Sonic the Hedgehog is like a 16-bit Skyrim: SEGA has re-released the classics of Mega Drive on almost every platform you can think of and shows no sign of stopping. The latest effort is Sonic Origins, a collection that brings Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic CD to modern consoles under one banner. Even though we’ve all played these games a thousand times, it’s still worth checking out old-school favorites, and the additional bells and whistles in this collection present the quadrilogy in a fresh and interesting way.
For starters, the games themselves are still a great selection of platforms. What’s interesting about playing them one after the other is how the series changes and improves over time. The opening adventure features a satisfying, sonic-driven move, but it doesn’t take full advantage of it, with many areas that force you to play slowly. Sonic CD is a really interesting fun that incorporates time travel; destroys the ingenuity produced by Eggman robots in the past to create a better future. As a result, the stages are much more open, allowing you to find the gates of time and increase your speed enough to reach different time periods.
Sonic 2 returns to the traditional stages and bosses, enhancing the first title with a higher level design that is much more based on the character’s skills. Finally, Sonic 3 & Knuckles is rebuilt with complicated stages, encounters with more varied heads, the trio of shield enhancers and more. It’s a shame you can’t play Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles separately, but well, at least they’re here. All games have weaknesses: the traps you can’t see coming are a nuisance everywhere, and some special stages can be painful, but it’s still a pleasure to blow them up.
And there are several ways to do that. Anniversary mode features every widescreen game, with unlimited lives and the ability to launch, made from Sonic Mania. Meanwhile, the classic mode presents the game in its original 4: 3 format, finite lives and no script. You can also choose Sonic, Tails or Knuckles in each game, although the latter is not a CD option.
While you can enjoy each game alone, a story mode brings the four titles together in one long adventure. You won’t miss anything if you don’t play it, but it’s interesting to live all the games as if they were a continuous saga. Whether you play it this way or enjoy it little by little, a very neat addition makes each title stand out with new introductions and other animated ones. These are wonderful and brief interludes that provide a little extra context to Sonic games. Similarly, Sonic Origins has great opening and closing animations with the same style, making the package feel consistent.
An important addition to Origins is coins. Achieved by playing in Birthday mode (and more that we’ll get into soon), this is a persistent currency that has a couple of uses. First, you can spend a coin to retry a special phase, which is incredibly useful if you want to unlock Super Sonic but struggle with these tricky challenges.
The other main use of coins is to unlock certain items in the Museum. The Museum is home to music, artwork and movies, and there is plenty to enjoy. Some of these will be unlocked automatically as you play the games, while others require some coins. Examples of these “premium” pieces include some Sonic Generations music songs, reference sheets of original characters of the time, and animations showing current versions of all new movie scenes. There’s a good amount to delve into here that fans will enjoy picking up, though you’ll need hundreds of coins if you want it all.
Fortunately, there are many ways to get coins, one of which is mission mode. These are short challenges based on each Sonic title, and vary in type and difficulty. One could be to defeat a certain number of enemies in particular before reaching the finish line, while another will see you crossing a level with zero rings. Your completion time affects your rank, and higher ranks give you more coins. It’s a simple addition, but here’s a variety and missions are set in specifically designed stages; you can’t do this with autopilot.
Elsewhere, Boss Rush is a self-explanatory mode for every game; you have three lives to defeat all the bosses in a row, most without rings. Completing Boss Rush earns you even more coins, as does playing in mirror mode, which spins each game horizontally, surprisingly difficult, even if you know Sonic’s 16-bit games like the back of your hand. Finally, there are even new Blue Spheres stages to enjoy with new mechanics, which is a big plus.
Everything in Sonic Origins looks great, with three-dimensional islands representing each game or mode. It is a neat package that is quite well organized and all the games work perfectly and have a look and sound just as you would expect. There’s an anti-aliasing option you can turn on, but that made the image look more blurry than anything, so we’d be left with clean pixels.
The only thing that really drops the collection is the rather petty DLC. None of the extra bonuses are especially significant, but it seems almost bad to put a pay wall on things like extra music songs from related games like Sonic Spinball, extra mailbox edges when playing in classic mode, and extra animated characters on the islands in the main menu. . Even the most die-hard fans might regret the lack of particular Sonic 3 & Knuckles songs, replaced by music that was produced in the 90’s but never finished (until now). The new tracks aren’t bad, some are really good, but you might have to get used to them if you’re nostalgic for Carnival Night, Ice Cap and Launch Base.
Conclusion
Sonic Origins presents four of the best hedgehog games in style, and it’s a pleasure to revisit these iconic platform games. Presentation flowers, such as animated scenes, as well as a host of additional fashions such as Boss Rush and Missions, offer fans and newcomers a lot to see and do, and the Museum is packed with interesting artwork that perhaps you haven’t seen it before. Some DLC teasing practices aside, and of course the games themselves have some 30-year weaknesses, but this is generally a wonderful twist on the memory lane.