Retro Gamer goes behind the scenes of Sonic Origins

The latest issue of Retro Gamer has exclusive insight into Sonic Origins, Sega’s incoming Sonic compilation. Simon ‘Stealth’ Thomley is heavily involved with the project and a huge Sonic fan, having worked on Sonic Mania alongside Christian Whitehead.

He’s particularly happy about the return of Sonic 3 & Knuckles because he’d originally hoped to work on it before, but it never came to fruition. “There were a lot of planned enhancements at the time a Sonic 3 & Knuckles remake was first pitched, and I’m happy to say that many of them have made it into Origins along with a few fresh ideas from the new team,” he tells us.

Simon also explains how the original Sonic games were first updated for iOS and other systems and how the Retro Engine has constantly evolved to handle each new Sonic project he and Christian (who isn’t involved with Sonic Origins) have worked on. “When we were asked to remake Sonic 3 & Knuckles, we had conversations with Sega that led to the conclusion that the best move for the collection would be to use Retro Engine once again for consistency. I discussed this with Christian [Whitehead] as well, which ultimately led to the creation of ‘Retro Engine v5 Ultimate’.

The Sonic celebrations continue with a fantastic 32-page mini mag which highlights Sonic’s greatest moments, from meeting Shadow for the first time, to being temporarily rescued by Dr Robotnik in Sonic The Hedgehog 2 on Game Gear. How many do you remember?

Other highlights of issue 235 include a look at the evolution of Driver, Ubisoft’s popular open-world crime game, the story of how E3 came to be and how Net Fighter became the world’s first online-only fighting game. We also go behind the scenes of the quirky platformer Glover, reveal what happened when Microsphere went Back To Skool, and discover if Rogue Legacy 2 is a worthy sequel.