Sonic Original Sin?

 If you're strong you can fly, you can reach the otherside of the rainbow- Sun Tzu, The Art of Disappointment

Oh I had that initial second of such excitement when a brand new trailer for a Sonic game dropped on the Internet entitled: 'Sonic Origins'. Imaginations raced, what could be this 'Origin'? Clearly it was eluding to the 2D era of Sonic games, but could this be a continuation of the Sonic originals? That renegade spin-off series 'Generations', as we know the 3D version of that universe is going onto 'Frontiers' next? Or maybe a direct sequel to Mania! Yes, as you can imagine I didn't take the necessary time to stop and think about for half a second until my brother, resident expert in all things Sonic, calmly explained to me that I did actually know this thing was coming, he had told me so before, and that it's just the 5 thousandth collection pack for old-school Sonic games. That's Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles and Sonic CD, being packaged up and sold for some as-of-yet-undisclosed price which has more than a few people just a little antsy.

So of course I'm coming at this with more than a little trepidation. We've been sold these games more times than Metal Sonic has popped up in the series and no one's exactly thrilled to be bumrushed into purchasing them again; however there is something new coming with this package. You see, for the first time ever these games are going to be coming with a remaster for Sonic 3 & Knuckles, with the rest of the packaged games presumably being the exact same flawless remake jobs pulled off by Christian Whitehead for the mobile versions of the games. Now that does actually mean something to someone like me, because my very first 2D Sonic game I ever played was actually Sonic 3- (Although my first actual Sonic game was Adventure from nearly a decade prior to when I played 3- but we know how fans talk about the 3D era...) Yet even with that point of connection to this package, I would be lying if I said this wasn't more than a little disappointing.

Sonic is one of those franchises barred and chained by a single succession of questionable quality games when nothing about this series demands it needs to be this way. These games come from a platforming series about a blue Hedgehog breaking robots, why do we need a cohesive and continuing narrative? Mario doesn't, and has never, cared about such things and that series is a permanent classic in the video game world, and a Sonic contemporary. (If you squint your eyes and smudge the dates a little.) Me and my brother sat down to talk about it, and he explained that despite how it may seem, nearly every single 3D Sonic game has been following the exact same 'canon' since Adventure, excluding the obvious veer-offs, like Sonic 06 and Boom. (Literally the most broken 3D games in the entire series.) So there's clearly a stigma against going out there and trying something wild and unconnected to the past from the dinosaurs over at Sega.

When I saw the title 'Sonic Origins', my mind immediately raced to the ancillary Sonic media that tried to add enough depth and character to the Sonic world for words like 'origin' to have any actual value. And so of course, my tortuous, self-sabotaging, mind flashed at 'Sonic Underground' for a brief damnable second (Miracle, why must you remind me of Sonia and Manic on a daily basis? What have I done to deserve this cruellest of penance?) and then to the SATAM tv show. It was a couple seconds of racing thought, but before sobriety struck me around the back of the head with a half-empty glass, I genuinely believed that SATAM's actual, genuine fully-fledged alternate Sonic setting, was finally getting it's video game debut. How utterly and embarrassingly stupid of me.

SATAM (Short for 'Saturday Morning Cartoon', in reference to when the series was slotted for in the day) proposed a functioning and comprehendible Sonic world that consisted of more than just malformed grass loops courses and floating platforms. This was the world of Mobius, and it had swathes of various anthropomorphic garden-animal residents, a least one sprawling and rugged industrial metropolis, an apparently functioning system of government (a Monarchy), and a genuine tyrannical threat in the most dastardly iteration of Eggman we've ever seen: black-sclera Robotnik, as I like to call him. This is the universe that proved fruitful enough to be adopted by the comics and rode for over a decade before it was all rebooted, and then the comic series itself was eventually rebooted. (You know what comics are like; confusing.) Yet has Sega ever taken advantage of this entire pre-made world lying on their doorstep to make a game with it? They considered it for a spell, but ultimately no. They never took the plunge.

Instead of getting our fictional tyrannical robot Sonic dystopia, we have to deal with the real life sonic dystopia of trying to parse another moronic 'content editions table', because yes: Sonic Origins already has one of those mind bending plans to try and flog some stupid plan to us. Looking at the chart we can see that there really are only two actual editions of the game here, Standard and Deluxe, but a plethora of DLC and Pre-order bonuses that share and contrast items here and there, just enough to make you want to throw the whole thing in the trash and just slap on the inexpensive, normal, copies of the games that most fans have already bought twice over. You've got the 'Start Dash pack', only available by pre-order, which comes with 100 bonus coins (I don't even know what a 'coin' is in a game where you collect 'rings') a Mirror mode and a letterbox background- that's literally it. The 'Premium fun' also has that background, a Hard mode, (ooh) Character animations and camera movement in the main menu as well as on 'music islands'! (whatever that is.) And the deluxe version comes with everything in the premium pack, except for the letterbox backgrounds, but with the additional tracks from other SEGA Megadrive titles that standard version buyers can pick up through the Classic music pack.

I've seen a lot of bad content charts before, but this one is absolutely abysmal. Let's be totally honest with ourselves, the only 'content' on this chart worthy of an entry are the Hard missions and the music pack, to snatch the rest of this stuff out of the game and sell it at a mark-up is frankly embarrassing. You expect me to go out and buy animations for characters in the background of the main menu? Are you high SEGA? A mirror mode? Which simply flips a stage on it's head? That's worth an extra DLC to you? HOW ABOUT A LETTERBOX MODE? " An aspect ratio change? Cough up the dough!" Typically you see other companies attach crappy DLC chunks like a skin here or there, or maybe even a tiny mission pack. Sega went around and pulled crap from the options menu to try and flog it on the side for a bonus, how utterly pathetic of them.

I'm usually the kind who just sits back, tuts his head, and says; "what's done is done, this is a buncha crap: but what'are'ya gonna do?" I have a different feeling with this one. This is insulting to the fanbase, this whole chart needs to be ripped up. Alternate menu animations and differing aspect ratios are fun additions to the core package, not substantial chunks of extra content to be sold for a premium; SEGA must think we're idiots to even consider a DLC strategy like this. What's next- are we getting a DLC pack to unlock Level Select? How about Debug mode? How much is it going to cost us to play as character's outside the base game they were included in? "Knuckles in Sonic 2? That'll be a cheeky fiver!" So let me just say kudos to SEGA for getting my high-flying hopes up with this announcement, crushing them with reality, and then utterly failing to meet my re-adjusted minimal expectations. Truly you are masters in the sacred art of disappointment.