Origins was conceived following the release of the 2020 Sonic film; due to the influx of new fans, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka wanted to make the older Sonic games available on modern hardware. It was primarily developed at Sega, though Simon Thomley, who worked on Sonic Mania (2017), developed the remaster of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. A portion of the Sonic 3 soundtrack was replaced with rearrangements by Jun Senoue, following speculation of licensing problems arising from Michael Jackson's involvement with Sonic 3.