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Sonic Origins Plus is a new DLC expansion pack for the Sonic Retro collection that was released last year with several new features including a number of Game Gear titles and the adorable Amy Rose as a playable character. This will also be the first time that the collection will get a physical release will all the DLC included.
To clarify, these will be our first impressions of the new DLC. We previously reviewed Sonic Origins when it was released last year so if you want more details on the main game check there. We found that while the new DLC from Origins Plus is good, it also has some faults with audio performance and ultimately doesn’t do much to fix one major issue with the Origins Collection: that it’s a little overpriced.
Amy Rose
The Sonic Origins Collections allows you to play through the four classic Sonic Genesis games: Sonic The Hedgehog 1, 2, 3 (and Knuckles) and CD, as either Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles, and now with Origins Plus you can play as Knuckles in Sonic CD (which feels like it should have been there in the original release) as well as Sonic’s favorite fangirl Amy Rose and she’s pretty fun.
She plays a lot like Sonic himself in terms of handling and moveset but what separates her from the others is her hammer. When jumping you can press the button a second time and Amy will spin with her hammer giving her a wider hitbox that helps her more easily reach enemies and bust down walls. It’s a cool feature even if she’s not all that different from the other characters.
I also really like her sprites. They’re brand new but feel at home alongside the original Genesis sprites of the other three while still maintaining a lot of her bubbly personality. Overall, if you’re a fan of Amy she’s done pretty well here.
The Game Gear Games
The other new feature of the game is that you now have access to twelve Game Gear Sonic titles which include the following:
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Game Gear)
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Game Gear)
- Sonic Chaos
- Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble
- Sonic Drift
- Sonic Drift 2
- Sonic Spinball
- Tails Adventure
- Sonic Labyrinth
- Sonic Blast
- Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
- Tails’ Skypatrol
It sounds like a lot but if I being honest I don’t think the Game Gear is that good in general. Sorry if I’m stepping on someone’s childhood but none of them have aged very well with very, it’s clear that the Game Gear lacked the blast processing to make Sonic as fast as usual so a lot of the platformers like Sonic Blast and Sonic Triple Trouble make him feel very stiff and strangely slow, not to mention with very odd looking sprites. If I’m being honest, my favorite of these was probably Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine since it’s a puzzle game that plays a bit smoother since the pace is slower.
It doesn’t help that many critics have pointed out that a few of these games like Sonic Chaos were also available on the Sega Master System and that those versions tended to be better due to the lack of screen crunch making it hard to see what’s in front of you.
They’re not completely unplayable but after a few hours of trying out different Game Gear titles, I kinda just wanted to go back to the Genesis games. The emulation is also questionable and the audio quality is incredibly poor, sounding very tinny. The classic Sega voice single sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
Improvements to The Original
As previously mentioned one of the larger issues with the original Sonic Origins is that there were notable glitches across the game which were eventually patched out with later updates. After playing Origins Plus, I didn’t have any recognizable glitches. The gameplay was each game was fast and fluid as you’d expect of Sonic The Hedgehog games.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the price. The original collection was criticized for its $40 price tag, seen as too expensive for four old Genesis titles alongside a table of different DLC and pre-order versions. Origins Plus while only being $10 USD as DLC doesn’t feel like it adds much on top of the base game, with just one new playable character, who’s not that different from Sonic, and a bunch of smaller titles haven’t aged that well and aren’t that well emulated.
If that’s not enough, the physical version of Origins Plus also goes for $40 while the original digital vanilla version is also $40, meaning that users could have gotten more content for cheaper if they just waited a year. The classic Sonic games are fantastic but if they’re all your after, there are also more affordable ways to play them including the Sega Ages versions of Sonic The Hedgehog and Sonic II which you can get on the Switch for just $16.
Sonic Origins Plus
Ultimately whether you want to get Sonic Origins Plus really comes down if the new additions are worth a higher price.
If you want to play the classic Genesis Sonic games, these are perfectly good ports and the extra bonuses like the animated intros and concept art are nice additions. Being able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and now Amy adds some great replay value to them but outside of that and I suppose Knuckles in Sonic CD (again, I feel that should have been in the original version) I don’t think there’s much to Sonic Origins Plus. I you played those Game Gear games as a kid then maybe you’d get more out of it, but I didn’t do much for myself especially when they hed me grasping for the volume controls.
As I previously said, there are more affordable ways to access these games even on the same consoles and I’m not sure the extra content really justifies the steeper price. The genesis games are fun blast from the past but you can’t help but feel that Sonic is grabbing a few more coins than he really needs.
