As much as it's good to have access to older games on current platforms, the new content that Sonic Origins Plus brings only reminds us how poor quality the SEGA handheld library was compared to its home console offerings. The original Sonic the Hedgehog games are great, and Sonic Origins is worth the purchase for those alone. Sonic 1, CD, 2, and 3 & Knuckles are all classics that deserve to be experienced in this collection. They're in widescreen and play just as great as they did back in the day. The only downside is the soundtrack changes made in Sonic 3 because of the legal issues surrounding the music.
Amy is officially playable in the original games for the first time with the Plus expansion, which is awesome. She feels great to play, as if she always belonged here. That said, the other content added with the Plus version brings a collection of games not many will want to see.
The main selling point of Sonic Origins Plus is the addition of 12 Game Gear titles. If you happened to grow up playing these, we can understand why you'd want to go back and relive these adventures. However, newcomers will quickly be put off by the jank.
Many games added in Sonic Origins Plus are just Game Gear ports of Master System titles. Even the games that share names with Sonic and Tails' original introduction have completely different levels than you're familiar with. There are also different features at play. For example, the first zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 features railcar sections. That makes seeing these levels exciting to experience the first time, even if it doesn’t feel as good as the original console games.
Your first experience with starting most of these games is having your eardrums blown out by the distorted and crackled SEGA intro. Because these are the Game Gear versions of Master System games, screen crunch is the biggest problem. Frame rate dips are also too common, especially in games like Sonic Chaos and Triple Trouble. After the performance and screen improvements made in the base Origins bundle, it's very disappointing to see SEGA skip out on those for these games that needed them even more. Seeing Game Gear titles struggle on a PS5 is embarrassing.
While the Game Gear games in Sonic Origins Plus don’t look, sound, or play great, the problem comes down to these games not being that good originally — not that they're bad ports. Buy Sonic Origins Plus for the Genesis games and to play as Amy, but don't expect the Game Gear games to run away with your heart.
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Comments 29
Why on Earth didn't they use the Master System versions??? Baffling decision from Sega.
Those Game Gear games look rough on a huge TV even without the framerate issues. Disappointing release.
At less than a dollar per title for the upgrade, I wasn’t expecting the world, and I came away pleasantly surprised at the variety of GG titles in the package. I’m probably the target audience for this though, since I remember how amazing it was to play a handheld with a color screen after being stuck in a portable pea green world for so long. It was quite a neat little system.
I sense there may be an irretrievable issue with the Master System versions of these games. Source code missing, emulator not playing ball, or whatever else. I guess it just happened to be easier and/or cheaper to make the Game Gear versions instead.
I am not a massive Sonic fan, but I still really admired the games back in the day, collected some of the comics and played them whenever and wherever I could until I got a PlayStation. I played more than less of the total games across Master System and Mega Drive, but for some reason Chaos remains my favourite of them all. I like the levels, the soundtrack, and tbh how stupidly easy it is to play through. I have a lot of nostalgia for it as I got it for Christmas with the system when I was 6. I remember my brother got to the last boss on the first sitting, then we cleared it on our second attempt.
I was in the mood to play it very recently, and then by coincidence noticed it was due to be released as part of this pack. I was pretty gutted to hear it’s the game gear versions, and they don’t stack up.
I have tried to run a version on my jail broken Mega Drive Mini just last night, but the emulation doesn’t seem very good. I have a 1 second delay when pressing buttons. I’m going to try a few things to see if I can fix that, as I’d like to play a nice version. If anyone has any tips, let me know.
Shame they didn’t do this justice.
@Suda52 what was the one step forward and two steps backward they took with Dreamcast?
@kyleforrester87
1. No DVD drive.
2. Not enough money to actually support it properly past launch.
3. Killed the Saturn way too early in Japan. Yeah it was dead in Europe and the US by 1997 but it was still selling very well in Japan even into 1999. Then they killed it. Which is insane because the Saturn was OUTSELLING the Dreamcast in Japan when the DC launched in holiday of 1998.
The dreamcast was an amazing console and very innovative in so many ways. But the problem was Sega itself. They just didn’t have the hard assets to support it. It was a last hurrah.
But as a consequence of Sega’s dire condition with the Dreamcast they pretty much told their studios to make whatever they wanted for it and the Naomi arcade board (basically a Dreamcast with extra RAM). So we got some really weird unorthodox great games out of the situation. Like Seaman, Crazy Taxi, and Typing of the Dead. Games that would have never been approved in prior years of Sega.
@OrtadragoonX yeah I mean it obviously flopped for reasons or, well, it would have been a success. But you could apply the “two steps forward, one step backward” logic to anything that has ever failed, when it is generally always more complicated than that. N64 and GameCube were pretty cool consoles but I wonder if Nintendo would have been in a position to launch the Wii without the handheld side of the business doing as well as it was, which I guess is something Sega just didn’t have going for it.
@kyleforrester87
The N64 wasn’t really a failure. Nintendo made money on it and it did wildly well in the United States. Vast majority of the 32 million consoles sold were in the US. It flopped hard in Japan though.
