Sonic Origins Plus Revealed: Playable Amy, Emulated Game Gear Games, New Box Art Shown

mmmmm I can't wait to replay some sweet sweet Sonic Blast mmmmmmmm

...and yes Knuckles is playable in Sonic CD:

  

Also here's an Amy screenshot:

 

Honestly still kind of feels like the bare minimum to me. Amy is cool, but she’s clearly taking some inspiration from Advance in terms of moveset, even if it’s adjusted to be a bit more speedy, compared to the windup time Advance had.

Game Gear games, technically a good call since the 3DS store is closing, meaning the only way to get them at this point would be either the DX port of Adventure on GameCube, Mega Collection Plus, and Gems Collection, but it’s still absolutely lazy. Not only are the Game Gear games easy to emulate, but they don’t even look great in that trailer.

Why is it even just the Game Gear games? Why not the Master System ports of Sonic 1 and 2? Or hell - give us actual ports of the Brazilian Master System ports of stuff like Sonic Chaos, which actually benefits from not having ridiculous levels of screen crunch. Even now, we can’t get the ‘best’ variants of some of these games.

Not to mention the lack of any other games. This is supposed to be the definitive Sonic collection. Could we honestly not spring for Spinball, 3D Blast, and Mean Bean when they’ve been in every single SEGA compilation for years?

Could we not get a port of Knuckles Chaotix, which is still the one and only Classic era game that is completely inaccessible to anyone because it has never once been ported or re-released? Arguably, a good port of that could have been worth the price tag alone.

No Sonic the Fighters, even though a perfectly good port of the arcade version was already done for Lost Judgement? Not even Sonic R, despite that game’s last re-release being in 2005?

To me, bare minimum, to justify another release, this should have been the definitive collection once and for all. Chaotix, Spinball, Mean Bean Machine, AND both versions of 3D Blast, given the Saturn version equally never got re-released since the PC port. The Fighters and R definitely should’ve been included too, especially the former, given that it’s literally already a thing.

Also, Knuckles being playable in CD is such the mehest thing. Woo, we’re getting a feature that should have been there since it’s release date last year. Also funnier, considering Mania got a fairly substantial free update when the Plus version released with revamped bosses, fixes, zone transitions and more.

Also, where the hell is Mighty and Ray?

Funny Hedgehog go nyoom, I like what I see

Looks fine. Was hoping for 3D Blast and Spinball too, but this is decent enough. Hopefully when the update is out it has a lot of bugfixes too.

Nothing against the GG games - but I would reiterate what’s already been said of “why not this and that etc…”

The only thing I could contemplate is that they’d rather get our favourite team to do some real work on Sonic 3D, Spinball and Chaotix and create another pack for next year (the “gems collection” of this generation of you will). Although really, I was hoping we’d be moving onto the HD collections / ports of SA1/2 for Switch by then.

THAT BEING SAID. Playable Amy! They freaking did it.

It’s an Iffy model though (never liked it in CD, so would have hoped for Sonic 3 style improvements - but I’ll take what I can get at this stage and will probably grow to like it).

I’m glad to see Knuckles has been fed back into CD as well. Hopefully this alongside any QOL updates will be free to owners of the base game, much like what they did with Mania Plus. 

The bigger question here is if Stealths team got to fully work on correcting everything Sonic Team sort of ripped apart and out back together again in this package. Whilst I found the original overall effort to be non-offensive, it wasn’t a completely cohesive piece of work.  

 

1 hour ago, Sonicka said:

It’s an Iffy model though (never liked it in CD, so would have hoped for Sonic 3 style improvements - but I’ll take what I can get at this stage and will probably grow to like it).

It looks better than her CD sprite...

Imagine not only dumping the same ROMs onto a disc that you tried to pretend were a bonus 20 years ago with Adventure DX and once again not utilizing the significantly superior Master System versions (and I'm sure with nary a widescreen emulator hack to boot), but pretending excrement like Sonic Blast and Spinball 8-Bit is a bonus at all instead of the actually playable games that both of those were a bad copy of that are nowhere to be found.

 

 

 

Yah playable Amy woo. Is the music in Sonic 3 still going to sound like it was recorded with a webcam microphone from 2004, or is the former enough of a set of jangly keys that they'll just plaster cherry picked reviews on trailers a month after release again?

