Well, yeah, but: What we mean, it's a REALLY different art. Like the background of act two, with everything completely different in the foreground too. For comparison, I consider EHZ a "remake" of GHZ. It's this level of difference that would be necessary - to use the general inspiration, the general idea of the level, but in a completely new way. It's not redesigning, but rebuilding.
Happy with the recycled zones personally. If they include awesome zones like Ice Cap and Hydrocity I'd be happy with seeing them again. Ultimately we need to just hope Mania 1 is super successful to guarantee Mania 2 which would almost certainly be all-new content.
This is why I'm excited. Also, so I'm not just posting one sentence ordeals, I wanted to comment on the dead horse of the cloud details and all the "unnecessary" crying on stupid-small details. Being a crybaby of a fanbase is what has got us Sonic Mania, and I really feel that being a crybaby on these small details ENSURES that we don't get a sloppy classic. We have MEGA high expectations for this title, and we have to keep it that way. These 2D classic titles cannot be taken lightly, otherwise we'll be getting another Sonic 4, and another RIP Sonic. Please, continue to bring up any small detail issues, so for Sonic Mania 2, attention to small details can be continued.
My point on the subject in all of its entirety. Once again, I'd never ever believe that all of the graphics are redrawn if not the super-close comparison. Can't say if that's good or bad objectively, but for me it's an effort wasted for nothin'.
Let's be real, there is a difference between justified criticism on topics/points that can make or break a game and then there's insignificant nitpicking about a few pixels that don't look right. Most folk won't give a damn about a few pixels that they won't even notice unless someone pointed it out. Off-pixels are not make or break. Would you seriously consider cancelling your pre-order of Sonic Mania because of a stupid cloud?
I actually would be completely fine either way. I'm just so excited for the game itself that it doesn't matter for me. Besides, I always love seeing how old things can be reimagined.
I took a crack at a Greg Martin US inspired Sonic Mania cover (well at least the line art anyway): I mean I'm not Greg Martin, but I thought this came out pretty well, well for me anyway. And this is supposed to be a Saturn game, so by 96 Sonic no longer had the mohawk (still had the assbrow though) but AoSTH Robotnik was all the rage. And in the spirit of American boxarts screwing up designs, I made a redesigned Hard Boiled Heavy :specialed:
Is it? It earned us the reputation of "worst fanbase in gaming," no doubt. I don't know that it had much to do with Mania's creation and approval, though.
I'll be honest while I'd prefer completely new stages, I've actually grown to the idea of some old, some new. It's like a full blown game version of Sonic Jam. The game probably wouldn't be nearly as long or packed with content had it gone with the original pitch. After seeing the SDCC event, I don't think Iizuka was try to hold it back through nostalgia. I think he figured it'd be easier and potentially more interesting to see what these guys could do with established concepts. And given what we've seen so far, they've done a masterful job.
That's a little alarming, but I hope it just had to do with location/height! We already have a curtain Super Mario style in Mirage Saloon at the act 2 boss. That base line for STP Act 2 gives me life and I'm looking forward to hearing the rest!
Nice work Dark Sonic! On the topic of a sequel/"Mania 2"--like everyone else of course I really hope that happens. But I hope both the "Mania" dev team and Sega go into it with the proper intentions. One of my fears is that if "Mania" ends up exceeding Sega's expectations that they might become a bit gung-ho on rushing out more sequels to it. I'm not going to get into the many other problems with the 3D "Sonic" games--and I know this isn't the proper thread to discuss that in the first place--but one of the issues with them that pertains to "Mania" is the sheer volume that have been made. There will have been 12 of them in a 19 year timespan by the end of this year. Compare that to 6 in a 21 year timespan for the mainline 3D "Mario" games. Clearly Nintendo has taken much more time with their 3D "Mario" games than Sega has with 3D "Sonic." I would hate for something similar to happen to 2D "Sonic" games, should they greenlight more. Regarding returning zones: yeah, I also wish more/all of the game was new zones, but like others pointed out I think it's more than acceptable for this first outing. First time trying to make a great proper classic game, Sega/Iizuka seemingly wanted to hedge their bets (if the game was made up of entirely new zones it'd have taken longer and required more resources), and so on and so forth. I think the "Mania" team did the best possible job with the returning zones they could, and I appreciate how different they made the Act 2s. No idea how many copies "Mania" would have to sell to be considered a *major* success by Sega, but if it is I really hope they give the "Mania" dev team the proper resources they need for a sequel. In that instance I think they should give them at least 2.5 to 3 years dev time, and make most/all of the folks that were contract-only full-time. More time, bigger budget (not *dramatically* more but definitely more), etc. I think "Mania" could easily be a brilliant stepping stone to an even greater sequel. Unlike what happened with "Mega Man 9" to "Mega Man 10" (pretty similar project in many ways) where it seemed like that dev team put most of their ideas/effort into "9" and then "10" while still very good felt more like residual material, I think there's obvious potential for the "Mania" dev team to make an even greater sequel. A "Mania 2" with 10-12 new zones and a small handful of returning zones would go over super well, I think. That way the game is nearly entirely new, with enough new zones to constitute an entire game by themselves. And the handful of returning zones would provide continuity with "Mania 1," allow the team to continue with a concept they're familiar with from the first game and can clearly execute well on, and give some more classic zones that didn't make the cut for the first one the wonderful overhauled treatment. Of course this is all just my humble opinion, and who knows what will happen. In any case, super glad these folks were able to make this first one. Looks so damn good. Can't wait!
