O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
I watched my friends play Sonic games a lot, I played Sonic games a fair bit, the style, the soundtracks, the Knuckles himself… So many memories about these games that… I don’t love that much, if I’m honest. I’m not much into platforming games in general, unless they focus on exploration and/or puzzle solving, so despite the era of games I grew up with having so many great (and not great) examples of the genre, I didn’t play a lot of them much or at all. But after replaying Sonic Generations for the Sonic X Shadow Generations release that I really liked, I was in the mood for more Sonic. So after giving Frontiers a try and getting frustrated with it after a few hours (even though it has so many things done so well), I’ve decided to finally play Sonic Origins with the Plus expansion. And this return to the classics was somewhat predictable, but still necessary for me.
I think I should explain the Sonic classics, despite how huge these games were, because it’s been a very long time since Sonic the Hedgehog came out and the franchise has changed a lot over the years. These are the classic 2D platforming games with focus on fast movement but also some action and some exploration. There were originally released for Sega Mega Drive console (known as Genesis in the US) and instantly became quite popular, becoming the central part of the Sega vs Nintendo competition. Sonic grew into a gigantic multimedia franchise that rivaled Nintendo’s Mario series… and still does with comic books, animated series and live action movies being hugely popular to this day. Even if the game releases became known for their more spotty quality.
Sonic Origins includes the 5 key classic titles in the franchise updated to have modern niceties and to run at high widescreen resolutions and even has the story game mode that allows you to go through all of them in a sequence with newly created animated cutscenes in-between the games. To make the experience feel more consistent, some of the changes were made to the moves of the characters and how they handle, though mostly the games behave similarly to how they did originally. Plus, you can play each game separately in the same updated version or the “classic” version, which is the main way of playing other characters in those games, some of which were possible before, but some were added for this collection and the Plus expansion. On top of the main collection of games, there are special small “missions” you can do, which are basically short challenge courses similar to the ones you could find in Generations. And with Plus you get a collection of Game Gear titles from the same era.
Sadly, not everything you’d expect is included. Side games for other platforms are not here, but even more strangely, even a few of the Mega Drive games are not present – you get the art and music for Sonic 3D Blast, for example, but not the game itself? Or, it doesn’t have an option to play just Sonic 3 and just Sonic & Knuckles, for some reason, only the full “intended” Sonic 3 & Knuckles experience. And even the “classic” mode of the original games isn’t actually how the original game played – you still can spindash in Sonic 1, for example, even though the move didn’t appear until Sonic 2. Which doesn’t make this whole collection bad, just feels quite disappointing, given the price point of the collection Sega decided to go with.
Still, the collection is very well put together, feels good, sounds good. The soundtracks for all games are as amazing as they used to be… With few exceptions. And no, I’m not talking about the fact that several Sonic 3 tracks were changed for licensing reasons, I did not mind the new versions that much. Rather, the original games do have a few other bizarre tracks. Anyway, among the modern niceties, the missions (and few other things) give you coins, which allows you to restart Special Stages if you fail them, which makes getting the good endings much easier. Which I really appreciated, since I’m not a fan of the most of these. And also you can play with no lives and no time limit, which was, again, my preferred way of playing through the games and made the experience so much more enjoyable.
Anyway, let me speak a few words about the games themselves.
Original Sonic the Hedgehog starts really nicely and plays fantastically for a couple of levels. Sega really nailed the idea on their first go in those initial moments, but the game cannot quite keep this momentum and the last series of levels become quite frustrating and sometimes confusing. And final boss is not fun at all. Special stages in this game were hard to look at and tedious more than anything else too, and while you technically get the “good ending” only if you get 6 “chaos emeralds”, it doesn’t change much about the game (and story mode goes with the good ending anyway) as there was no in-game benefit to collecting them yet. In this title they also occasionally did unexpected bottomless pits that kill you or incredibly rude springs that would launch you into spikes. And crushing deaths were especially common.
