Sega Shares Another Extensive Overview Trailer For Sonic Origins

I like these videos. Really hammering in the "there are hopefully many new fans who've never played these games before being introduced to the series" feel. Very kid friendly vibe, without being condecending.

I've seen many people being cynical and saying the only people who will buy this are 30-50 yr olds who've played these games a thousand times, but judging by how many kids I saw packing out the cinema for the second movie each time I went, and how many kids I've seen round town and supermarkets holding Sonic toys and wearing Sonic clothes, I'd say theres definitely a whole new generation of fans coming up too.

Makes me happy to know their first experience of these older games will be a very positive one - the widescreen, no permadeath, ability to retry special stages etc should make it a lot more friendly for a modern audience, especially those who are more used to Fortnite, Among Us, COD and FIFA than side scrolling 2d games.

Its actually something we've thought about a lot for our own mascot platforming game, you can't just assume that modern gamers will instinctively know how 2d platforming works like you could in the 90s. We hope/know our game will appeal to both hardcore retro fans, but also kids and new gamers. So not only have we included a wide range of difficulty levels (for super easy to brutal one hit permadeath and all inbetween) and optional assists, we've made cute story based tutorials for the "unwritten rules" of these games - like tapping to do a little jump, or holding to jump slightly higher, and the subtleties of pressing directions when jumping or falling. These are completely skippable for experienced players, and I can see some people being grumpy in reviews and moaning that they are obvious or too long - but older gamers can forget just how different these games are to the mainstream common titles for many young gamers growing up playing on phones/tablets, or with 3d only games.

First time I knew "R" meant to rotate the special stage.

Sonic Origins definitely isn’t a lacklustre collection, each game is fully remastered and the museum has a lot of archived & anniversary unlocks! From Sonic Stadium:
“Not only can you unlock the classic Sonic Screensaver and other artworks found on Sonic Jam, but you can also view manual and box arts for every game – in any region. There are some really nice curios here too, such as a 1994 European Sonic Art Style Guide and graph paper scans of boss concepts from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and even storyboards and animatics for the animations in not only Sonic Origins, but Sonic Mania Adventures too. You can also unlock the entirety of the Sonic 30th Anniversary Symphony using your coins so you can enjoy it on the big telly whenever you like.”
You can also unlock “remixes of stage themes across titles like Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces”, as well as Super Smash Bros.

@MysteryCupofJoe It actually stands for "reverse". The stage is always revolving, the R toggles the direction between clockwise and anticlockwise.

@Pandy-the-Panda Definitely excited for all the unlockables. I love the Sonic Symphony, and as a hand drawn animation nut the storyboard and animatics will be really great to see!

Will you be trying out Sonic Origins on Nintendo Switch when it arrives tomorrow?

Nope as bad as I want to play Sonic 3 and Knuckles in widescreen I rather wait for a physical release first.

It is interesting that they are trying to sell these as remasters, it's like they missed the memo that you have three types of players.

Nostalgia players, who want to play the original game, bugs, warped aspect ratio, low frame rate, limited palette, poor sounding music, and all. Sometimes even asking for CRT filters.

Nostalgia+ players, who want to play the game as it was intended, square-pixel art, 30/60/90/120fps, intended palette, remastered (non-PSG/non-FM) sound and music (but not orchestrated/multi-timbral remixes), no filters.

New players, who are expecting something else entirely, and would find the original game's speed, art and music to be "ugly" because it's not 3D like Sonic Boom. Where there are tutorials and quick-save style mechanics to avoid the gitgud mechanics.

@kisai I definitely fit into that "Nostalgia+" section, thats why I loved the previous Retro Engine games so much. I totally get what you are saying about new players, and I alluded to some of that in my above post in relation to developing my own game for these audiences.

However, I don't think 16 or even 8bit style pixel art is a big turn off for many new players, there's been tonnes of recent games that are hugely popular with kids online with pixel art - off the top of my head Star Dew Valley, Celleste, Undertale, Terraria, Enter the Gungeon, Hyper Light Drifter... not to mention the aesthetics of Minecraft which they all grew up with

Sonic Mania has been very popular with younger Sonic fans who grew up with the 3d games. There would more likely have been outcry if they tried to update the classic sprites into a higher resolution, tbh... though keeping the resolution but adding slightly more colours and "inbetween" frames like they subtley did in Mania would have been nice, though I'm not upset they didn't for this compilation.

What is a spin dash?...On another note what is a chili dog?

@samuelvictor I'll quote my father when I was playing a pixel-art game
"how OLD is that game?"

There is a certain perspective that people have that pixel art is either low-budget, or dated. Compare the GBC/GBA Shantae games with the last two, where the they went from the pixel art style to the cel-style animation with only the background layer being 3D. Not that I would prefer that at all for sonic, but part of the appeal of the "pixel art" is that it's less information overload for people. After a point, you either stick to the pixel art out of painful nostalgia for that style, or you do the logical thing and redraw the sprites at a higher resolution and frame rate. We have not had a "high resolution 2D sonic" other than what we were given in Sonic Generations for Classic Sonic which were both 3D.

Remastering to keep the pixel style here, is the correct thing to do, but if they're going to go through the effort of "remastering", they should have gone the Cave Story+ route where you could switch between original style and a higher resolution style without necessarily having to go all-or-nothing. You can mix the original and higher resolution sprites, you can mix the original music or the remixes, and so forth.

