Stealth is "very unhappy with the state of Sonic Origins"

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When a team of developers launch their game, it can be a happy moment, one of excitement and anticipation as all that effort and hard work have resulted in a completed product that fans can enjoy. That's true to a degree when it comes to the recently launched Sonic Origins, but there's been some problems as well. Stealth, who is renowned and beloved for his projects and work within the Sonic community, and who is part of the team that helped get Sonic 3 & Knuckles finally released on modern platforms, is not pleased with the end result. Those intricately familiar with Sonic 3 were quick to point out issues and flaws with dev Headcannon's port of the game into the Retro Engine, critisizing them for not having fixed physics and hitbox problems before the game's release.



However, Stealth took to Twitter to let out a long string of Tweets that better explain the situation in its entirety: according to him, Sonic Origins isn't "what [they] turned in" to SEGA, and a lot of bugs and problems that players are having were instead introduced on SEGA's end of things. Stealth mentions how he and Headcannon did all they could so that Origins could be as good as they could make it be, suffering development crunch and stress over getting everything done in time. Some things, he notes as being bugs that Headcannon had to overlook due to the high pressure development, but not all of them are his team's fault. Just ahead of Sonic Origins' launch, the team tried to push some fixes out, but those reportedly weren't allowed due to submission and approval rules, and delaying the game at all just wasn't an option for SEGA. Headcannon has also apparently offered to iron out the bugs and keep working on making Origins better post-release, but the team isn't sure if SEGA will allow that to happen.



Not all is negative, though--Stealth wanted to make sure to mention he's still on good terms with SEGA, and appreciated the opportunity and said that most of SEGA's staff was kind and respectful, just that he wanted to clear the air so fans better knew what went on behind closed doors.
 

matpower

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Have you played all the games in Sonic Origins?
I am not sure why you are hellbent on that. If you have played Sonic 1/2/CD/3&K before, you can easily pick up things like the Tails' AI begin completely broken, hitting collision issues or bypassing boundaries on (widescreen) Sonic 3 & Knuckles, or the audio being all muffled.
Those issues are real and saying people are jumping on a bandwagon is silly, they are not minor bugs, they do affect the gameplay experience.

That’s nice. In the real world most companies have social media policies precisely for this reason, and it would be grounds for immediate termination if Stealth was a SEGA employee rather than an independent contractor. There’s such a thing as being “too honest” - you don’t throw people under the bus for the online mob to feast on, you wait until the situation develops further. He’s made it more difficult for the PR team to mop up the issue, and that costs money. The whole thing could’ve been nipped in the bud in a week’s time via patches without the drama, now the drama stays online forever. It will be reflected in Headcannon’s future contracts going forward, it’s an important factor. He’s doing himself damage by not being able to keep his cool, it’s bad for business, not just for SEGA but more so for himself.
I think he is more defending himself and his studio than just throwing SEGA under the bus. Either way it would have reflected badly for him. He could have stayed silent, with a chance of SEGA not picking up and fixing bugs, tainting his studio's work or did what he did now, which can sour future contracts.
 

UltraHurricane

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I am not sure why you are hellbent on that. If you have played Sonic 1/2/CD/3&K before, you can easily pick up things like the Tails' AI begin completely broken, hitting collision issues or bypassing boundaries on (widescreen) Sonic 3 & Knuckles, or the audio being all muffled.
Those issues are real and saying people are jumping on a bandwagon is silly, they are not minor bugs, they do affect the gameplay experience.


I think he is more defending himself and his studio than just throwing SEGA under the bus. Either way it would have reflected badly for him. He could have stayed silent, with a chance of SEGA not picking up and fixing bugs, tainting his studio's work or did what he did now, which can sour future contracts.
i fully agree, it's a lose-lose situation either way, and staying silent while letting SEGA cultivate an environment to release rushed, medicore games doesn't help anyone, cause why WOULD anyone work with them at this point?
 

Foxi4

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I think he is more defending himself and his studio than just throwing SEGA under the bus. Either way it would have reflected badly for him. He could have stayed silent, with a chance of SEGA not picking up and fixing bugs, tainting his studio's work or did what he did now, which can sour future contracts.
Or he could just wait to see what happens and, more likely than not, be contacted in regards to patching the game, as is the industry standard. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see games be released fully baked again, but that’ll never come back. Even industry veterans like Koji Igarashi have their hiccups - Bloodstained was a mess upon release, especially on the Switch, and that’s another title that was made in large part by contractors. It got fixed, and it’s a classic - one of the best “Castlevania” games out there without actually being called “Castlevania”.
 

