@RTB. Fascinating. At least the modding community for Sonic 3 AIR have brought out a decent Mighty and Ray, using sprites me and Xeric made as references.

@Dolphman: Not to mention that the game's launch trailer outright states "new playable characters" as a selling point, which isn't true because of Tails/Knuckles being in Sonic 1's mobile port and Tails being in CD's previous port (with Knuckles being suspiciously absent for CD). While there don't seem to be any references to Amy being playable, there's leftovers for Mighty and Ray for the Sonic 3 & Knuckles portion of the game... which may not seem like much since Sonic Mania was used as a source, but then there's the fact that the game actually tries to reference "3K_Special/Mighty.bin" and "3K_Special/Ray.bin" specifically, neither of which exist in the final game, so it seems very likely that just like using 1/2/Mania sprites in 3K, that Mighty and Ray were possibly considered to be the "new playable characters" in question based off of their Mania gameplay before being cut.

From what I've read, the development of this game has been a shambles. At one point, people thought it was vaporware. Then it was rushed to be ready by June 23. Different developers including Headcannon working on the ports, the final build ended up more buggier than intended plus the divisions of Sega were not co-operating as usual when it comes to the series. It left Stealth having a bit of a sour experience (reportedly the SoA side was mostly fine, just not the other parts). It was a GOOD thing that there was no physical release at launch otherwise it would have to be patched having less of an incentive to have one (some people don't even get physical releases until there is a GOTY/Complete Edition or a later print run with the patches on the disc/cartridge). Now what popular series got a recent re-release that was criticised for its issues and the later physical release didn't do much to improve, still having to be patched to this day?

Probably considering how popular Sonic is all things considering and how many times they have re-released the same game in different forms (Mania with a download code and statue, Mania Plus, regular Mania again [in some places, why?], bundled with Forces, repackaging Team Sonic Racing with an artbook), probably might get a release by around November at the earliest when Frontiers comes out.

At least on the bright side, the collection does have some new fixes such as Sonic's hanging sprites from Sonic 3 no longer using his Sonic 2 design.

The trick with Amy is that the way her abilities are established, they'd have to break the "all buttons are the same" rule. I'd be all for it; I'm just not sure Sega would be willing to do it.

And it also sucks that they didn't release a physical copy of the game. Hopefully it'll get a physical release later in the future, similar to how Sonic Mania didn't get a physical release until Plus came out.

It also sucks Amy isn't playable either. The way she appears a lot in the promotional materials and animated scenes really screams false advertising.
Anyway. I'll might take a hand on adding to this later on if I can get around to it.

Right? I don't understand why they didn't add him. That's basically my ONLY problem with the collection.

Welp, finally... it's here...

Just kinda wish knuckles was playable in sonic CD.

Thank you SO MUCH for doing this, people!