Review for Sonic 3 & Knuckles cuz it's not showing up on backlogged:

Truly one of the greatest platformers of all time. It's amazing how much polish went into this single.. well, two games. It took the best elements from the previous Sonic games and just rolled with it. Truly the best platformer to come from the 8 bit AND 16 bit generation. A true masterpiece!

EDIT: Okay I just found out that backloggd does have S3AK. I typed in Sonic 3 instead of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 so that's on me. This review is staying up, though.

The game was supposed to be THE solution to play retro Sonic games on modern hardware. Yet my experience says it is even worse than emulation on OpenEmu and nothing close to the likes of Christian Whitehead remasters or Sonic 3 AIR.

The games are at least somewhat functional when I played it. However I do noticed a significant increase in the amount of bugs that were not present in the original games. I don't know what happened when they were trying to port the game but something for sure have gone wrong here.

If you don't really mind about authentic Sonic experience. Go ahead and play this game as it at least functions after several updates. Whether it justifies the price tag? That would be a resounding no though.

If you ask me, just emulate the games. The quality of games from this port don't deviate much from emulation anyways in my opinion.

This collection of games is alright in my eyes. I never played Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 growing up, so I can't really tell how hard they fumbled these versions of the games.

I mean, this is actually a good selection of games (One of the only times they have re-released Sonic 3 & Knuckles as far as I know), cute presentation, story mode connects these games through neat animated cutscenes... There is also some bonus content and missions, as well as some quality of life "improvements" to Sonic 1 and CD........They still suck tho.

My biggest problem with this one is SEGA and how scummy they were, with the confusing advertising and needlessly complicated different versions of the same game that all offered different things. This game is not bad, but I'm not sure it deserved to be as pricey as it is.

Overall, I think I would still replay it...But you are probably better off emulating these games. I will certainly not be playing Sonic Origins Plus, just so I can play with Amy and a bunch of shitty Sonic Game Gear games or whatever.

Im not gonna rate this because this is just going to be my general purpose feelings on classic sonic games as a whole. Classic sonic games have a gameplay loop of striving to be better and better that doesnt work for me as a player, working to get better in games can be fun and rewarding, but classic sonic games have never had that fun factor for me. I understand the place sonic holds in our gaming landscape and history, and i appreciate what he stands for, but classic sonic just doesnt gel with me, but im glad it does with so many others.

(This review was written for Steam first and is in the context of it being on PC.)

Sonic Origins is a very; polarizing title to say the least. Between it being announced nearly 3 years before it had a release date was quite an interesting move and the DLC roadmap image [imgur.com] and then on launch; it came out the Headcanon team came out and said they didn’t turn in what was released and weren’t too happy about it. Origins really didn’t have a lot going for it for existing fans; however what this collection was made for and marketed towards, parents who watched the Sonic Movie with their kids and wanted a way to replay classic games from their childhood; Origin was and kinda is perfect for that niche.


I’ll cut to the chase; Sonic Origins is a good value in two situations; if you have a Steam Deck or just hate “setting up” emulators or fan ports of these games.


However this only effects PC; if you’re on console this is a great value for a game; since there isn’t really any options.


So lets talk about like; the game itself now right?


Sonic Origins is a collection of 4 Genesis titles (+12 Emulated Game Gear games with Plus), under the Retro Engine, developed by Christian Whitehead, a legend in the Sonic space who needs no introduction; they’re all upgraded with full widescreen support in the Anniversary mode or you can keep the og 4:3 in Classic mode; “””new””” playable characters (Amy with Plus) and last but not least the new Story mode that was added to play all 4 games back-to-back in story order. Sonic Origins also comes with tons and tons of goodies that you can unlock with coins you find through out the game and honestly for new and old Sonic fans; it’s always nice seeing them bundle in concept art, music tracks, etc. While it isn’t as cool as Generations was; it’s still a neat touch for them to include a lot of 90s Sonic art and even new Classic Sonic art.


