Megathread Sonic Origins | MT | General Discussion

[SolidSurgeTT]

Just now, light-gaia said:

Sonic Mania glitches had nothing to do with Denuvo. I have the PS4 version, not the PC version and I experienced a lot of glitches and bugs. Including the infamous blue Super Sonic. Sonic Mania had way more glitches and bugs than Sonic Origins.

Not glitches, the actual inclusion of it. Remember the PC version was delayed for two weeks almost exclusively to add Denuvo? Then when people railed against it Sega washed their hands of the matter and implied it was Headcannon Games' call. Stealth had to take to Twitter to point out that wasn't the case.

[light-gaia]

The game received patches that fixed all the bugs, but it came out with a lot of problems

5 minutes ago, SolidSurgeTT said:

Not glitches, the actual inclusion of it. Remember the PC version was delayed for two weeks almost exclusively to add Denuvo? Then when people railed against it Sega washed their hands of the matter and implied it was Headcannon Games' call. Stealth had to take to Twitter to point out that wasn't the case.

I'm not talking about Denuvo, I'm talking about bugs and glitches in the console versions of the game

Edited June 24, 2022 by light-gaia
Grammar checking

[Ryannumber1gamer]

14 minutes ago, SolidSurgeTT said:

Not glitches, the actual inclusion of it. Remember the PC version was delayed for two weeks almost exclusively to add Denuvo? Then when people railed against it Sega washed their hands of the matter and implied it was Headcannon Games' call. Stealth had to take to Twitter to point out that wasn't the case.

To my knowledge, it was actually SEGA of Europe that delayed the game to implement that, as apparently they were the ones handling publishing PC ports of SEGA games at the time (if they still do, I have no idea). Given we’re talking five years ago, I can’t really recall which of the two tried to do that.

Whatever the case, he’s not wrong that Mania had its share of bugs. As someone who played the game at midnight release when it dropped, I ended up with not one, but two game breaking glitches in Chemical Plant and Flying Battery Zone alone that forced me to reset the game and start from the beginning of the retrospective zones. 

I’m not gonna comment on if what Headcannon said is unprofessional or not, but in regards to saying that the Sonic Stadium review is the only positive one or stuff like that, the game is still holding a 80% on Metacritic with over 20 reviews. One positive review isn’t enough to do that, and frankly, I don’t think most people outside of the fandom are noticing half the stuff like sounds being changed or music being off (apart from the new tracks which would stand out a lot more), with only the big glitches being enough to cause that. Hell, the classics are literally something I’m not very versed in because I don’t like Sonic 1, 2 or CD very much and I haven’t noticed much of anything beyond the drop dash implementation not being particularly good in the first three games. 

[SolidSurgeTT]

14 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

Sonic Mania glitches had nothing to do with Denuvo. I have the PS4 version, not the PC version and I experienced a lot of glitches and bugs. Including the infamous blue Super Sonic. Sonic Mania had way more glitches and bugs than Sonic Origins.

I guess I should clarify; I wasn't saying "Actually, you're wrong." Rather I was trying to say "Although they may not have blamed Headcannon for Sonic Mania's bugs they did try to throw them under the bus for another reason so Sega definitely has priors for not standing behind their collaborators."

[VO.SUPER]

I do hope this airing of shit by Stealth hasn't damaged the prospect of patches for the game. 

Granted, he was harsher with Mania on its release and SEGA still worked with him, so I hope this hasn't had any serious consequences aside from pissing off some management at SoJ. 

It's infuriating that there's such a divide between the people who make the games and the people who need to market it here in the states. Sonic Team are kept basically isolated from us, and we're kind of forced to rely on Izuka's word alone most of the time on how things are progressing. 

[light-gaia]

37 minutes ago, SolidSurgeTT said:

I guess I should clarify; I wasn't saying "Actually, you're wrong." Rather I was trying to say "Although they may not have blamed Headcannon for Sonic Mania's bugs they did try to throw them under the bus for another reason so Sega definitely has priors for not standing behind their collaborators."

I don't remember the Denuvo situation because I didn't bought the PC version, so I'm not saying you are wrong either.

What I meant to say is Sonic Origins right now is more solid and polished than Sonic Mania back when it was released. The game has a few bugs and glitches, but nothing severe that couldn't be fixed with small updates.

[Shiny Gems]

3 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

I don't remember the Denuvo situation because I didn't bought the PC version, so I'm not saying you are wrong either.

What I meant to say is Sonic Origins right now is more solid and polished than Sonic Mania back when it was released. The game has a few bugs and glitches, but nothing severe that couldn't be fixed with small updates.

