Sonic Origins Green Hill Zone Animated Cutscene
Image: Sonic Station / SEGA

Famitsu has been holding a stream to showcase some of the many different features SEGA's upcoming compilation, Sonic Origins, comes with when it launches on 23rd June. So, it's time to brush aside that Sonic Frontiers disappointment that some of us are struggling with and embrace the classic age of Sonic.

We have Tails' Channel to thank for all of the updates from the stream today, as it has been sharing footage and screenshots from the broadcast on Twitter. And we're mightily impressed.

First up is what is likely one of Story Mode's brand new cutscenes. We've covered that Story Mode is going to be exclusively for Sonic, and part of the reason we speculated this is because of these new cutscenes that have been lovingly created. And this matches the quality of the reveal trailer because it looks wonderful — basically on par with Sonic Mania's opening!

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Everything is here! The iconic visuals of Green Hill Zone, the Motobug Badnik, the Flickies coming out of the robots, and the animals captured in the capsule as the much-rounder Robotnik flies off into the distance. This is how we imagined Sonic back in 1991. It's glorious. Don't take us away from it.

Of course, we can sit and admire those visuals all day, but SEGA is bringing more than just brand new cutscenes to the compilation. Famitsu showed off a few other features, giving us a look at the Pause menu, the character select screen — which lets you select between Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Sonic & Tails, and Knuckles & Tails — from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The last shot is what looks like a mode select screen, which is meant to be a huge world map:

You can see Sonic the Hedgehog's iconic South Island, Sonic 2's West Island, Sonic 3 & Knuckles' Floating Island, and Little Planet from Sonic CD. For Mission Mode, you can see the Veg-O-Fortress from Sonic Spinball, and Museum Mode is likely the island featured in Sonic 3D Blast.

One other new feature coming to Sonic Origins is the ability to play through each game backward, Mario Kart-style. No, not in race cars — shudders — but in Mirror Mode, which flips each game to its mirror image.

This might be a nice little challenge to play around with if you're hugely familiar with these four classic games. While the clip only shows us the very start of Sonic 3 and Angel Island Zone, including the cutscene, you can see what SEGA is going for here. And it's going to make our heads spin. We're so used to the routes and patterns that flipping everything around might just throw us off!

We also got a little look at a Museum Mode, which is where all of the game's music, artwork, history, and box art will be stored. Remember Sonic Mega Collection? It'll be a bit like that.

Let's hope both the Japanese and North American soundtracks for CD are there! But we just can't wait to trawl through the archives, read through all of the information, and comb over every piece of concept art. We know we're Nintendo Life, but we do have a soft spot for the blue blur.

Sonic Origins launches in just a few weeks! Let us know what you think of some of these new additions — that mode select map, right? — down below.

[source twitter.com]