Sonic Mania devs helped SEGA with Sonic Origins Plus

No one has treated Sonic the Hedgehog worse than SEGA, but that might be changing with the release of Sonic Origins Plus.

Following the game’s original broken release last year, the Japanese studio is getting some precious help from the best Sonic devs around: Headcannon.

In a series of tweets, Headcannon, the studio responsible for the delicious slice of 16-bit nostalgia that was Sonic Mania, revealed their involvement in Sonic Origins Plus. The studio explained that they helped put Amy back in the spotlight by making her a playable character, as well as other additions.

Along with Sonic's on-and-off love interest - we all know he rather fancies human princesses - Knuckles also joins the fray. The echidna will be a playable character in Sonic CD as well. Headcannon also mentioned a series of enhancements and fixes, but did not give further details at this time.

In a previous Twitter thread, Headcannon had clarified that they did not work on Origins itself, but they were only tasked to develop a Retro Engine version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Head of the studio, Christian Whitehead, mentioned how we has happy to be "represented" in the project, but the main work was handled by an internal team at Sega.

The reveal of Headcannon being officially at work on Origins has had players buzzing on Twitter. Several users are begging the indie studio to step in and help Sega in improving the ports.

Sonic Origins’ initial release featured infamously poor optimization of its multiple Game Gear ports. Issues such as the aspect ratio being fixed at "pixel perfect", rather than 4:3, showed a clear lack of polish for the series’ celebration. Several fans also complained about the blurriness of the Sonic 3 port and the music not matching the quality of the other games. Can Headcannon step in and save the day again? We will have to wait and see.