I am not sure if I can agree with that, considering how there are glitches in Origins that make it so that you lose all progress in things like Story mode and lose your score and emeralds, among other things.

[light-gaia]

39 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

I am not sure if I can agree with that, considering how there are glitches in Origins that make it so that you lose all progress in things like Story mode and lose your score and emeralds, among other things.

The first day I played Sonic Mania back in 2017, I finished a stage and Sonic jumped to a bottomless pit and died during his victory animation. This was after I already finished the stage and was in the score screen. I experienced a lot of unfair deaths caused by bugs. @Ryannumber1gamer also said he experienced gaming break bugs in Sonic Mania.

Here is a compilation of Sonic Mania glitches: https://youtu.be/nKfDxm-vkec

This video is from August 2017, most of the issues were patched later.

I've been playing Sonic Origins since yesterday and I haven't experienced bugs like that yet. It's definitely more stable than Sonic Mania was.

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by light-gaia
Grammar checking

[Shiny Gems]

1 minute ago, light-gaia said:

The first day I played Sonic Mania back in 2017, I finished a stage and Sonic jumped to a bottomless pit and died during his victory animation. This was after I already finished the stage and was in the score screen. I experienced a lot of unfair deaths caused by bugs. @Ryannumber1gamer also said he experienced gaming break bugs in Sonic Mania.

Here is a compilation of Sonic Mania glitches: https://youtu.be/nKfDxm-vkec

This video is from August 2017, most of the issues were patched later.

I've been playing Sonic Origins since yesterday and I haven't experienced bugs like that yet. It's definitely more stage than Sonic Mania was.

Ah, yeah, I experienced the same kind of bug in Mania before.

I still think the Mania glitches are nothing like Origins', as the ones I have seen so far in Mania with the provided videos are nothing like what can be encountered in Origins. It does not seem like the glitches in Mania are as game altering.

[CleverSonicUsername]

I started Sonic 1 in anniversary mode and went to the level select menu to enable the seventh emerald, then closed out of the game after Spring Yard. When I hit "continue" later it started me at Green Hill Act 1 with no emeralds. I cannot tell if this is a bug or a feature but boy it sucks. 

edit: Nevermind the fact that enabling the seventh emerald or elemental shields is something that should be in a proper menu rather than buried in the level select. 

[light-gaia]

16 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

Ah, yeah, I experienced the same kind of bug in Mania before.

I still think the Mania glitches are nothing like Origins', as the ones I have seen so far in Mania with the provided videos are nothing like what can be encountered in Origins. It does not seem like the glitches in Mania are as game altering.

There were Sonic Mania glitches that alter the level collision detection, and a lot of other gaming breaking glitches. They were easily activated by accident in a normal playthrough.

[Shiny Gems]

1 minute ago, light-gaia said:

There were Sonic Mania glitches that alter the level collision detection, and a lot of other gaming breaking glitches. They were easily activated by accident in a normal playthrough.

Yeah, but I wasn't talking about those kinds of game altering glitches. In fact, resetting one's progress like the glitch in Sonic Origins with the story mode is more intense to me than any of those glitches in Mania you listed.

Though Origins does not seem to have much of the same kind of glitches Mania had when it came out, I will give you that.

[Roareye Black]

6 hours ago, Ming Ming Hatsune said:

Ahhh, so that's why when I restart an act, the BGM doesn't restart along with it! I thought that was a strange design choice.

Dreadknux may have some relationship with Sega, because an honest reviewer who has played Sonic classics a lot would have spotted these issues and put those in to the review.

You can give it praise all you like, it's an opinion piece after all - but it just doesn't look honest when you give it a '5/5 Essential' rating KNOWING these bugs and issues are present.

Lord knows myself and Dread haven't spoken really for a solid decade, but I am going to defend him somewhat on this point - as someone who grew up with the man.

He knows the Classics, he owned them multiple times over and knows levels like the back of his hands. The dude used to collate and sell the cheat codes at school break times when he was 7 for crying loud Believe me when I say, he knows these games.

 

I think his review isn't exactly cronyism, which seems to be your inference (the "relationship with Sega"). He definitely HAS a relationship with Sega, but he was trained in journalism at degree level. He's also not a journalist any longer.

However Dread has always been caught heavily in the new Sonic game hype train. It's not new for him to see Sonic titles in a more positive light because he loves them. It may be called a review, but it's more an opinion piece - he's not paid for TSS and the site isn't geared to be a hardcore journalism site, it's a fansite.