Weirdly enough the GameCube was profitable as well despite only selling 22 million consoles worldwide.
But it is true that their handhelds are what kept them relevant in terms of the popular mindshare between the SNES and the Wii for much of the world. The N64 did well in the US but flopped in Japan and only did ok in Europe. The GameCube started strong in both Japan and the US (not sure about Europe) but then sort of settled into a low rate seller year after year while the PS2 destroyed everything in its path.
@BeerIsAwesome I’d imagine consistency. The game gear had way more Sonic games than the MS, was better supported in the US and - importantly - Japan so has more reverence and relevance for this collection. Instead of splitting some games for GG and some for MS it made more sense to go for the former.
As for me I’ll get this on switch where the handheld games won’t look anywhere near as bad as they will on my lounge TV.
@OrtadragoonX I guess I just wanted the literal examples of the 2 specific steps forward and 1 step backwards Sega made that resulted in them leaving the hardware market, as I don’t see it as being comparable to the state of this game 😂 But, I understand the sentiment.
In other news, I realised my TV wasn’t in game mode on the HDMI channel I had my MD mini hooked up to, hence the input lag I was getting. Just turned GM on and it’s much better!
Yeah I downloaded this the other day purely to play all four main games as Amy. I'll probably check out some of the GG titles at some point though, if only out of curiosity.
Don't forget plus also adds new challenges and Knuckles on Sonic CD... still disappointing though
@Mdhoover That's no worse an answer as anything else. And probably the most plausible. Realistically, it doesn't matter as much as people here make it out to be. We're talking about games that weren't exactly breaking the graphical and sound barriers of the time, so anyone dying on that particular hill probably wasn't going to play it anyway.
As we're all saying they should have put the Master System versions on here instead, or the Mega Drive Mean Bean Machine? I'd argue its Sonic 1 is better than the Mega Drive game but they're all far more playable than the Game Gear versions. I picked this up on Switch so the Game Gear games aren't as bad on its screen and my familiarity with them certainly helps.
It's just a shame they didn't bother to even match previous collections with stuff like Sonic R, Sonic Fighters and perhaps even Sonic 3D or that one stage from Sonic Jam
A couple points here.
1. The Game Gear and Master System versions of Sonic released in the same months as each other, meaning they were developed at the same time.
2. The Game Gear games included play identically to their Game Gear versions on the PS5. That includes their faults like the mono audio not sounding fantastic in stereo and the zoomed in aspect ratio. There were only so many pixels to work with.
Personally, I'm happy they put in the Game Gear versions instead of the Master System. Whenever you saw advertisements for these games in N. America, they almost never mentioned the Master System. Thus, it was either Genesis or Game Gear here.
Sega genesis.probably the best name for a video games consoles ever.yeah those sonic the hedgehog games bring back memories.word up son
If they added the original sonic 3 music back i could even forgive the rest. But, while that doesn't happen, i will not be buying any of these.
fully agree. the game gear was an awful handheld and one i have absolutely no reason to invest time into. including the game gear games in this collection is meaningless and inflates the cost of the other games in an arbitrary way.
@Porco I don't know, I think the main targets for these collections are people who played them at the time. Quality is irrelevant when nostalgia is concerned, there's prob a lot of people with fond memories of the game gear games.
It's the same argument for the nes tmnt being included in that collection. It doesn't stand up well now, but it's one of the most remembered titles cause so many people played it back then.
Edit : it's the same reason that I'm still peeved that the c64 versions of turrican weren't included In that package. It is technically, a worse game than other ones, but it's the one that I played and would like to play again.
We need Knuckes Chaotix! It's the lost Sonic game by this point.
I have lived in the northeastern US my entire 38 years and I’ve never seen or played or met anyone that has ever seen or played a master system, it was a non entity in America. I’m sure the two people in the country who did have it are in this comment section they always are , but that’s probably a major or the reason they went with game gear versions.
@Mio_Nakashima sega cd, phantasy star, shining force, I can name 90s sega stuff too
The Game Gear games ain’t that bad, that might be my nostalgia talking there. The change of music in Sonic 3 is still kinda keeping me from buying this. Yeah, I need to get over that but I can’t.
The Master System versions of Sonic 1 and 2 are great, i still play them even today. The Game Gear versions aren't as good, especially Sonic 2
@Balosi i'd have to disagree since the game gear didn't exactly sell well against the gameboy/gameboy colour which means there is little nostalgia to go around. i never hear of anyone talking fondly about the sonic game gear games and believe me, i have watched a ton of retro gaming enthusiast videos over the years... those games have quite honestly been forgotten.
I never played any of the game gear ports, but I loved sonic 1+2 on the master system. I would have loved it if they added Sonic R and Sonic 3d from the Saturn they both had an awesome soundtrack.
@carlos82 I would totally love to see Sonic R, and the Saturn version of Sonic 3D.
Sonic three had my fav music of all sonic games. Sucks it’s not there..
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