To make matters worse, I always have to start from Green Hill Zone every time I turn the game on. I was having a hard time seeing what I was doing through the static lines flickering down my TV screen (such is the consequence of plugging the ancient Genesis into my modern TV).

When I was attempting to play through Sonic 1 in college nearly a decade ago, my experience was terrible. That neat feature is something more retro games should adopt if they’re ever re-released and adapted to modern current-gen consoles. Most modern games have the option to play through them without getting a single “Game Over” after dying so many times, such as Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, but Anniversary Mode made my experience of playing the classic Sonic games a lot easier than playing them on the Genesis.

It’s a mode where you don’t lose any lives you can collect coins to redo the special stages as many times as you want to so you could get the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic Mania made me appreciate the classic Sonic games despite it being a compilation of the best levels from that era, but the newly released Sonic Origins collection (which features the original Sonic Sega Genesis trilogy and Sonic CD) has given me a newfound appreciation for them thanks to a gameplay mode called Anniversary Mode.

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