Sonic Mania Retrospective

You have to keep hitting that sweet spot while avoiding his attacks. Metal Sonic's new boss fight is a perfect example of what I'm going for here: you're always running, you have to keep hitting his opening at the right time and dodging a series of attacks on top of it all. It would be nice to put an end to the boring, repetitive, slow boss encounters that cling to Sonic like leeches. This is completely unrelated, but it stops auto scrolling. I'm not sure who exactly wanted a Sky Chase homage.   It was nice riding the tornado for the boss fight at the end, but joking around on a slow-moving plane at the beginning of Mirage Saloon was one of the biggest disappointments when I initially played, and to this day it's one of the highlights. low. of the entire game.

  What's really strange is that the encore mode has a newly created Act 1 for Mirage Saloon that, in my opinion, is wonderfully designed. He even makes use of Mighty's stomp ability. Why didn't they just replace Sky Chase with this? Encore mode is not much different from Mania mode, apart from the aesthetics and the change of location of some elements. The level designs are exactly the same, as are most of the secret locations. Simply swap which secrets are found in which locations.   Metal Sonic's entire boss fight was changed, so I don't see why they couldn't have overwritten Mirage Saloon Act 1 and changed the color palette a bit.

I mean, I'd be happy to play   Encore Mode, but sometimes I don't want to have to deal with character switching and would just like to do a clean match with one character.  It's just a big, strange missed opportunity. These things don't really fit with what I think is Sonic's strength, and even outside of that, Mania still skirts a lot of the conventions established by Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Instead of   14 special stages to complete, there are only seven.  I can even admit that the special stages offered are too easy, as were the first stages in Sonic 3. The problem with Sonic 3 is that the last seven were harder, and the payoff was much stronger in Hyper Sonic with its great running ability.

Mania only has the basic special form, and I suppose it's justified narratively because the super emeralds are damaged... but in a game that already cuts a lot of contextual corners, I think it could have overlooked that little detail to get seven more special stages difficult. and a hyper

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reward. I'm not going to overlook the fact that this game's story, its sense of context, is lacking in many areas. The Phantom Ruby is a mystical gem that can basically do anything, like transform Metal Sonic into a big monster for a radical boss fight, or transport Sonic and Tails somewhere so the next level can begin with little explanation. .

It gives level designers an excuse to choose which themes will go in which order, without having to worry about continuity. Whether the development team wanted it or not, they were working with a bunch of old levels from these four classic games at the behest of a higher order;   Without Phantom Ruby, it would be much more difficult to locate these varied classic levels.   You should keep in mind that Sonic 1 and 2 take place on different islands, Sonic 3 and Knuckles take place on a floating land mass, and Sonic CD takes place on a small planet. You have to think about where the four new zones will fit into this mess - the Phantom Ruby is a good way to achieve some sensible continuity.

Unfortunately, while I think this was the best choice, it doesn't change the reality that previous classic Sonic games have a much stronger context. Sonic 3's level transitions are praised to the heavens for a reason: they tied together an entire island of areas. You were chasing Eggman around a fully realized island, trying to stop him from launching the Death Egg. Mania doesn't have that luxury; While stage transitions exist, they cannot serve the same function as effectively. Whenever a transition doesn't make sense canonically, the Phantom Ruby simply teleports you. Green Hill is on a completely separate island, so you head to the Chemical Plant.

Stardust Speedway is on Little Planet, and Press Garden is supposed to be somewhere else, so you warp there. It makes sense, the Phantom Ruby can do anything, but it kind of misses the point of having stage transitions in the first place. Mania is at its best near the end in this regard. You take a submarine from Oil Ocean to Lava Reef, linking the two islands. You can see Little Planet in the background of Act 2 of Lava Reef and even fly towards it during the boss fight. The transition to Metallic Madness makes a lot more sense then and gives Little Planet more purpose in the story than before.  At the end of Metallic Madness, Eggman's plan hinted at at Stardust Speedway is fully revealed: he is building a giant robot, and the next area is both outside and inside said giant robot.

This is a nice build-up to the tension for the final encounter with Eggman and the Hard Boiled Heavies. Until Sonic flies to Mobius to join the resistance and all that, haha, yeah, let's not get into that.  The ending seems a bit half-baked because it needs to connect with Forces. The bad ending is really short, with Sonic just jumping into the air next to a title card after blowing up Little Planet, although the good ending is even weirder since Knuckles and Tails just... well, they're sitting there and Sonic is gone. . I commend the effort to bridge the gap between Mania and Forces, but it might call into question why classic Sonic was in Forces in the first place, hmmm.

I swear if the Phantom Ruby was included solely so it could bond with the Forces, *sigh* well, I won't even say it, you get the point. Nothing beats Doomsday Zone, a prophesied fight between Hyper Sonic and Eggman, his last attempt to escape with Master Emerald in the midst of her rapidly crumbling death egg. Mania is looking for something similar, but the buildup isn't as strong. It seems like the Hard Boiled Heavies have been working for Eggman the whole time, but suddenly, near the end, Eggman and Heavy King are fighting over the ghost ruby. There's a brief glimpse into Heavy King's true motives during Knuckles' game, where he kidnaps the Master Emerald, but that's it.

