The Sonic Origins game, which is a collection of four old Sonic the Hedgehog games. Since the collection has been out for fans have been looking at the tech side of Sonic Origins bit by bit.
Digital Foundry came out with a tech analysis for Sonic Origins in which they looked at it from a technical point of view.
Sonic Origins analysis highlights
- GENERAL
- Overall, it feels unfinished. Bugs and a high price tag make it hard to sell right now.
- The games in the collection are not emulated; instead, they are real ports that have been updated in the Retro Engine.
- The Hedgehog Engine runs the front end of the collection.
- DLC feels like it should have been part of the game.
- The drop dash, which is now in all games, isn’t as smooth as it was in Mania.
- Classic Mode still uses the Retro Engine versions of the games, so it doesn’t feel completely true to the original games.
- There are a lot of small problems that need to be fixed (Museum typos, Tails getting stuck, Blue Spheres music tempo not increasing, etc.)
- VIDEO
- All of the games are made with a bilinear filter instead of a sharp scale, which makes the pixels softer.
- When anti-aliasing is turned on in Origins’ settings, the picture is too blurry.
- Origins does not have the other video filters that came with Mania.
- PS5/XSX has a clear native 4K front end, while Switch is less clear.
- On the Switch, animated videos are not the right size.
- Classic Mode is 4:3 and Anniversary Mode is 16:9 widescreen.
- The Sonic CD menu doesn’t work or look like the menus for the other games in the collection.
- AUDIO
- The volume is too low overall, especially when the Switch is in portable mode.
- Compared to everything else, the animated videos on Sonic CD are too loud.
- Several 3&K songs were changed to versions that were similar to the prototype songs.
- Compared to the other games, the music in 3&K is not as clear.
- Extended loops of music that were in the 2011 version of Sonic CD are no longer there.
- Sonic CD’s voice samples are not present
- PERFORMANCE
- PS5 and XSX run at 60fps on the front end, while Switch runs at 30fps and feels less smooth.
- The games feel very responsive and have low input lag.
- Retro Engine got rid of slowdown in the games, so they now run at a smooth 60 frames per second.
- Compared to the Genesis and CD versions, the special stages are much smoother.
