Two things about those clouds: 1: The review copy may not necessarily be the final copy 2: Being an absolute perfectionist about this kinda stuff would probably delay the game further. And most people won't even begin to notice it.
Yes, thank you, this is what I was referring too. One model is polygon based, another sprite based. Would have preferred one or the other for both. Variety I guess!
Yes, Blue Spheres would blend in much better if it was visually revamped,but apparently it just got a few gradients, not exciting at all. Pardon my lack of excitement at the bonus stage, it's just that not only it looks bland and unoriginal, but the original concept was already boring to begin with.
I don't think that most people are super-fans. Don't get me wrong graphical detal improvements and fixes for those little flaws are a great thing, but I think they're relatively low on the list of priorities.
Hands-on preview of a Mania demo featuring the bonus stages, special stages, and time-attack mode by GameCrate. - Bonus Stages are activated by the player having at least 25 rings, and are randomly selected. - Bonus Stages will have new layouts, as well as layouts reused from Sonic 3 & Knuckles. - Completion of the Bonus Stages by getting all of the spheres results in the player earning a Silver Medallion. - Completion of the Bonus Stages by getting all of the spheres and all of the rings results in the player earning a Gold Medallion. (They don't know what the medallions do.) - You can fall off the track in the Special Stages (a la Chaotix) and hitting obstacles slows down your speed. - In order to earn the Chaos Emerald, you just need to catch up to the UFO (you don't need to attack it as in Sonic CD). - Time Attack allows players to play through individual acts. Levels during this mode have no checkpoints, no bosses, and the clock acting as a timer. - Completing Acts in Time Attack mode results in the game logs and saves your times. You can compare your record to your personal best times, or upload your record to an online leaderboard. - Restarting levels during Time Attack mode is done by the player pressing and holding a single button (not specified which). - Knuckles is said by the developers to have a slightly lower jump height than Sonic and Tails as in Sonic 3&K (though I assume we may know this already). EDIT: GameStop Italy recently posted a placeholder listing for a physical release for Mania on Switch. Hopefully this isn't an error and is a sign of things to come?
... Why is this not yet a thing. EDIT: I misread, I thought you were talking about Blue Sphere as a mobile game. Why is Blue Sphere not yet a mobile game.
I'm very happy to see Blue Spheres making a return! Kind of ironic that lately I've been working on a S3K hack that changes the special stage layouts. :v: Though I find it odd that I'm not getting any tracking info yet, and one of my friends in real life who pre ordered the collector's edition as well says he's getting his collectors edition two days after mania is released. I've seen in groups on Facebook of people posting their tracking info, from Amazon, the same place that I pre ordered mine and on their account it said shipping between Aug 17th and 19th. I pre ordered it back in March after needing to cancel the pre order I made when we first were able to. Is anyone here getting their tracking information yet? :v: I might just be paranoid, I really want my package to arrive at my doorstep the day Mania is released rather than days later, since I had issues pre ordering Generations back when it was released. (I didn't get my copy until two days after the game was released... >_>)
Thanks for extensive run-down Yeow. Very interesting. Also wonder if a physical release may be happening. I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
Wait... So Special Stages are like the ones in Heroes/Rush Adventure/Generations 3DS, except with a looping stage and ring timer instead of a definite end, no boost, and the ability to drift and Bonus Stages are Blue Sphere stages? That's amazing. I'm hyped all over again!
You're not missing out on too much. I have a BBA (purchased directly from SOA's online store during the ~2 hours before they sold out in 2001) and although build uploads are quick, streaming files from PC over dc-load is still very slow. I'm talking 30 seconds black screen for something that's instantaneous on GDEmu. The pre-order trailer was also 30fps, which was disappointing. The original trailer and earlier videos were 60, so I really hope the launch trainer is correct because that's the one everyone's going to pass around when the game comes out.
All of them are linear "chase the target" styled stages. The stage ends as soon as the player catches up to the target or time runs out. The player must collect a large quantity of a specific item in order to speed up. That's not "completely different", but I'm not pretending as if they're exactly the same as the ones that came before. I also just realized that there are branching paths in them, so that's another thing I'm excited about. Late edit: A typo was bugging the hell out of me.
Looking at the Bonus Stage Blue Sphere stuff, I gotta say, I do agree Knuckles looks weird. I can see the graphical enhancements by way of a broader palette for the characters and more detail hands down, but the shininess of the original to try to vary up the colors was significantly reduced, which both makes them stick out in color but also can be weird to folks with 20+ years of S3&K on their brain. Not the most fair comparison given the Youtube compression problem, plus the higher number of animation frames not making it exact either
So ever since I was a kid, I always thought Knuckles' head looked flat in Blue Spheres because of the lighting. Mania's sprites give it a more round shape and look a ton better in my book for it.