Nakamichi

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will these issues/bugs get fixed?

i played a few levels of Sonic 1 on the origins collection and it was fun. Would love it if they fixed it.
 

Jonna

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I am not sure why you are hellbent on that. If you have played Sonic 1/2/CD/3&K before, you can easily pick up things like the Tails' AI begin completely broken, hitting collision issues or bypassing boundaries on (widescreen) Sonic 3 & Knuckles, or the audio being all muffled.
Those issues are real and saying people are jumping on a bandwagon is silly, they are not minor bugs, they do affect the gameplay experience.
No one has answered my question yet. 3 different people have replied now and have not addressed my point.
 

TheZander

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No one has answered my question yet. 3 different people have replied now and have not addressed my point.
I just went through, youre saying people are biased against this game and under the mob mentality that it is a bug riddled mess with seemingly little evidence that they themselves have encountered the horrible bugs. And youre saying this from the perspective of someone who has played through most the game with little to no hindrance due to glitches or whatever. And having experienced that first hand you are befuddled at all the negativity this is receiving.

i also have no experience playing this but I completely believe you when you say there are little no gltiches mainly because these games came out 100 years ago and have no reason on this earth no run perfectly fine remastered. it does not make any sense that these games could get screwed up to not being playable. How? what could stealth of done to not be able to manage this. Im startting to think all this dude did was work on the cut scene crap
 

matpower

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Or he could just wait to see what happens and, more likely than not, be contacted in regards to patching the game, as is the industry standard. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see games be released fully baked again, but that’ll never come back. Even industry veterans like Koji Igarashi have their hiccups - Bloodstained was a mess upon release, especially on the Switch, and that’s another title that was made in large part by contractors. It got fixed, and it’s a classic - one of the best “Castlevania” games out there without actually being called “Castlevania”.
He might have been a little ahead of himself, he did have a feeling SEGA wouldn't ask him to fix the games which could've been unfounded. Given the previous track record (Colors Ultimate) where SEGA threw the contractor under the bus, I guess that was his rationale.
I am hopeful the game will be fixed down the road, but for now it isn't the definitive experience it should be.
No one has answered my question yet. 3 different people have replied now and have not addressed my point.
Well, I can tell you I played the game and noticed the bad audio, wonky Tails and the obvious mislabeled stuff under the Museum. I haven't had any major collision issues (I did hit some with crushing, but those were present in the previous ports and even Mania).

That said, the game is an easy 6.5 or 7, the presentation needs some fixes but the games are still fun and you can play them start-to-finish (if with some minor wonkyness). If they polish it a bit more, it could easily be a 8 or 9.
i also have no experience playing this but I completely believe you when you say there are little no gltiches mainly because these games came out 100 years ago and have no reason on this earth no run perfectly fine remastered. it does not make any sense that these games could get screwed up to not being playable. How? what could stealth of done to not be able to manage this. Im startting to think all this dude did was work on the cut scene crap
The games might be old, but they aren't emulated nor are using the original source code. Every game has been reimplemented into Taxman's Retro Engine (which mostly matches the original behavior, but you can pick some differences here and there), so there is room for bugs and mistakes.

Taxman and Stealth ported Sonic CD in 2011 and later, 1 and 2 in 2013 for mobile devices. Those are pretty solid and bug free. For Origins, SEGA took that work and customized it in house without Stealth's help, while he was tasked to delivering Sonic 3&K to SEGA, which would again do more in house work without him for integration.
The cutscenes were done by Tyson Hesse, and integrated by SEGA in-house.

The majority of the issues seem to be related to the integration work, besides propping up Hedgehog Engine for the UI and islands, they had to get their hands dirty on a codebase they didn't know well (Retro Engine).
 

pokota

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yeah but then the general public would have to admit their wrongdoings, which isn't going to happen any time soon
 

PacBunnyXV07

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Strange coming from big S.
If it weren't for both nostalgia whales and toxic youngsters communities, maybe we could have new 2D games based on this new 2D engine. Gamindustri depends more on our behaviour than we could ever admit.
How bout a 2D Sonic game made with the VanillaWare engine?
 

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