TouchArcade has referred to the remasters of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as 'spectacular'.

Reviewers praised the Retro Engine for its performance, which has been called superior to simply emulating the original games.

In January 2021, an open-source decompilation of the Retro Engine versions of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 were released, allowing the games to run natively on PC platforms. In conjunction with this, it was announced that the Star Engine had been turned into a separate engine with a focus on 3D rendering, with the Retro Engine being brought back. In October 2021, Evening Star announced development was underway for a game using the Star Engine. In reference to the studio name, the Retro Engine initially had been renamed the Star Engine. In 2019, Whitehead, in collaboration with other members behind Sonic Mania, founded a new studio called Evening Star. Whitehead, Thomley, and PagodaWest Games later collaborated on an original Sonic game using the Retro Engine called Sonic Mania, which released August 2017. Thomley speculated that this was due to legal problems regarding the music. Despite fan support, Sega did not approve of the project. In 2014, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the release of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Whitehead and Thomley produced a proof-of-concept showing the game using the engine on an iPhone. Whitehead, along with fellow Sonic scene member Simon 'Stealth' Thomley, were later commissioned to create remakes of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 using the engine, released for mobile platforms in 2013. Sega later officially released the port in 2011 for various platforms, such as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Microsoft Windows, iOS and Android. As a response, Whitehead produced a proof-of-concept video showing Sega's 1993 Sega CD game Sonic CD running on an iPhone. In 2009, Sega asked fans for ideas on a game to port to iOS. Retro Sonic later merged with two other Sonic fangames, Sonic XG and Sonic Nexus, to form Retro Sonic Nexus. The game became notable after its release for its accuracy to the games, despite not being a ROM hack or modification to an existing Sonic game. History Īustralian programmer Christian Whitehead created the Retro Engine for use with a 2007 fangame entitled Retro Sonic, which is based upon the original Sonic games released for the Sega Genesis. For this reason, the engine focuses more on raster graphics and palette manipulation, although it does feature support for widescreen graphics and online functionality. Unlike most modern game engines, the Retro Engine is primarily tailored for creating two-dimensional games like those released for 32-bit or below-era consoles, such as the Sega Saturn, Sega Genesis or the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

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