That said, Sega has such a checkered history with Sonic that I don't expect anything that wasn't already in the game. Like playing as just tails or knuckles in Sonic 2, was already possible, just before you needed the lock-on cart, which, given has never "really" been possible legitimately. Tails alone however was never exactly possible before.

@N8tiveT3ch In some games like Street Fighter (Blanka), Mortal Kombat (Mileena), Pokemon (Sandshrew or Miltank), and Turricane it's called a rolling attack. A chili dog is just a dog with chili on it.

@strollin_stu
Which “Sonic Boom” are we talking about? Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal complete are trash, however the TV show and Fire & Ice are pretty good.

@kisai I agree with a lot of what you are saying, especially that the perception can be that pixel art is either older or cheaper, and also that keeping the pixel art for this particular release was the right call. You mentioned redrawing at a higher resolution and framerate - as I said, what Sonic Mania did to update intelligently was keep the same resolution, but up the framerate to give far more individual frames, to give less or no jerk between images, and also increased the colour pallette slightly to create a more 3d look and separate the characetr from the backgrounds better. To my tastes they did a perfect job.

Where we are going to have to disagree is that in general higher resolution images for 2d games are better, or even that they take more effort. I can tell that this must be a matter of preference by the example you give of Shantae: For my money, Risky's Revenge and Pirate's Curse are two of the most beautiful 2d games ever made... and Half Genie Hero and Seven Sirens are painfully ugly by comparisson. They switched from everything being hand drawn with limitations to make the best out of every frame, to a automatically tweened set of vectors and suddenly everything looks like a cheap flash browser game to me.

Of course, if everything is hand drawn and painted it can look beautiful, like Cuphead, for example, but also for a more obviously "gamey" aesthetic, Streets of Rage 4 would be a good example... but to me, even though those characters and backgrounds are skillfully drawn by talenbted artists, it still over emphasises the limited range of motions the characters have and looks stiff and wooden, compared to a "real" 2d animated tv series or film, and personally the pixel graphics in Shredder's Revenge or Final Vendetta are far more appealing to me for use in a videogame.

@kisai (cont) In fact, I'm struggling to think of an example of a classic game that has had high resolution art redrawn and its actually worked. Something like the HD Ultra Street Fighter 2 characters just look terrible to me. Again, the art is high quality and skillfully done, but a 2d videogame necessarily limited the range of motion, and has staccato, unpredictable movements, and the high res art makes it feel like you are moving around cardboard cutouts, or clip art. The Dragon's Trap remake had nice art, and did a good job of exagerating the movements with squash and stretch etc, and for sure was a big upgrade over the very limited early 8bit art... but I can't help but feel it would have been even better to have a "16/32bit" style remake with pixel art as if it was made on, say, Neo Geo or Saturn, than to have the ultra clean vector style drawings. Same with the Toki remake. For both, I find myself leaning more towards the originals, despite their shortcomings.

Of course the other option is pre-rendered sprites, like DKC, which almost always look really terrible once you move to high res, because again it emphasises where the perspective or lighting breaks, and where the edges are, far worse than it did in older 240p games where your brain "fills in the blanks". The travesty of Sonic 4 is a perfect example of how stiff and lifeless this can look if done wrong.

Of course, simple pixel art can be super cheap and easy, and devs with no artistic talent can make very-early 80s style art, pretend its part of the style, and it will be less laughable to look at than if they tried to hand draw something. But true high quality pixel art (especially stuff that uses modern hardware and can bypass memory restrications and add far more animation frames and colours, such as that in Shredder's Revenge) is incredibly difficult to do well, especially with a smooth frame rate to make everything move nicely. The fact you are limited by resolution makes it hard to give the exact impression of what you are trying to, again, especially for those key "inbetween" frames it takes to get smoot motion. Its easy to do this badly, but for my money, when its done well, its still the preferable aesthetic for most 2d games... save for the extremely rare examples when the 2d art is so exemplary its a pleasure to view in motion... Cuphead is the only example I can think of right now, literally blanking on any other modern game thats pulled it off.

Again, I can see that some of this is a matter of preference and I'm not trying to flame or start an arguement. Its interesting that you gave Shantae as an example because in almost any thread where the series comes up, I see a huge amount of people complaining how much they hate the new art, and others saying how much better it looks. Must genuinely be a matter of taste.

I really can’t wait to not buy this!

When a physical appears next year, sure I'll add it to my many, many Sonic compilations for various platforms.
Otherwise no thanks

Holy crap, Sega actually referenced the legendary SammyClassicSonicFan at the start of the video!

@Clyde_Radcliffe Lol nice catch! I can't believe I missed that. When will I LEARN that my actions have CONSEQUENCES!!

Hopefully, a physical release will happen. Does Sega really have faith in this compilation, or are they double-dipping? I suspect it's the latter. I'll possibly wait for physical, though if Sega makes it clear there won't be, I'll download it.

@samuelvictor top tier comment.

Absolutely gorgeous! Makes the Mario 3D all stars collection look really bare bones.

@thegroke777 Thanks!

I wonder what happened to the guy who claimed he had a physical preorder, lol,

great game for everyone