Sonic Origins Remasters Four Sega Classics That Started It All

Good news for fans of retro games — Sonic the Hedgehog is back, and it's back in style. Sega has just announced the upcoming release of Sonic Origins, a game that contains four remastered games in one package: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Set to arrive on a wide array of platforms starting June 23, 2022, Sonic Origins delivers all of the nostalgia in a neatly refreshed singular title complete with some new additions to make the comeback even sweeter. June 23 is a strategic date in the franchise, as the first game was released on June 23, 1991. This makes Sonic Origins a present for the protagonist's 31st birthday.

SEGA's own Sonic the Hedgehog announced the return in a fun and colorful YouTube video as well as on Twitter. All the information about the upcoming game can also be found on the official website. Whether you've played the original Sonics yourself or you've never even heard of them, it's an opinion shared by many that these games are real classics, and many older gamers have a lot of nostalgia for the fierce little hedgehog and his friends. That would explain why a second Sonic movie was released earlier this year.

The game will be available on all kinds of consoles as well as the PC, including PlayStation 5 and 4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, Steam, the Epic Games Store, and lastly, Nintendo Switch — although that one is marked with a "coming soon." SEGA has already re-released older Sonic games on some platforms, such as the classic Sonic the Hedgehog on the Nintendo Switch, but the new bundle comes with four different titles, extra animations, and both Classic and Anniversary modes. Pre-orders are already open, and ordering early gets you access to some bonus content.

The nostalgia comes at a price

Although re-releasing games that are decades old seems fairly straightforward (assuming that it's even possible to port them to a newer platform), Sonic the Hedgehog manages to have a curiously fragmented list of pre-order options. Buying the Standard edition will only grant you access to the base game, but if you choose to pre-order, you'll also unlock 100 bonus coins (in-game currency), Mirror Mode, and a custom Letterbox Background. A so-called "free" DLC also comes with the Deluxe Edition.

The Deluxe Edition grants the user the most perks of all, unlocking everything that the DLC doesn't, including hard missions, extra character animations, camera controls over the main menu, and additional music tracks. There's also a Premium Fun Pack that contains some extra goodies, and a Classical Music Pack that's just the base game with additional music tracks. It's admittedly a bit confusing, so in short — if you want it all, you'll need the Digital Deluxe Edition.

Although the official pricing of the games is not yet up on the Sonic the Hedgehog website, SEGA's partners (such as Xbox) reveal that the base edition costs $40 and the Deluxe version costs $45. Whether that's a reasonable price to pay or not is up to each customer to decide, but nostalgia is a powerful force, and coming back to the games we once loved can be worth a whole lot — so Sonic Origins just might be a huge success despite the strange way the company chose to break up the different versions. By the way, have you seen this Xbox homage to Sonic? It's a good reminder that it could always be worse.