With brand new animated cut-scenes to boot they are by far one of the best parts of this game; they are just usually eye candy to look at, and the Sonic CD intro was upscaled but it looks nice; sure as hell way better than what ever they did to Persona 3 Portables upscaling… sheesh.


They all look really nice! I mean to be fair they didn’t change much in this port with the Mobile ports that came out before looked the exact same since they’re using the same engine; but I will say; the anti-aliasing enabled in game can look really weird? Not bad; just strange.


They all control as you would expect; nothing really new here other than in all 4 games Sonic now has the Drop Dash. Like it or not it’s here to stay and it doesn’t seem it’s going away anytime soon. Sonic 3 doesn’t benefit that much from it since it was planned to be in it originally anyways, so it feels natural to put back in, Sonic 1 gets a much needed speed up with it, and Sonic 2 just feels even better with how already fast that game is. However; this and I’m not trying to oversell this to you; it shatters CD apart; since you can just find a semi-flat space in any level and just drop dash back and forth all challenge of finding a spot to Time Travel is just gone; while this makes the game better for a lot of people since it’s even less maze like and faster some people don’t like it and want to be able to disable it (you cannot in any of the games; either in Anniversary or Classic mode.) but; alas we live in a post-Sonic Mania world and it’s effects will be here forever.


Sonic Origins big improvement in the gameplay department I think benefits ‘em all; is the fact you can retry special stages using the coins you collect. In the case of Sonic 2 which stages I personally despise this was a life changing feature to make that game a lot more enjoyable getting all the chaos emeralds; so very very good move devs.


By far the biggest downgrade and just lame-o feature is that Sonic 1, CD, and 2 are downgraded to the original Genesis versions; the biggest omission from all of them are multiple save files in each of em; so you can save progress between characters; since in Origins if you wanna change characters and mess around with someone else; you better be ready to restart the entire game! Only Sonic 3 has kept it’s save data system since it’s just already included in the game.


As for the 100%? It’s not really that hard. The achievements for the most part are piss easy and you’ll get them as you play and beat each game; the only parts that suck are some of the challenges just kinda are not that fun and will take a lot of grind to get good at and beat the gimmick they’re hittin you with; and getting all the collectibles is something you’ll do while playing the games and doing all the missions.


Honestly? The whole part that this collection is good and brings native widescreen and cool collectibles to the table is why it kinda hurts me to not recommend it; at least for PC, if you’re on console it’s a no brainer purchase if you’re a Sonic Fan; but since we’re here on Steam; yeah, it’s just not worth it to the other options you have on a computer, but if you want the easiest, no mods, cross saves for you Steam Deck already set up, to play all the classic Sonic games it really is a no brainer purchase; but I’d recommend saving your dollars for a better Sonic game.


Overall, I just; can’t recommend this for someone that is looking to get the best bang for their buck.
If you’re a 100% nerd like me; Sonic 3 A.I.R has tons of achievements; just go for those instead of this.

A decent entry point for new fans of the series who wish to get into the games, but that's about all it is really. Personally, I believe this collection should've consisted of SA1, SA2, and Heroes as they don't see nearly as many rereleases and ports that these classic games do.

Despite aiming to be the "definitive" way to play these games, there still lacks many basic features and customisation options that you'd expect, with the most glaring exclusion being save slots for each game (with the exception of Sonic 3 but only because it was a feature of the original game). Once you clear a game with a certain character your only options are to replay the last level or play again from the beginning, which is surprising as the iOS ports of these games bothered having save slots. You're given the option to play the games in "classic" mode which is the game's anniversary mode but in 4:3 and with lives, which is super restricting and plain odd. Should have just given us seperate options to play in whichever aspect ration we like and toggle lives.

The unlockables in the museum aren't all that interesting if you're a long time fan as most of, if not all, the entries are accessible elsewhere. I will commend the devs for including each episode of Sonic Mania Adventures in high quality for it to be preserved and not just exclusive to YouTube.

What should have been an easy task for SEGA instead is an undercooked collection of 4 beloved games that took way too many updates to fix bugs. Not to mention the unnecessary "Plus" revision a year after launch that included content that, in all honesty, should have been part of the game to begin with.