The original 16-bit adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog are among the best games in Sonic history and – for my money – some of the best ever. Since its original appearance, it has been re-released several times, most often a little more than the emulators associated with the original ROMs. Sonic Origins is different, though: a completely rebuilt set of original 16-bit games using the Retro Engine, the same technology that powers the great Sonic Mania. This release also includes Sonic 3 and Knuckles, a rarity that makes this one of the most exciting Sonic releases in a long time. Sonic Origins has a lot to offer, but there’s always the possibility of problems too – and unfortunately Origins has few.
Sonic Origins reminds me of Sonic Jam for Sega Saturn – the first complete collection that brings all of the original Mega Drive games to a new platform, with a wealth of additional material including videos, music, and illustrations. This is effectively Sonic Jam 2 – all 16-bit games, as well as Sonic CD, are surrounded by a wide range of additional materials and alternative game modes designed to expand on the formula.
To explore this material, you can traverse six islands: four represent the main games in the bundle while the others offer additional features including a movie gallery, illustrations, and an extensive music box. The entire front end is built using Sonic Team’s Hedgehog engine, the same engine that powers many of its games including Sonic Forces and Sonic Generations. When you play a game, games powered by the Retro Engine are displayed as a skin within the game user interface. It’s an approach we’ve seen in many other old combos, but in this case, there are drawbacks.
The first and biggest concern is displaying games on the screen with a two-line filter, which results in softened pixel edges. Sonic Mania offers four display options to solve this problem, including a pair of CRT filters and a sharp-scaling option, but those options aren’t available in Origins — and the clarity limit is significant. there he is An option called Anti-aliasing, but this further degrades the image quality resulting in an unacceptably blurry display.
Another major drawback of the front end is shown in the Switch version. Here, you only get 30fps presentation and blurry picture quality — a far cry from 4K 60fps on the PS5 or Series X. This reduces the overall fluidity of menu navigation on the Switch; Everything feels stagnant and foggy. Some of the beautiful animated videos included here have also been incorrectly resized on the Switch, which is unfortunate.
There are other issues as well. Typos appear in the music menu, incorrect track names, and overall sound levels are very low – however, the Sonic CD videos are far superior to anything else in the game. The Sonic CD also buries options, such as choosing a soundtrack, within its own menu that appears to have been hacked from the game’s original 2011 release and seems inconsistent as a result. So, while the user interface is attractive, there are glaring bugs that must be resolved to issue it. The only good news is that if you’re playing on PC, the mod community has already fixed the biggest problem, restoring Sonic Mania display options. We can only hope that Sonic Team will listen to this feedback and will fix the issues in a future patch for console releases.
Fortunately, the games themselves are the main draw, and they are generally produced to a high standard using the Retro Engine. Native 16:9 aspect ratios are supported, with a higher field of view and head-ups adjusted to match, and lag is eliminated – a recurring issue on the original hardware. Instead, Sonic is rendered at 60 frames per second. Bonuses and special stages sound smoother too, sparse episodes fade in with alpha blending and the soundtracks for the first two games have been remastered with cleaner sound. There’s new content as well: The hidden mansion area in the Mystery Cave area in Sonic 2 is now a proper bonus stage that replicates the look of the previously unfinished level.
Although the previous games are great, Sonic 3 and Knuckles are the big plus to this bundle Not Previously got the Retro Engine transform. On the surface, it’s a solid port with loads of new features, and the closer you look, the more you’ll notice small updates that make the game look better than ever – from refreshed on-screen water effects to additional animation frames for bonus episodes. Rotation-dependent objects, such as chrome and zip lines, have been updated with true per-pixel rotation, allowing for smoother movement, while the blue ball’s special stages have been updated to match Sonic Mania with dramatically smoother animations. There are plenty of tweaks and other minor changes all the time, which makes it feel carefully orchestrated despite a few issues we’ll touch on shortly.
One of the most important changes in music. Much of the original Sonic 3 soundtrack was apparently created by a collaboration between Michael Jackson and Brad Buxer, but this created issues that kept Sonic 3 from being re-released for years. The solution to this problem for the new version is to replace these tracks with music that was first found in a prototype version of Sonic 3. These tracks were later used in the PC port of Sonic 3 and Knuckles, where they were rearranged as MIDI tracks, and now have been recreated For Sonic Origins. I feel the new arrangements are a step down from the ones in the initial release of Sonic 3 but they’re still serviceable. However, the music in Sonic 3 and Knuckles is muffled compared to the redesigned tracks included in Retro Engine transitions for Sonic 1 and 2, which is disappointing.
However, beyond audio, all of these ports received additional gaming features – Sonic Mania’s drop dash action makes the cut, although its implementation isn’t exactly equal, and there are also mission, synthesis, and mirror modes available. There are other minor tweaks to the gameplay, but none as significant as the easy and normal modes implemented in Sonic Jam on Sega Saturn, where things like spikes and enemies have been tweaked. There’s also a classic mode, where you get a fixed 4:3 aspect ratio and an ancient life system – but you can’t have one without the other.
So at this point, aside from the two-line filtering, things look pretty good – but unfortunately Origins shows quite a few bugs. Most of them don’t break the game, but the sheer number of them affects the overall experience. For example, in Sonic 2, Tails crashes as you pass a level, and you hear his jump sound effect repeat endlessly – becoming a massive annoyance. In Sonic 3, the arrival of the third stage from the middle of the boss causes debris to fall off the screen, which continues until you die or enter a special stage rather than stopping when the boss is defeated. Later in the Marble Garden Zone it is possible to bypass the camera and die. I could go on, but the point is that this game lacks the fit and finish we’ve seen in other Retro Engine powered projects.
So where does this leave us? On the other hand, the glitches and rendering issues are frustrating – it feels unpolished in a way that it’s hard to completely ignore. However, these are still full Retro Engine ports of classic Sonic games making it one of the most exciting re-releases to date. Personally, I have no use for an emulator in this case, as I will always opt for the original cartridge versions, but the wider aspect ratio, improved special stages, and additional content make for a good time – not to mention the very low input lag.
If Sonic Team can solve these technical issues, Origins would be easy to recommend, but with its glitches and hefty price tag, it’s a tough sell. Really, it feels like Sega needs to slow down a bit – the last three re-releases have all shipped with technical issues that should have been fixed before launch. They risk burning their customers with products like this and I hope they start realizing that before it’s too late. Sonic Origins could have been the best compilation yet, but as it stands, there’s more work to be done.
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