There is now a Sonic Mania studio Sonic Origins connection - Headcannon has confirmed their involvement with Origins.
www.destructoid.com
They have their work cut out for them if they wanna match up to the features of
Sonic 3C:
https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_3_Complete
This is the only version of Sonic 3+K I play now. I threw this version on my Genesis Mini. I use it with emulators on PC and other consoles. If you have an Everdrive or another similar flash cart, you can run this version on the real hardware. So many nice features and options, really customizable, and I love the improved quality-of-life sh1t, like being able to de-power from Super/Hyper form, a safety so you don't accidentally turn Super/Hyper, not having to use invincibility music for Super/Hyper, and more. It's interesting to see Flying Battery Zone with its original pre-release background, or the original Zone order where FBZ came after Carnival Night Zone (or was it before, I forget). You can choose to use the miniboss music from either Sonic 3 or Sonic & Knuckles. There's just a ton of options to really customize the Sonic 3+K experience.
As for
Sonic CD, so far the best version is the Christian Whitehead version, which is the version found on Steam, 7th-gen consoles, and Android. I wonder which version is in this new
Origins collection. CW also did a version of Sonic 1 and 2 that was on mobile OSes only, but there's also the
Sega Ages versions of Sonic 1 and 2 for current platforms like Switch. I wonder which versions they chose for this new collection.
It would have been cool if
Sonic Advance 1 and
2 were also included. Both were very good
Sonic games for the GBA.
Sonic Mania was a pretty good game (I have it on Steam and Switch), so I'm interested to see how that team's version of
Sonic 3+K for this collection will turn out. They come from the Sonic fan community (as did Christian Whitehead, who was also a lead developer on
Sonic Mania), so they should know about
Sonic 3C. I hope they incorporate at least some of those features in their remaster. As far as I am concerned,
Sonic 3C is the definitive version of the game.
I wonder if I will buy
Sonic Origins. I seem to have a problem where I keep buying classic Sonic games, even though I own them for the original hardware, and can play them on emulators. I keep buying collections as well as individually-sold classic
Sonic games. I got them on multiple systems. For example, I own Sonic CD on Sega CD (well technically it's my brother's, but I made a copy of the disc), Steam, Gamecube, X360, PS3, and Android. I
think that's all of them. There's been previous collections like
Sonic Jam on Saturn,
Sonic Mega Collection+ on PS2,
Sonic Gems Collection on Gamecube, and
Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I own all of those too. So yeah, I have a problem. The price of
Sonic Origins is kinda steep though.