtracks, but Origins restricts itself to only songs present or related to the games on offer, unless you pay more for DLC that adds Spinball, Knuckles Chaotix, and Sonic 3D Blast to the track list. You can also set up a playlist if you like, but you can't actually do anything with it.

The pricing and DLC plan for Origins is just as much a mess as the collection itself. The base game is 40$, which is asking a bit much already, with additional DLC setting you back 8$ total, unless you opt for the deluxe edition for 45$. Do not pay for the DLC, it does not add much to the overall package. The quantity of "extreme" difficulty missions is meager at best, the extra soundtracks can just be found on Youtube (and god knows you can do more with a youtube playlist than one that tethers you to your Playstation), and the extra character animations on the menu or borders for the 4:3 mode just aren't worth the price of admission. It is mildly infuriating that some of the menus are designed around Sonic Spinball and Sonic 3D Blast when neither game is included, too. I'm not expecting full remasters of these, the market just doesn't really exist for that, but would it have been so hard to toss in a few extra ROMs as unlockables?

To be fair, just because the presence of Sonic Spinball art and music tricked me into thinking it might be int he game doesn't mean I should've trusted that it would be. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... I'm gonna keep buying this garbage.

Being a Sonic fan is exhausting. A port of the 2013 and 2011 remasters along with a new port of Sonic 3 with widescreen support by Headcannon should have been a layup. But a lack of features, messy user interface, and glitchy compromised titles hold Origins back from being the definitive collection it could and should have been. No doubt this frustration is shared by Headcannon, as their founder Simon Thomley recently aired his grievances with Sega on Twitter. It's a shame Thomley has to jeopardize Headcannon's partnership with Sega, but his honestly and unwillingness for all the blame to be pinned on his staff is admirable. It should come as no surprise that Sega is still mired in self-sabotaging behavior, of course, and I can't imagine it being any different moving forward.

Sadly, the ROMs Sega was offering on digital storefronts for the original Sonic games were all delisted ahead of Origins release, and while this doesn't mean much from a preservation standpoint given how easily accessible they still are off certain sites, digital scarcity is never a good thing. Fans have long been using these ROMs coupled with fan projects to upscale these games legally, and those versions are still the best way to enjoy Sonic in 16:9. Your choices are to mod the games the way they ought to be or settle on a product that is buggy and compromised. When it comes down to it, that too is a celebration of what Sonic is: a series consistently outshined by the efforts of fans.

Correction (6/29): According to Digital Foundry, Sonic CD has some differences that make it clear that it is also a unique build for Origins, so I really have no idea why the 2011 menus are still present in it.

I think it’s safe to say that Sonic Origins is by far some of the most hyped I’ve been for a video game, I love playing the classic games and as someone who doesn’t really play any video games on Steam and such, being able to play these games on my Switch was great. Now I won’t deny that this collection does have problems and I think what’s most obvious is how rushed this collection is. Stealth already opened up about their disappointment with the collection and I haven’t encountered many bugs on Switch but sometimes I would have issues with collision… which doesn’t bother me that much considering I also had those problems in the original releases but still. Furthermore, some of the stuff not added in is rather baffling, mainly the absence of time attack. I don’t really play time attack much when it comes to Sonic but the omission is still jarring. The drop dash wasn’t implemented perfectly, it sucks that some of the music for 3 and Knuckles got replaced (I will say though, I really love the music used for Launch Base), and some of the features locked behind the digital deluxe version… some make sense, others are pretty stupid. I would also be lying if I said I could wait more time if that meant putting Knuckles in Sonic CD but it’s still, again, jarring.

In spite of these problems though, I do personally think Sonic Origins remains to be one of the best legacy compilations and I consider Anniversary Mode to be the definitive official release of all the classic games. Right off the bat, all of them are in a superb 16:9 aspect ratio that resolves a lot of the screen crunch issues each game had. Lives and game overs are completely removed and replaced with a brilliant coin system that can be used to retry special stages, which is one of the greatest improvements I have seen in any remake to date. The special stages themselves have never looked better and are miles more fun and beatable then they were on Genesis, Sonic 2 ESPECIALLY. And Sonic now has the drop dash, a feature that works somewhat well for Sonic 1 and 2 and perfectly for CD and 3 and Knuckles. Not to mention there’s not really anything they took away from the Genesis counterparts while still using the stuff that made the Taxman and Stealth remakes so great. Cheat codes are still present and debug mode can be used to farm for coins, Sonic CD has both soundtracks available and Sonic 1 and 2 allows you to play as either Sonic, Tails or Knuckles, while CD allows you to play as either Sonic or Tails.

