Headcannon, one of the developers of the best Sonic game in recent years(opens in new tab), was involved with the Sonic Origins collection, which includes remastered versions of Sonic The Hedgehog 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Unfortunately, since the game release last week, there has been a flood of videos showing the game bugs, glitches, and general messiness.
User reviews clearly reflect the reception, though there is some overlap in the negative sentiment toward the game's micro transactions (which to be fair do lock some weird stuff behind a paywall).
'New game has bugs,' isn't the most exciting story, but it's interesting that this has happened with what must be some of the most frequently re-released games ever created. After all these years, you'd think Sonic Team would have a handle on things.
Or perhaps not. The Sonic 3 & Knuckles portion of Origins was developed by Simon 'Stealth' Thomley, founder of Headcannon and a programmer on Sonic Mania. There have been a number of issues with this, including level-skipping glitches, and Thomley took to social media to express his own dissatisfaction with the conditions under which Sonic Origins was developed.
"This is frustrating," Thomley writes. "I won't lie and say there weren't problems with what we gave Sega, but what's in Origins isn't what we turned in. Integration introduced some bizarre bugs that conventional logic would lead one to believe were our fault—many of them aren't."
Thomley continued that "we knew going into this would be a huge waste of time and we worked ourselves into the field to make it happen so that it could be built and released as well."
This is frustrating. I won't lie and say that there weren't issues in what we gave to Sega, but what is in Origins is also not what we turned in. Integration introduced some wild bugs that conventional logic would have one believe were our responsibility- a lot of them aren't.
— Stealth (@HCStealth) June 24, 2022
He goes on to say that Headcannon submitted build contained "Some actual errors, some oversight, some rush jobs, and some things we noticed but weren't allowed to correct near the end. It's far from perfect, and some of the flaws are our own. It's difficult."
However, Thomley claims Sega introduced additional bugs that were not present in Headcannon's build and refused to allow Headcannon to make "major fixes" as the game neared release. It wishes to work on resolving the issues raised by users, but is unsure whether it will be able to do so.
"Everyone of us is extremely dissatisfied with the state of Origins and even the Sonic 3 component," Thomley writes. "We weren't thrilled with its pre-submission state either, but a lot was out of our hands."
The developer goes on to say that discussing such issues in public can be "considered 'unprofessional,' and can hurt our relationship with Sega, meaning no Origins updates, and no further 2D pixel Sonic games from us [but] there's just too much scrutiny over things that are and aren't related to us, and I don't want to sit back in silence while people ask why and how things happened to a product they put so much hope and money into."
The thread concludes with a reiteration of Headcannon's desire to resolve the issues with that game, as well as its commitment to Sonic. Thomley also emphasises how difficult it is to develop a game, and that he is "not fighting with Sega, and no, I have not cut off Sega [...] I'm willing to do more work under the right conditions; whether they want to work with me again is an entirely separate matter."
I'd seen a few of these Sonic Origins bugs floating around over the weekend and was more amused than bothered by them. However, this is clearly a fanbase with high expectations, and a re-release package should have been easily capable of meeting them.
As for Headcannon and Sega, as Thomley points out, calling out Sega is probably not the wisest move if you ever want to work on Sonic games again. But then, he and others are clearly big fans of these projects, which is why they work so hard on them. That's totally cool, and it's arguably why Sonic Mania was as good as it was. But you have to wonder if it also makes molehills appear to be mountains at times.
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