Sigh...After Mania was such a smash hit, I was hoping for Origins to be an utter slam dunk as well. I had a lot of hype going into this. The CW versions of Sonic 1 and 2 on PC, finally. Sonic 3 getting the same treatment FINALLY after Whitehead was denied doing so a decade ago, fancy new intro/outro animations for every single game to provide context for each game's story and a bunch of neat little extras, such as concept art, animatics, extra songs, etc.

All of that sounded great, even if I think the price for it is way, way too steep for games that are nearing 3 decades in age. But where does it crumble apart? Behind the scenes is where it crumbles apart.

Playing any game in Origins, you can immediately tell corners were cut. The physics, while remarkably close to the original games, still feel slightly off. For example, in Sonic 3's Launch Base Zone, you can't enter the pods if you're standing right next to them because your jump is just ever slightly too high. In Sonic 2, the Aquatic Ruin boss fight becomes weirdly difficult due to the aspect ratio, making it feel more like an oversight. In Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone boss fight, you can effectively cheese the boss by standing under the platforms (which wasn't possible in the original, you still had to dodge).

The one thing that gets me though, is the music. Yes, I'm partially talking about the songs in Sonic 3, but I just mean the quality of the songs overall. Again, launching any game aside from CD, you can just hear the compression and crunch of every song. The quality of the songs is astoundingly low quality. It feels like they're using heavily compressed 128 kbps YouTube rips for every single song, and that's genuinely a shame. You don't need to be an audiophile either to hear the low quality, you can just immediately notice it as soon as it transitions from the Origins menu to the game.

And of course, Sonic 3's changed music. Contrary to what others may think, I don't hate the replaced tracks. And if you don't know - they replaced the songs with compositions from Sonic 3's November 1993 prototype. Except, for some reason, they based the songs off of the MIDI compositions from the S&K collection on 1997. Zones like Ice Cap and Launch Base sound fine, if anything I think they genuinely recomposed the 1993 proto. ver of Ice Cap and cleaned it up, and it sounds legitimately wonderful, but Carnival Night Zone...god, it sounds awful.

And then Sonic 3's Super Sonic theme they added. It's...awful. It sounds like something ripped out of Sonic 4. The baffling bit? They included the Unused Theme in the game's Museum Mode for Sonic 3's soundtrack. Why...couldn't they just...use that? It's just baffling. They can include it in the collection but apparently not use it in the game?

I don't wanna keep going. Sonic Origins is a disappointment. I pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe edition by selling my CS:GO knife to buy it, and honestly - I kinda want my knife back now. The animation work done here is incredible and the extras they gave in the game are nice, but none of it makes up for what feels like shoddy ports of mobile games, poor audio quality and just overall lack of polish.

I read some behind the scenes stuff on Origins' development, including this tweet by Stealth on Twitter and it just saddens me how Sega continues to mistreat its developers and its beloved properties.

Shame on you, Sega. Shame on you.

Sigh...After Mania was such a smash hit, I was hoping for Origins to be an utter slam dunk as well. I had a lot of hype going into this. The CW versions of Sonic 1 and 2 on PC, finally. Sonic 3 getting the same treatment FINALLY after Whitehead was denied doing so a decade ago, fancy new intro/outro animations for every single game to provide context for each game's story and a bunch of neat little extras, such as concept art, animatics, extra songs, etc. All of that sounded great, even if I think the price for it is way, way too steep for games that are nearing 3 decades in age. But where does it crumble apart? Behind the scenes is where it crumbles apart. Playing any game in Origins, you can immediately tell corners were cut. The physics, while remarkably close to the original games, still feel slightly off. For example, in Sonic 3's Launch Base Zone, you can't enter the pods if you're standing right next to them because your jump is just ever slightly too high. In Sonic 2, the Aquatic Ruin boss fight becomes weirdly difficult due to the aspect ratio, making it feel more like an oversight. In Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone boss fight, you can effectively cheese the boss by standing under the platforms (which wasn't possible in the original, you still had to dodge). The one thing that gets me though, is the music. Yes, I'm partially talking about the songs in Sonic 3, but I just mean the quality of the songs overall. Again, launching any game aside from CD, you can just hear the compression and crunch of every song. The quality of the songs is astoundingly low quality. It feels like they're using heavily compressed 128 kbps YouTube rips for every single song, and that's genuinely a shame. You don't need to be an audiophile either to hear the low quality, you can just immediately notice it as soon as it transitions from the Origins menu to the game. And of course, Sonic 3's changed music. Contrary to what others may think, I don't hate the replaced tracks. And if you don't know - they replaced the songs with compositions from Sonic 3's November 1993 prototype. Except, for some reason, they based the songs off of the MIDI compositions from the S&K collection on 1997. Zones like Ice Cap and Launch Base sound fine, if anything I think they genuinely recomposed the 1993 proto. ver of Ice Cap and cleaned it up, and it sounds legitimately wonderful, but Carnival Night Zone...god, it sounds awful. And then Sonic 3's Super Sonic theme they added. It's...awful. It sounds like something ripped out of Sonic 4. The baffling bit? They included the Unused Theme in the game's Museum Mode for Sonic 3's soundtrack. Why...couldn't they just...use that? It's just baffling. They can include it in the collection but apparently not use it in the game? I don't wanna keep going. Sonic Origins is a disappointment. I pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe edition by selling my CS:GO knife to buy it, and honestly - I kinda want my knife back now. The animation work done here is incredible and the extras they gave in the game are nice, but none of it makes up for what feels like shoddy ports of mobile games, poor audio quality and just overall lack of polish. I read some behind the scenes stuff on Origins' development, including [url=https://twitter.com/HCStealth/status/1540161919851540480]this tweet by Stealth on Twitter[/url] and it just saddens me how Sega continues to mistreat its developers and its beloved properties. Shame on you, Sega. Shame on you.