They don't even fight unless you're Sonic and can trigger the Super Boss fight. Encore mode shows that Heavy King is still out there and kicking... I guess, and it seems to take place after Forces. Although Sonic goes through the exact same levels and bosses again. There's not even a threadbare excuse like there was for Knuckles, just... do it again. Which is strange because Tyson Hesse's Sonic Mania Adventures miniseries shows Sonic returning from Forces, with his hand raised in a farewell pose. Should we assume that both are equal? Sure, you could say the animation is non-canonical, but the IDW comics continue the continuity of modern post-Forces games, and I don't see why this short animation would even imply that it takes place after Forces, if Encore mode already was set to do the same.

I know this seems a little nitpicky, but Sonic's stories have always been important to me, no matter how simple they are. As a series, it has shown an incredible willingness to provide a sense of context to each level that I appreciate and don't often find in other platformers. I see here the skeleton of a great story using asymmetrical conflict. Sonic against Eggman against the Hard Boiled Heavies. Maybe then Super Sonic's final boss would feel less like a formality and more like the climax of an ever-present story. It was, and still is, one of my favorite aspects of Sonic 3.

Despite this, I think Mania does the best job of encompassing exactly what it is. I mentioned earlier that it's a collage of old and new, and from a purely aesthetic point of view, I have a fondness for that approach. Exploring Sonic's Greatest Hits means you're performing Sonic's Greatest Hits. It is not as original as any of the classics that preceded it, rather it is a compilation of everything that made it great. The tracks you once loved are beautifully remastered by Tee Lopes, without straying too far from his original composition. Similarly, while the level design can often be different and some of the visual aspects are improved, there are small fragments of exact sections of levels from older games: the climb through the murky water in Chemical Plant, the poles of propeller in Flying Battery, the Twisted Tubes in Hydrocity: everything you remember, mixed with a lot of new things.

I'd be willing to bet that every return zone is better than it originally was, without a single exception. Sonic CD's stages are a little less chaotic and a little less cheap, while Sonic stages 1 through 3 feel bigger and better, taking inspiration from CD's greater strength and playing with new tricks that complement the levels better than crush blocks and how. The new areas have appropriate level motifs and appropriate music to accompany them - Studiopolis feels like it's straight out of the '90s. If you told me this was a scrapped area for Sonic 3, I'd believe you in a heartbeat.

The moment you hear that song finish, you know what's in store for you here. Really, when I think of it as just a throwback to a bygone era, a mash-up of Sonic's most iconic moments, it's easier to forget that it's not all that contextually sound or memorable on its own.   What Sonic

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has generated is a feeling of purity that Sonic hasn't enjoyed in a long time. Trust me, I've been with it for a long time and enjoyed the revival of the Boost era, but Mania feels a little different.  He seems to have come together on all fronts, he has been enjoyed by many people who don't even play Sonic.

I don't think I've seen anything like that in a long time. Mania has some problems, sure, but none of those problems rise to the level of the frustrations I have with some of the recent modern games. I love watching this little miniseries, getting the most out of these characters and their expressiveness. Seeing Sonic eager to face a powered-up Metal Sonic and Tails' next facepalm; watching Knuckles play the overprotective mother with the Master Emerald;  Watching them all hang out and eat chili dogs - this is what I've wanted about Sonic for a long time. You can see it in the games:   Mighty's various idle animations and victory poses are extremely confident, Sonic's are impatient, Ray's are just cute.

I want to see this gang go on more adventures, away from the cringeworthy lines and everything that passes for "drama" in 3D titles. This is the happiest I've been with Sonic in a long time and I think that alone deserves the highest praise I can offer.   So what does the future hold for our chubby blue friend? It's safe to say that Mania was a success on all fronts: a critical favorite, it sold over a million copies less than a year after its release, and that's not even counting the additional sales that were sure to accrue thanks to the release of Plus.  SEGA would be crazy not to make a sequel, so this is what I would personally like to see.

One: entrances to hidden areas. Mario has level changes, why doesn't Sonic? As I said in my Sonic 2 video, it would encourage exploration in a unique and surprising way. Two: work on those boss fights. I know it must be hard to get them to work with Sonic, but there has to be a way to get them to work more than 50 percent of the time. Three: let's break away from the classics and become something truly original. With this level design team, this composer, this art team, this programming legend: the key to making something even better is giving the project more creative freedom.

A lot of this is at SEGA's doorstep, and I hope someone there makes the right decision. Mania has already outsold the two most recent modern Sonic games, and while I'm not saying I want modern Sonic to die, I am saying it would be ridiculous to abandon the highest-rated, highest-grossing Sonic game in years. Maybe I'm being too optimistic here. The forces destroyed much of the goodwill I had built up over the years, but if Mania has shown me anything: there is hope for Sonic. God willing, there is hope.