Sonic Origins Plus Revealed, Amy Rose Finally Gets To Run

This has certainly been a bit of a Sonic week. Yesterday, Sega gave everyone a reason to revisit Sonic Frontiers by releasing the first of three free content updates. Today? The existence of Sonic Origins Plus has been officially confirmed, with a trailer featuring what they’ve added to last year’s celebration of Sonic the Hedgehog.

There’s no reason not to mention it right away – the big draw here is a playable Amy Rose. Featured heavily in the original Origins promotional materials, it felt a bit odd she wasn’t added to the roster across the board. Then again, it felt odd that Knuckles was excluded from being playable in Sonic CD. Clearly, someone heard the criticisms and went looking to address them.

What’s a Plus without some additional playable content? Not presented as a whole since Sonic Adventure DX, the 12 Game Gear titles will be added to Origins Plus. No, they haven’t been made from the ground up – they’re emulated, which is perfectly fine. Even if Triple Trouble is great, not every Sonic game needs to be recreated in the Retro Engine.

Just like Mania Plus, Origins Plus will be getting a physical release, complete with reversible cover art and a 20 page art book. Will the book contain anything that wasn’t shown digitally in the base versions of Origins? Heck, will the game feature any new behind the scenes materials in the museum? We’ll have to wait and see. The physical game will retail for $39.99 US Dollars – the same price as the original digital version.

If you held back on getting Origins last year, but don’t want to mess with physical media, the update will be available digitally. Sonic Origins Plus – which includes the original DLC from 2022 – will retail for $39.99. For those that already have the base version of Origins and want to experience all Plus has in store, it’ll cost $9.99. Granted, that does include the “Premium Fun” and “Classic Music” packs, so if you didn’t get those last year, the new content is technically only five dollars. But if you did get the Digital Deluxe last year, doesn’t look like you’ll be getting any sort of discount. Guess waiting does pay off, sometimes.

This is certainly a first step to making this collection better, but it does seem odd some games are still being excluded. No Sonic Spinball, 3D Blast, or even Sonic the Fighters. Those aren’t games that would need brand new emulators for modern systems, Genesis emulators already exist! Not to mention Fighters works just fine in Lost Judgement. There’s also been no word on bug patches, though I’d wager its safe to assume some of them will be addressed for this roll out. Either way, both the physical and digital version of Sonic Origins Plus will be available on June 23rd, 2023.