I bought a Mayflash adapter to use a Genesis controller--any idea if this will work with at least the PC version?
This is false. While many parts of the backgrounds having actually been redone, the foregrounds have simply been smoothed out and edited while some parts are simply copied exactly as they were. Green Hill seems to be the worst offender, the cloud issue being one example. Flying Battery has foreground tiles again ripped straight from the game they're from. Chemical Plant has a lot of nice updates but there are examples there and hopefully the animations present in Sonic 2 will have been re-implemented, such as the bubbles that flowed through the pipes being static in all the footage I've seen so far. I wish this "art is completely redone" misconception would stop being thrown around when it's untrue for most of the tiles. That said, I don't have a problem with the Mania Team doing this, it saves time and effort that can be put to making a fun game. Just facts are facts.
Absolutely will work with Steam. You can make Steam see it as a an Xbox 360 controller or even a keyboard and mouse. Make sure you enable "generic gamepad support" in steam before using it. Upon plugging it in, it may ask you to define the controller so steam can work with it.
The Act 2s for the returning zones are new layouts though, which you're not addressing. There's also a hands-on preview I posted a while back, that mentioned Mania's Blue Spheres will have original layouts in addition to recycled layouts too. Wish people would give credit where credit is due on the reused material that isn't recycled verbatim, especially so since the decision to have old zones wasn't even made by the development team in the first place. -___- (The worst thing is that the game having returning zones isn't even bad in concept. If it was just a few old zones snuck in as hidden surprises --a la Hidden Palace in Sonic 2 Remastered-- that would had been perfectly fine. But nah, over half of the game has to be comprised of old zones and as part of the main campaign. To say nothing of the fact a fair amount of the old zones are ones we've seen remade before.) If/when these guys get another shot at another classic Sonic game, I hope they have significantly more creative control on what direction the project goes. For all of the praise Mania has gotten, nearly everyone's in agreement in saying the game should had been mostly new content.
You're right, most people will not care about the few pixels. However, most folks will care if something feels off because of failing to consider the details (Sonic 4's physics). While that's an exaggerated example, the point is that if the developers are looking into the details of the seemingly insignificant, they're looking into the smaller details more of the significant. When I was in basic training, the details of clipping strings from uniform and rolling up shirts seemed useless -- who cares? The point from those seemingly insignificant activities in training was to gain a habit and understanding to look at the small details into everything. 20 seemingly insignificant changes can turn into 1 significant change. We'll probably have to agree to disagree on this subject. I'm saying all of this to stand ground to support those who are critics. I honestly believe it's what has helped this franchise and the developers demand more of the quality it deserves. We need the critics. small and large -- Sonic Mania 2 only becomes better from it, not worse.
Nice catch on the Studiopolis background, I had noticed it was Act 2 but hadn't realised about the red curtains. I would assume that it's just different backgrounds based on the area within the Zone, similar to Green Hill's caves/mountains/totems. I really like the look of Act 2 from the very small snippets we have seen, glad it's been kept secret (for the most part) right up to release! Regarding release hour, I'm not sure about Steam but the Uk Xbox Store won't let you play until 16:00 GMT on the 15th. I don't know if this is across all platforms or not though.
While I agree that the content recycling looks to be Mania's biggest downside, I think you're playing it up a bit. From what we've seen, the first act of a reimagined zone is rather familiar, containing chunks of previously used layouts. However, a decent portion of the act is still new and original. In fact, the departure from familiarity observed in the second act has me reticent to even use the term "recycled." I completely understand the frustration with nostalgia milking, but I'd recommend keeping an open mind.