With Sonic CD Sega tried to do something different, and it kinda works. But also kinda doesn’t at all. Unlike most Sonic titles, this one wanted to emphasize the exploration – to get good ending you have to time travel to the past and destroy a special machine, so then you create a good future. You can also travel to the future and all three (well, four because Good and Bad Future) timelines have slightly different layout, their own music variation and other aspects. Which is neat, but also not very fun with how Sonic controls and due to the stage layout. The levels are huge and you have no clue where said machine can even be, while traveling through time is not as easy to achieve mechanically while also easy enough to accidentally perform it. And the biggest slap to this whole idea is the fact that if you just complete 7 Special Stages and get all Time Stones, you automatically get all machines destroyed in the entire game, making exploration pointless…
It doesn’t help that the stages become quite obnoxious as the game goes on and in some it’s almost impossible parse what’s going on as you get bounced across half the stage at ridiculous speeds and cannot even begin to comprehend the layout. Special Stages are also quite bad, but with Origins you can replay them and it’s better to just do them and rush through the rest of the levels. Sadly, Story mode seems to default to the US soundtrack of the game with no way to select the Japanese one… Oh right, this game had two different soundtracks for complicated reasons. And they’re both great and you can select either when you’re playing the game on its own. It’s just odd that the game seems to default to the US one in story. This is the only game to feature Amy Rose canonically, out of this collection, despite how important she’d be in later games.
After that was the US+JP developed Sonic 2, a favorite of many but not me. Though it’s easy to see why people love it. A lot of the mechanics were refined, levels are, in general, much nicer. The famous spindash appeared in this game and so did Tails, which allowed for cooperative play. Getting into Special Stages to get the Chaos Emeralds became so easy, you could get all of them in the very first Zone. And this time there was an in-game reward for it as well – this is when the concept of Super Sonic was introduced. This is a very fun game that feels like a proper improvement over the original game, but also with some lessons taken from CD (that was in development at the same time but came out later). Though, I was never a fan of the tube Special Stages as they are more about memorizing the path, then reacting to it. And last levels, especially the final boss rush, are more tedious than fun in the modern version, but were probably super horrible in the classic games where you had limited lives.
And then comes the Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Originally released as two games that had to be divided for a lot of complicated reasons, they were my personal favorite as a kid (specifically the Sonic & Knuckles) and I was a bit afraid that this megagame didn’t age well. But no, it is undoubtedly the best entry in the classic series. On top of the already fun ideas and mechanics from Sonic 2, Sega added the fun idea with elemental shields that gave Sonic unique abilities, gave other playable characters unique abilities of their own and even created unique paths through the levels that could only be accessed by said characters. Knuckles is, of course, the best boy. The Zones are mostly fantastic, with only a couple of weaker ones, the Special Stages are genuinely good. Laggy and frustrating if you can’t immediately restart them (as it was in the original release), but best so far. And even accessing these stages requires a bit of exploration, as entrances to them are hidden in levels. Though the hiding places are quite forgiving and this might be the easiest classic game to get the best ending for, which is great, since it’s also the only classic game that has a special final stage if you get all Emeralds.
Overall, not being the biggest fan of platformers did influence my enjoyment of the games, of course. And the fact that for the story mode you have to go through the first two games that are rougher than the last two isn’t helping. But Sonic 2 and especially Sonic 3 & Knuckles are extremely good. So good that I understand why Sega wanted to do something completely new, different and surprising after that. Because topping what they have created with S3&K would’ve been hard and, perhaps, not very rewarding. Could I recommend Sonic Origins to people? Sure, it’s a good collection, but probably wait for a good discount. As for the Plus expansion – unless you’re a hardcore Sonic fan the Game Gear games might not interest you. And apart from that, you get to play as Amy and a few other niceties, which is cool, but also feels more interesting to already existing Sonic fans who probably bought the collection anyway, rather than the more general audience. I was happy to revisit these classics myself, even if this collection could’ve been better (or cheaper).