You can hear a similar reaction in season 1 of The Sonic Hour, an episode called The Sonic Heroes Hour. Dread (and Ben, in his only year on the show) are both praising Sonic Heroes, which at the time is on preview only. Before it released. I call it as I see it (admittedly a little harsh in hindsight) by mentioning the sloppy graphics, awkward looking gameplay etc. Dread and Ben don't want to hear anything negative, so essentially call me a fool. While I got it right historically, that's not my point. You can hear in how Dread is gleefully discussing Sonic Heroes that he at least WANTS it to be exceptional.

 

TL;DR - I don't believe Dread is attempting to mislead anyone, and I can guarantee he knows these games. I just think he's like a kid at Christmas at having more of the franchise he loves.

[Shiny Gems]

One thing I want to say, which is NOT in defense of Sonic Team or Sega; I noticed someone from somewhere say they have not learned from Sonic 06 with Origins. That may be the case, somewhat, but for Sonic 06, they just moved the release date to an earlier time, giving no time to fix the physics, gameplay and everything else. For Origins, it seems mostly that they edited most of the things Headcannon and the other non-Sonic Team workers did, which backfired. It is possible they could still learn from that in the future.

Not trying to defend anyone here, I just wanted to point out one thing about how Sonic 06 ended up and how Sonic Origins ended up are not entirely the same thing. Not to mention, the circumstances behind Sonic 06 and how it actually turned out is a whole different, worse beast than Sonic Origins.

[light-gaia]

I'm having a positive experience so far. I wish the classic mode were the original ROMs being emulated, though.

I wish Saturn Sonic 3D Blast were included in the collection, too. 

[Roareye Black]

40 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

I'm having a positive experience so far. I wish the classic mode were the original ROMs being emulated, though.

I wish Saturn Sonic 3D Blast were included in the collection, too. 

They can't emulate the classic ROM for Sonic 3 though, due to the music. I reckon that's why they didn't emulate the others. Could have saved effort though by emulating the rest and just doing the 4:3 downstep for S3. However that might have created problems with S3&K being merged as a single title in the menu.

Saturn 3D Flickies' Island was never on the cards. The music was by Richard Jacques, and they'd likely have to pay out a music licence to him for the soundtrack too. And considering they're not emulating any games, I don't see how Whitehead's engine could be modified for pseudo-3D isometric play.

The game that should have been included is Knuckles Chaotix, as it plays the same as a regular Sonic game. But with how this came out, can you imagine adding the headache of rebuilding another game on top?

[KHCast]

3 hours ago, light-gaia said:

I think his tweets are kinda unprofessional. The game has a few glitches and bugs but nothing severe that couldn't be fixed with a few patches. Sonic Mania had way more problems when it first came out. I experienced a lot of deaths because of glitches in Sonic Mania.

Imagine if back in 2017, Sega says: "bugs in Sonic Mania are Headcanon's fault not ours"

Whether you wanna say it’s unprofessional to call out the other teams/devs working on the game is up for debate, but the general idea of expressing frustration and explaining the situation about how the product you sent was not the one sold, the crunch thrown on devs, and calling out segas lack of transparency, is not unprofessional in the slightest. Again, unless you wanna suggest any devs that come out about toxic work situations regarding the company they work under are “unprofessional”

 

[Shiny Gems]

6 minutes ago, Roareye Black said:

They can't emulate the classic ROM for Sonic 3 though, due to the music. I reckon that's why they didn't emulate the others. Could have saved effort though by emulating the rest and just doing the 4:3 downstep for S3. However that might have created problems with S3&K being merged as a single title in the menu.

Saturn 3D Flickies' Island was never on the cards. The music was by Richard Jacques, and they'd likely have to pay out a music licence to him for the soundtrack too. And considering they're not emulating any games, I don't see how Whitehead's engine could be modified for pseudo-3D isometric play.

The game that should have been included is Knuckles Chaotix, as it plays the same as a regular Sonic game. But with how this came out, can you imagine adding the headache of rebuilding another game on top?

On the last part, is it wrong that I want a few more games like Knuckles Chaotix as DLC for Sonic Origins? Just a few, if adding such a game is even possible to begin with. I wouldn't lose sleep over it if it were not DLC, but it would be nice still.

[light-gaia]

9 minutes ago, Roareye Black said:

They can't emulate the classic ROM for Sonic 3 though, due to the music. I reckon that's why they didn't emulate the others. Could have saved effort though by emulating the rest and just doing the 4:3 downstep for S3. However that might have created problems with S3&K being merged as a single title in the menu.