If that were all Sonic Origins added, I’d be happy with calling this collection really good and leaving it there but Origins has even more content that elevates it to something special. Every game has a boss rush, and while I’m not a fan of it personally, I can see it as a great way to test the player’s skills. Mission mode is a great addition that can keep players coming back if they wish as they try getting the highest ranks and see how to use each game’s mechanics to their fullest. The museum is absolutely superb and using coins to unlock stuff present is genius. And on top of all of that, there’s story mode, and whole game that collects all four games in one playthrough. I’m actually hoping to play this mode soon when I get the chance. Oh, and the presentation in Origins is fantastic, easily one of the best looking collections I’ve seen.

In conclusion, Super Mario 3D All-Stars found dead in a ditch.

"Please buy my new, definitive collection of classic Sonic games, featuring new content like mission modes, animations, wid-"

Shut the fuck up Iizuka, ain't nobody gonna drop 40 dollars for some dumbass romset.

"ソニックオリジンズを購入するか、私があなたの指を取ります！"

Anything for you, my queen. I only regret that I have but 40 dollars to lose for you, my queen.

Some nitpicks aside, this is the definitive way to play Sonic 1, 2 and CD!

For 3 and Knuckles, I'd still recommend A.I.R due to it having more QoL improvements and customization but overall, this is a stellar compilation with some beautiful 2D animated cutscenes to boot.
My complaints mostly stem from the slightly blurry looking visuals and generally wishing there were more content included, i.e. Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic Spinball, 3D Blast and the 8-bit games.

I feel as though the expensive price tag is definitely questionable and would say to wait for a price drop if you're unsure, but the game does have plenty of additional side content worth playing. In the end, you're receiving 4, technically 5 great games for a moderately expensive price tag and whether or not its worth said price is up to your interpretation.

Despite some small issues which I hope get fixed, this is a great celebration of Sonic's roots and likely the best collection to date. Sonic 1, 2 and CD are better versions of already great ports, and Sonic 3 has received so much love and care that all the small details collectively made me grin more than I can count. Add in the big new bits and it's the Taxman/Stealth remaster I've waited long for. Of course as everyone has mentioned, the Sonic 3 music isn't great and the situation regarding it sucks, but modding has already rectified that so it's made the already perfect version just that bit better.

As a collection first and foremost I would say that Sonic Origins does the job well enough and does it with a little bit style. The presentation is slick and there’s obviously so much love put into this, from the animated cutscenes to the 3D modeled islands showcasing where each game takes place, it’s content packed, and a lot of the enhancements to the classic games themselves are nice (widescreen support, full sprite rotation, new animations and new sprites entirely with Super Sonic’s case). Mission mode has some extra bite size challenges to tackle, not spectacularly made but it’s there to fill the collection with more stuff to do and it gets the job done. I will say without having played many of the fanmade classic game enhancements I’d say this is the definitive way to play these games…but it ain’t perfect. For one the delisting of the original games on steam is pretty awful but the game is also riddled with technical issues from what I’ve been seeing, especially related to performance on PC thanks to Denuvo. I haven’t experienced anything negative myself mind you, my experience has been flawless, but I can only speak for myself. Honestly though I think my biggest issue is that it’s only a collection of Sonic 1 2 3&K and CD, games we’ve seen get rereleased time and time and time again. As awful as Knuckles Chaotix is why not release that game? It hasn’t been rereleased anywhere and is basically stuck on the 32X atm. Where’s some game gear support or more saturn sonic games? Heck where’s stuff that hasn’t even been seen in the US like Segasonic? This collection could’ve been so much more than what it is, but I guess they were just really focused on bringing us these 4 games and nothing else. It’s fine but like, you know, not super exciting. $40 is a bit too steep so I’d still wait for a price drop. It has some extra DLC where you get…more music, uh…you can zoom in on the 3D modeled islands…yeah don’t get the DLC lmao

I have no strong opinions on the new 3&K music. Launch Base’s new track is kinda catchy tho ngl

While I see why some would consider this a kind of lackluster collection, especially with the pricing in mind, I think as a compilation with arguably the best versions of each game it does a great job. The new animated intros and outros are gorgeous, adorable and funny, the restored cutscenes in Sonic CD look incredible, the 3D islands used for the menus are very pretty and the way the characters interact in them is great, and the museum has quite a lot of interesting material from the series.

I didn't encounter any glitches whatsoever in my back to back playthrough of all four games on Switch, but I'm aware other people are experiencing a lot of issues.

Some short thoughts on each game:

- Sonic 1: This is dramatically worse than I remember. I know it's pretty common to see people joking about how Green Hill is the only good level in the game but.... Maybe it is???? Kinda??? Lmao. I really don't mind too much when 2D Sonic straight up doesn't let you go fast. Yes, speed is his most well-known characteristic, but I've always seen it as more of a marketing thing than something that should be prioritized above all else in his games.

