While many were happy that Sonic Mania developer Headcannon was involved in Sonic Origins, it seems that their contribution was in the Sonic 3 & Knuckles remaster work itself and not the overall package. In fact, their part in remaking the game appears to have been contracted entirely separately from the context of Sonic Origins. In a thread, the studio’s official Twitter clarifies:
But as was previously announced, Origins has features beyond the original Retro Engine remakes, such as its story mode, the coin system, mirror mode, the Museum, and… whatever classic mode is (be it the emulated originals or just letterboxed). Even Mission Mode, which features scenarios outside of the original games (like modified level designs and Knuckles in S3K Death Egg Zone), was developed by a team in SEGA as Headcannon further explains:
There are a couple of consequences to this separation of development. It does imply that SEGA has a team that has done work within the Retro Engine, developing small level and gameplay modifications, as well as hooks from these modifications to the external launcher (I.E. replacing lives with spendable coins). It also suggest that the versions of the games are otherwise the same Retro Engine versions previously released (hence no Knuckles in Sonic CD).
That’s profoundly disappointing. I am no longer expecting much in the way of improvements or polish over the existing remakes of 1, 2, and CD.
Game is just barely over a month away and there’s literally never been any indication that it’s anything more than a straight port of the stealth-taxman remasters on modern gaming platforms with a mission mode and other miscellaneous content, so I’m not sure why your expectations were set any higher.
Are there even any significant improvements that can be made to a set of remasters that are widely considered to be superior to the original releases? I guess they could’ve made Knuckles playable in CD this time around, but that’s hardly a dealbreaker.
Giving Sonic all his moves (Super Peel-Out, Insta-Shield) in each game for starters, preferably with some sort of configurability. Including the PC/beta music for S3&K. Including Mighty and Ray based on their Mania appearances. Including features from other older releases of these games such as Sonic Jam’s different level layouts or Sonic Ages’ Ring Saver Mode. Savestates and rewind are awfully popular for retro rereleases nowadays even if I wouldn’t use them. And that’s all without even proposing actually new content like restoring Hidden Palace to Sonic 2 or giving Sonic 1 a 7th Chaos Emerald, which parts of this remaster have already done before.
And until recently there wasn’t really indication that these were “straight ports” of the stealth-taxman remasters. We knew they were based on them sure, but I had personally hoped that in the decade since 3 out of 4 of these games were remade for phones that they might have added a few more bells and whistles to it from their later titles using the same engine. It’s nice to finally have S3&K officially in widescreen and all, but that’s about all I’m getting from this apparently. I wasn’t exactly clamoring for missions to return from Generations, especially when it seems like it won’t unlock anything related to gameplay, and that seems to be the only other noteworthy addition to this near rerelease.
What? All that effort making missions and crap, and they can’t put Knuckles in SCD?
This doesn’t even seem lazy, just terrible decision making.
Because they failed to add one character into a game that he wasn’t in in the first place? I’m not sure that counts as lazy or terrible decision making. I think that’s just them not wanting to eff too much with something that already works.
It should be noted that due to Knuckles shorter jumping distance, implementing him into any games that he wasn’t originally in would require developers to redesign stages with alternative paths meant specifically for him. This may require more work then what they wanted to put into this collection without seeing how well it is received beforehand.
Let’s not forget that there could always be a later update to this game in the form of a ‘PLUS’ version, just like they did with mania. They could always add Knuckles to SCD or even Mighty and Ray for that matter with future DLC.
Good, more power to SEGA
The important question remains thou, is the original soundtrack included?