Saturn 3D Flickies' Island was never on the cards. The music was by Richard Jacques, and they'd likely have to pay out a music licence to him for the soundtrack too. And considering they're not emulating any games, I don't see how Whitehead's engine could be modified for pseudo-3D isometric play.

The game that should have been included is Knuckles Chaotix, as it plays the same as a regular Sonic game. But with how this came out, can you imagine adding the headache of rebuilding another game on top?

I know it's probably impossible. But I am one of the few people who like Sonic 3D Blast and would love to have access to the Saturn version on newer hardware

10 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Whether you wanna say it’s unprofessional to call out the other teams/devs working on the game is up for debate, but the general idea of expressing frustration and explaining the situation about how the product you sent was not the one sold, the crunch thrown on devs, and calling out segas lack of transparency, is not unprofessional in the slightest. Again, unless you wanna suggest any devs that come out about toxic work situations regarding the company they work under are “unprofessional”

It's unprofessional because it's putting the blame of some issues in the game on other developers who also worked on the project. It's like throwing your co-workers under the bus. We also only have access to his version of the story, and the other people involved obviously won't be able to defend themselves. We don't know if the crunch was due to HC's management issues, for example. They probably knew the deadline before start working on the project and should know if it was possible to deliver the game within this deadline. He admitted in his tweets that the team made some mistakes. I'm not saying this is the case here, but we shouldn't take everything he said as truth without having any other sources.

I don't think talking about toxic working environment is unprofessional. But pointing fingers towards your co-workers about flaws in a project that has just been released, and both teams worked together, it's kinda unprofessional to say the least.

[DaBigJ]

You're saying they probably knew about the deadline despite the fact that Stealth was literally involved in the same project, most certainly working with headcanon, and said that there was a lot of crunch.

Okay.

[light-gaia]

1 minute ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

You're saying they probably knew about the deadline despite the fact that Stealth was literally involved in the same project, most certainly working with headcanon, and said that there was a lot of crunch.

Okay.

When a company hires another company to do a job for them, they usually say when they need the job to be done.

[McGroose]

So it seems that Sega removed Sonic CD and the original Genesis Sonic games from the Steam page. Apparently this was already the case for a month or two and I just wasn't aware until now.

This is certainly understandable, but with all due lack of respect Sega, please go fuck yourself. I'm not buying your overpriced Denuvo DRM hack job.

Glad I already had all these games previously installed for half the price of Origins.

I was already indifferent to this collection the moment I found out it only had four games, but it's just amazing how they managed to keep embarrassing themselves more and more with this. This is like Sonic Jam's evil twin or something.

[LegoFedora]

45 minutes ago, Roareye Black said:

They can't emulate the classic ROM for Sonic 3 though, due to the music

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought that was exactly how sonic 3 got released time and time again? Some legal loophole where they can use the music but only in the context of the exact same rom it was made for, which is why we only saw direct rom ports and never actual remasters/remakes or anything that edited the game itself. Which is why it had to be changed for Origins, since it wouldn't be the same rom so Sega wouldn't have the rights to use that music free of hassle.

[Indigo Rush]

7 minutes ago, LegoFedora said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought that was exactly how sonic 3 got released time and time again? Some legal loophole where they can use the music but only in the context of the exact same rom it was made for, which is why we only saw direct rom ports and never actual remasters/remakes or anything that edited the game itself. Which is why it had to be changed for Origins, since it wouldn't be the same rom so Sega wouldn't have the rights to use that music free of hassle.

This was the prior assumption but after rumblings of a legal battle after S3&K released on Steam and none after, all of that was put into question. 

The most likely scenario (until we are told outright, which will likely be never) is that SEGA thought they were good to re-release Sonic 3 until someone caught wind of what they were doing and took them to court. This is speculation, but it could explain why the PC versopm had different music but not Mega Collection or anything further: S&KC only came out a few years (3) after the original release, and there could have been enough distance between that and Mega Collection (half a decade) for legal staff to either change over or just... forget. Maybe.

Again... we don't truly know. But the ROM being okay is kind of debunked after they suddenly stopped packing it in with any of their Genesis collections.

[Rabbitearsblog]

So, do you think that SEGA might be going through a similar situation to Activision (keep in mind though that Activision's situation was way different from SEGA's situation) in terms of all of the behind the scenes drama might blow up in a way that the whole company would have to start restaffing everyone to save face?  And even though this wasn't the first time that SEGA had mistreated the dev staff or that time that they nearly went bankrupt themselves, I would imagine with how the internet works nowadays, it would give people more incentive to restaff SEGA if the behind the scenes situation gets worse.  Just some random thinking on my part.