We've seen Sonic the Hedgehog change and evolve tons over the years, and the next step in his journey — Sonic Frontiers — is bringing some of the franchise's biggest changes yet.

But before we look forward, we're looking back today with the launch of Sonic Origins.

And @ahremic on Twitter has found some leftover files in Origins, but these aren't for any of the classic Sonic games, but rather for Frontiers (Thanks, Sonic Stadium and BlueStarEXSF on ResetEra).

These shaders indicate that the menus in Origins were made using tools for Frontiers, which means there are references to potential aspects of the next 3D Sonic game.

Of course, these may no longer be part of the game now, so it's worth taking all of this with a pinch of salt, but there's some pretty interesting stuff to gleam here — including the return of everyone's favourite frog-chasing cat.

Some of these are pretty self-explanatory still — Chaos Emerald stages are coming back, and Grow Flowers may indicate a new mode or just be code for flowers respawning.

There are plenty of files here that refer to fishing, so that may well be coming to Frontiers.

We'll say this again, of course — these files were found in Sonic Origins, so they may no longer be relevant to Frontiers, but it's an indication of what has at least been considered for the next 3D entry in the Sonic series.

We'll have to wait and see if this turns out to be a good catch.

Sonic Origins is out today on Switch — find out what the critics thought of the game in our round up.

Sonic Frontiers is currently scheduled to be released later this year.

How can a datamine HINT at something instead of just actually reveal information.

Big the Cat, hmm I like the fishing games, but his obsession with Froggy is a little disturbing.

@AzzyC it's only a HINT/Rumour as it hasn't been officially confirmed, someone could have put that wording in there just so this article would be created and to cause hype and it actually controls the weather or something.

Sonic Adventure aged poorly, at the time, many people liked it, but now, it's a divisive game that many people claim that it wasn't even good back then and was surpassed, it was never good and people were just fooled.

@victordamazio I agree that it aged poorly, but not with saying people got fooled, as it was what was great at the time, were people fooled into thing mario 64 was good.

@Snatcher Super Mario 64: A game that while it was surpassed by others, it's still fun to play today, it aged well, and some people claim that there are still games that need to learn from it, even ones made by Nintendo.

GoldenEye 007: A game that many people claim it was good and revolutionary at the time, but it was surpassed by other FPS games and it's hard to come back to it without nostalgia.

Sonic Adventure: A game that not only people claim it aged poorly, but others claim it was never good to begin with and people overlooked all the problems that were bad game design even in 1999, all because it was the first truly 3D Sonic.

@victordamazio It’s not like I don’t agree with it being outdated, it’s just that people being fooled

Just because a group of people don’t like something

People said colors was good, that colors was sonic highest points, now everyone talks about the terrible platforming, were they fooled into thinking the game was good

Were people who hated sonic unleashed fooled into thinking it was bad

Were people fooled into thinking Mario 64s camera was good

Idk, I’m probably making no sense, I just don’t really understand

They might have their issues, but they're still more joyously fun to play at times than a lot of games

Didn't a leaker already confirm that there will be fishing mini-games in Sonic Frontiers

Though it would be nice to see the return of Big the Cat, I still don't see what benefit a fishing mini-game add to the game unless it is just another way to earn in-game currency or unlock achievements

I wouldn't mind seeing Big the Cat and Froggy again in a 3D Sonic game

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