Sonic Origins, a collection of 4 retro Sonic the Hedgehog games, has been available for 5 days now. With the collection being available for nearly a week now, fans have been gradually taking a look at the technical aspect of Sonic Origins.
This also includes Digital Foundry. Earlier today, they released a Tech Review for Sonic Origins. As the name implies, they reviewed Sonic Origins, but mainly from a technical standpoint. If you’re curious about what they said, a list of highlights can be seen down below.
GENERAL
- Overall, feels unpolished – glitches and steep price tag make it a tough sell at the moment
- The games in the collection are not emulated, but are proper ports remade in the Retro Engine
- The frontend for the collection is powered by the Hedgehog Engine
- DLC feels tacked on and should have been included
- The drop dash (now included in all games) feels glitchy compared to Mania
- Classic Mode still uses the Retro Engine versions of the games and doesn’t feel entirely faithful
- Lots of minor bugs that need to be addressed (Museum typos, Tails getting stuck, Blue Spheres music tempo not increasing, etc.)
VIDEO
- All the games are rendered using a bilinear filter rather than a sharp scale, resulting in softened pixels
- Turning anti-aliasing on in Origins’ settings results in an unacceptably blurry presentation
- The other video filter options included with Mania are not present in Origins
- PS5/XSX provides a pristine native 4K frontend, Switch is blurrier
- Animated videos are incorrectly scaled on the Switch
- Anniversary Mode is native 16:9 widescreen, Classic Mode is 4:3
- Sonic CD’s menu is functionally/visually inconsistent with the other games in the collection
AUDIO
- Overall volume levels are too low, especially on the Switch in portable mode
- Sonic CD’s animated videos are too loud compared to everything else
- Several 3&K songs were replaced with versions based on the prototype songs
- The music in 3&K is muffled compared to the other games
- Sonic CD’s music extended music loop sections included in the 2011 version are no longer present
- Sonic CD’s voice samples are not present
PERFORMANCE
- PS5/XSX frontend runs at 60fps, Switch runs at 30fps and feels less fluid
- The games feature low input lag and feel remarkably responsive
- Slowdown eliminated in the games thanks to Retro Engine – games run at a smooth 60fps
- Special stages are much smoother compared to the original Genesis/CD versions
And again sega gives the middle finger to Nintendo fans despite sonic selling better on Nintendo platforms, 30 fps was a freaking slap in the face for sonic colors ultimate as it is for this game.
From what I read it looks like that’s just for menus and such. The actual gameplay is still 60 fps
Ouch, Sega really should have let Stealth and his team Headcannon delay the project so they could have finished the game making it much more polished and ready for distribution. I don’t think anyone cares that it met the deadline for Sonic’s birthday. Such a silly reason to release a game before it was ready for sale.
So I found a new glitch just now. If you trick Tails into flying by pressing the jump button a few times when you clear a boss stage after freeing the animals from the capsule, the sound effect of Tail’s flying will carry over to every new stage and the propeller sound won’t end. Even if Tails isn’t flying the sound will continue. Clearing the following stage won’t end the sound effect either. Its very annoying and I hope they allow Headcannon to patch out a lot of these irritating bugs.
Only Sega could manage to turn a collection of enhanced Genesis titles from thirty years ago into a PR fiasco. What a shame that this will be many people’s first exposure to one of the finest platformers ever made. 3&K deserved a better fate than this