Sonic Origins was shaping up to become the definitive way to play our favourite classics from the Genesis era. The official trailer demoed tantalizing animated cutscenes amidst footage of the remasters running in beautiful widescreen at 60 fps. We fell for it.
We obsessive Sonic fans waited until midnight of Sonic’s 31st anniversary (the release date) to grab a downloadable copy of this new compilation. However, what was supposed to be a sleepless night of a fan’s wet dream slowly became a bad trip of a nightmare.
Most reviewers and YouTubers were left with mixed feelings unimpressed with the game’s lack of polish. Veteran Sonic players saw much more subtle flaws that brought the game further away from what was supposed to be a compilation holy grail.
I don’t need to go into details, but most of us were left with sour taste from Sonic Origins feeling like we wasted 60$. The bugs, missing details, inaccurate physics and of course the butchered prototype tracks. It made us so angry and hurt our feelings. We were left with many painful cuts and bruises.
Sonic and Amy inflicted with wounds and bleeding. From Tumbler Blogger *chinchilla*
Many have tried to patch the holes in Sonic Origins but eventually realizing that it’s not moddable enough to fix the papercuts. Sega got the sale figures they wanted so they have no motivation to correct the many bugs in the game. Stealth from Headcannon revealed that Sega sent them into development hell.
Fortunately, fan gamers have already built remasters which fill in the gap quite nicely. You can still enjoy these games in a more polished and modern format without all the oddities found in Sega’s rush job. These are the treatments to your wounds and the definitive way play to these games in widescreen, at 60 fps and with drop dash.
Sonic 1 - Sonic 1 Forever - (Mods)
Sonic CD - Sonic CD Restored - (Mods)
Sonic 2 - Sonic 2 Absolute - (Mods)
Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Sonic 3 A.I.R. - (Mods) - (Additional Mods)
If you really liked the animated cutscenes, you can still watch these fantastic animations online from beginning to end. And don’t worry, you can find much more concepts, drawings, manuals, interviews and music than the tiny sample of bonuses that Origins included over at Sonic Retro.
Of course, if you can’t get enough of these platformers than you should take a look at the matchless spiritual successor made by Christian Whitehead et al. Sonic Mania