2 hours ago, Ducktor Naldush said:

mmmmm I can't wait to replay some sweet sweet Sonic Blast mmmmmmmm

Sonic Blast any % speed runs bout to go CRAZY

I definitely didn't expect playable Amy, and I never really felt like she was "missing" from Origins, but it's very cool to be getting her.  Having said this, that and the Game Gear games I already own several times over just... don't feel like enough.  I at least thought they'd add some more missions and more stuff to the museum, and like everyone, why must the Master System be shafted and 8-bit Sonic 2's reputation continually harmed with this game gear only 8-bit representation nonsense.  My hope is that it's easier to just advertise "all the game gear games!" instead of complicating the message, and they'll add a toggle to switch to the Master System version on certain games... but that's probably a total pipe dream.

I know they aren't advertising it because it's admitting fault with the original product, but Knuckles in CD better be a free update for all and not tied to the DLC.

Uh oh.

This doesn't bold well at all

Edit: moved

This will continue to baffle me for years to come:

IT WAS RIGHT THERE ON ALL THE CONSOLES THIS COLLECTION IS ON (barring switch, but still)

1 minute ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

This will continue to baffle me for years to come:

IT WAS RIGHT THERE ON ALL THE CONSOLES THIS COLLECTION IS ON

I genuinley think the only reason they've not gone for it is either so they can re-release Fighters at somepoint seperately or they're saving it for a hypothetical time where they feel like doing a Gems Collection style release with Fighters, R and Chaotix.

1 minute ago, PickleBrows said:

I genuinley think the only reason they've not gone for it is either so they can re-release Fighters at somepoint seperately or they're saving it for a hypothetical time where they feel like doing a Gems Collection style release with Fighters, R and Chaotix.

...Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me one bit. 

And yet probably still no 3D Blast Saturn version.

Real talk, if they still haven't gotten headcannon involved with Origins Plus then I might just skip this unless they prove they're competent enough to work Retro Engine

Honestly, yeah. Not gonna double post and say the same things I said in the rumor thread, as many have shared similar sentiments. But yeah when the Mania devs start openly talking about stuff, you know Sonic Team did a major screw up. First with Headcannon and 3&K and now Whitehead with the Retro Engine scaling not being used. Just goes to show this could've been a good collection had there been more communication and involvement from the Mania devs. This just screams Sonic Team wanting to prove they can do it alone. But this half Hedgehog Engine, half Retro Engine crap just really blew up in their face. It hurts to see.

Between this and Frontiers updates, Amy is finally getting the respect she deserves, hard to believe. The games... okay they are still fun and cheap to repurpose but why is there Mean Bean and Spinball 8 bit but not 16 bit? Weird choice, even considering the islands from Spinball and Flicky Island are in the game.

Well, I guess it's time to hype up Sonic Origins 2 featuring Mean Bean Machine, 16 bit Spinball, 3D Blast + Fighters and R, plus the island from Knuckles Chaotix in the form of a menu! Yay.

Here's a gif of Amy in action

Predicting her moveset based on this

* Spin Jump

* Hammer Spin Jump

* Basic Hammer Attack

* Spindash (like the other characters)

So we've really come to the point where a compilation is getting an update expansion to "finish" what was "unfinished" at launch? Of games for the 90s, no less??

1 minute ago, Supah Berry said:

So we've really come to the point where a compilation is getting an update expansion to "finish" what was "unfinished" at launch? Of games for the 90s, no less??

Of course, are you really surprised?

28 minutes ago, Supah Berry said:

So we've really come to the point where a compilation is getting an update expansion to "finish" what was "unfinished" at launch? Of games for the 90s, no less??

Mania Plus added 2 whole new characters and a new mode by 5 bucks. The vanillla Origins was already expensive as shit (seriously, it was sold higher than Ragnarok here). Now this. Yeah, it's a cute trailer, Amy looks fine and all, but it's still not THE collection it absolutely could've been. They had everything already done, except a Chaotix port.

2 hours ago, DaBigJ said:

Uh oh.

This doesn't bold well at all

Well fuck, Sonic Team'd as usual.

I am illiterate when it comes to game dev terminology , what does this mean?

How surprising was Playable Amy, really?

People have been asking for it for a while.

3 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

How surprising was Playable Amy, really?

People have been asking for it for a while.

We've been asking for a lot of things for a while and haven't gotten them yet. Let us celebrate the W