Sonic 1's levels though... They all feel like the team was still figuring out how to design fun levels around Sonic's movement and physics, and most zones have fun portions, but IMO none of them really feel wholly good and fun save for Green Hill, which is natural because it's the last one they designed.

- Sonic CD: Yes, these levels are kind of a mess, but with the years I've found that if you're not seriously engaging with the time travel mechanic purposely and instead treat the game like a roller-coaster that you just roll with it can be pretty chill. And if you really care that much about saving the futures and getting a good ending you can just do the special stages (which are good for once), get all the time stones and call it a day.

Gorgeous, beautiful game. The restored cutscenes look incredible too.

- Sonic 2: This game is still good and I had a good time, but it's bizarrely overrated, I'm sorry.

- Sonic 3&K: I genuinely love every bit of this game except for Sandopolis Zone, which is horrible, and I guess the bonus states (not blue spheres), which aren't great, but you have no reason to engage in them if you don't want to, so who cares.

Now that I'm older and I am interested in more than just the action in this I've gotten to love the game even more. The attention to detail to the environments, the backgrounds, and the way they're used to add to the storytelling is very impressive. A game like this having a cohesive narrative and a pseudo cinematic presentation despite being an otherwise arcade-ass console game is extremely cool. Love it.

Thankfully I got over the changed tracks in 3 too. They're actually quite good, except for the whack-ass instrumentation in Carnival Night Zone, what even is that, lol.

Replaying these has also confirmed for me something I've had in my mind for a couple of years, that platformers with restrictive or non straightforward jumps and/or physics are my favorites, because when done well the very act of jumping and moving around is engaging and can feel rewarding. I love it in GnG and Castlevania, and I love it in 2D Sonic. The momentum is just inherently fun to the point that just doing the most basic platforming challenges is entertaining. The lava reef boss in &K is s great example of that, and my love for this sort of movement is what makes me not care that much about speed for the sake of it, although I have to admit the absurd speeds you can reach in S3K when you play well enough is exhilarating, so I won't complain when that's done well, obviously.

An okay compilation of some classic games, even if they are some of the most widely available games ever - but this is the first time Sonic 3 has been available in at least a decade. Plus it's one of the very rare times Sonic 3 & Knuckles has been in a bundle as a full game.

The new additions are nice bonuses, but don't go far. Widescreen is great (I don't keep up with all the billion releases so I'm not sure if this is even the first widescreen release of these games), and mission mode is fun, but you can breeze through it in an hour or so. Boss rush is probably the best addition, even if the decision of which bosses to give you rings or not for can be baffling. It's also short, but it's the kind of thing that makes you want to keep going for the best time.

Speaking of which, the leaderboards on Playstation seem bugged to crash the game whenever you try to view them. I won't take that into my rating since it seems exclusive to the PS version and may be a hardware problem that isn't the games fault.

But the game does have bugs. A lot of them according to some people. I personally didn't experience that many though, with the only truly horrible one being when playing Sonic 2, Tails will get stuck in the stage and his constant jump sound effects make it an earsore. Other than that, the game crashed twice in the exact same mission, but never again (other than as mentioned in the PS-specific leaderboard bug).

You've got your museum content which is nice I guess. But I can't imagine anyone who is opening up an entire video game so they can listen to a playlist of music. The art and movies are nice at least, even if I probably spent less than 30 minutes total looking at them.

The animated cutscenes are super short, all less than a minute each, but they look pretty great.

Story mode is one of the weirdest things about this game. It's literally just the 4 games in a row. Zero, and I mean zero effort was made into making it feel like a real story mode. No making it all one visual style or anything. Even those new cutscenes aren't exclusive to it, as they play when you play the games solo. Even the freaking credits for each individual game will play. What's the point of a "story mode" when you still have to sit through the credits at 4 different points of the "story". I can't see a single reason to play story mode over just playing the games normally since this mode doesn't even give you a choice of characters, it's always just Sonic, or Sonic & Tails in the last 2 games. May as well have just called it marathon mode or something.

You can't customise the features in the game either. If you want widescreen but keep the lives system and no drop dash, you're out of luck. Also the "classic" version of Sonic 1 still has spin dash....why? You can't play the actual original Sonic 1.

I won't say anything about the games themselves since I have reviews for them all.

So basically it's a a bunch of classic games, which vary in quality but I find them all at least fun to play, but has a bug that basically ruins the default way to play Sonic 2. It's also a good modern way to get your hands on the elusive 3&K. But for what it promises, it feels underdelivered. It'd honestly have been better as just a straight up basic bundle (with the widescreen), but cheaper.

Oh and the Hidden Palace Zone bonus for Sonic 2, from the 2013 mobile version is included, which is great.