Sonic Origins is coming on June 23. The game will feature three games from the Sega Genesis and one from the ill-fated Sega CD. It’ll also be remastered in full widescreen, have new animations and menus, and several new features such as music and animated title screens.
Unfortunately, the game is already becoming mired in controversy. Sega first announced that many of the new features will be locked behind a paywall and even published a confusing chart to explain what DLC will provide what features (which led to Trek to Yomi’s developers poking fun at the Sonic publisher). Then, Sega compounded its first mistake by announcing Sonic Origins would use Denuvo, a DRM software known for reducing performance on PC games.
Now Sega has just announced that every game in Sonic Origins--including Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD--will be delisted on all platforms on May 20.
There are, thankfully, two exceptions. Sonic The Hedgehog 1 and 2 will remain available on Sega Ages for the Nintendo Switch, and Sonic 2 will also remain part of Nintendo Switch Online’s Sega Genesis emulator on the Expansion Pack. But all other examples of these four games, most notably on Steam, will be delisted.
News of the mass delistings isn’t likely to go down well following both the Denuvo and DLC announcements. Sega seems to really be leaning hard on the Blue Blur to maximize its profits this year, which has admittedly been fairly light on releases for the publisher.
On the plus side, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 has become the highest-grossing video game movie of all time in the United States after recently surpassing Sonic 1. A domestic gross of $146 million is pretty good for any movie and is certainly setting Sonic 2 up to be one of the best video game movies of all time, although it'll still need a lot more ticket sales to take down the current top-ranked video game movie, Warcraft.