Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine.ĭespite its short length, Sonic Mania has a lot of replayability. Sometimes the boss encounters can be overly long and frustrating but there is a good variety of them with one boss encounter being a literal match of Dr. Still present are the instant kills, and the dreaded water levels with drowning music and all. Developer Headcannon has managed to make some really great, fast Sonic stages that actually let the player maintain some control while still going fast. The levels themselves are both a remix of old, popular levels and entirely new ones, some of which are based on prototype levels that were never finished. With 12 zones, each divided into 2 acts a piece, Sonic Mania can be completed in a long-afternoon. The game will save your progress between chapters unless you choose to play the classic “no save” route which allows only for limited continues and is dependent on extra lives accrued through gameplay. You can also play as Sonic and Tails as a duo with the AI taking over for Tails when there isn’t a player 2 available. Each has their own unique abilities- Sonic can drop dash, Tails can fly for short bursts and Knuckles can climb walls and glide. You can choose to play as Sonic the eponymous hedgehog, Tails the two-tailed fox, or Knuckles, the spike-fisted echidna. Taking place place after the events of 1994’s Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Mania combines many elements from the Sonic series until that point. The soundtrack is its own 90’s nostalgia fueled awesome. Fans of classic Sonic know that the story is mostly on the side, but Sonic Mania provides great homage to Sonic CD, especially with its hand-drawn animated cutscenes. Eggman has created an elite group of robots styled after himself called the Hard-Boiled Heavies, led by the Heavy King. Sonic Mania has Sonic and company again facing off against Doctor Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik and his mechanized creations. These gripes are faithfully recreated in Sonic Mania – but with some fast, surprisingly fun levels and some new twists, Sonic Mania was so masterfully created I can’t help but admire it, and despite frustrations, even enjoy it. These do lend to the replaying of levels, and finding the optimum routes through them – but I have so little fun on my first run through, I often don’t want to go back and explore. Lose all of your rings to unseen hazards, or worse: get instantly killed by a platform floating from just off screen. When he’s going really fast, your player agency is often taken away and you watch as Sonic zips through tubes and through hoops – it looks neat, but is it fun? Well, it can be, but it can also be frustrating in a way that doesn’t feel fair. Sonic has also been stuck right in the middle of the screen, so when he’s going fast you don’t have time to react properly to what’s in front of him. Sure, he’s quick, but he isn’t agile – Sonic starts off at a slow pace like he’s stuck in molasses, and his momentum makes him feel like he’s always on ice. I’m not going to get too far into that discussion, but I will admit that I personally have a bias towards not liking Sonic. Some schools of thought even argue that the Sonic games were never good – we were just dumb kids who didn’t know any better. It got so bad that even Sega admitted there was a problem. It is notorious how bad most recent Sonic games have been with few exceptions. Sonic Mania was described by Sonic Team head and longtime series producer Takashi Iizuka as being a passion project for all of the fans of the early Sonic games, and a hopefully a reemergence in quality that the Sonic series sorely needs. But that’s no surprise, since director Christian “Taxman” Whitehead has been using the Retro Engine to bring classic Sonic games to modern devices now for nearing a decade. It’s so faithfully recreated that it was hard not to be hit hard by nostalgia from the very first chiming of the word “Sega.” Developers Pagoda West Games and Headcannon really captured that blue-lightning in a bottle with Sonic Mania. Game, Games & Tech, Review Photo courtesy of Sega
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