It wasn't until my second play through that it fully dawned on me that the giant spherical thing in the upper background of Lava Reef Zone Act 2 was Little Planet. Also, I don't think this has been mentioned, but if you have a bubble shield you can stand on the dark blue bubbling liquid in Chemical Plant Zone Act 2. Unfortunately there's not much of the stuff, so you can't really take advantage of it too much. Some debug oddities: In Green Hill Zone the unused checkered ball can be placed, it obeys the game's physics and can destroy robots. You can also place a Splats robot. In Chemical Plant Zone as you cycle through the sprites there are two boosters. If you place the second booster, it's actually a bounce pad. There's also an unused (?) four legged mosquito-like robot that cannot be placed. How are you supposed to break the one at the beginning of Act 1? Massive backtracking?
I'm not so bothered by zone transitions as I am by the nonexistent narrative. Not just cutscenes, there are no dramatic momements in gameplay that the plot builds up to. It starts out well, with the game establishing that the HBH have gone haywire and Eggman is clearly surprised they have gone rogue with the Green Hill ending cutscene. It also effectively communicates that the jewel can change time/space with the two opening cutscenes. But after then nothing really happens. You fight the HBH but it doesn't have any narrative implications whatsoever despite being cool fights. The Heavy King trying to steal the Master Emerald is pretty cool, but other than that you don't even see him. It's pretty weird since he has a really cool design and I'd liked to have learnt more of him. And then you suddenly arrive at Titanic Monarch before you know. The game doesn't even effectively communicate that it's a massive robot-esque building until the final cutscene, after you have beaten the level! There just isn't anything like what Sonic 3AK had and it's a massive shame. No Knuckles traps leading to a final showdown. No Lava Reef escape sequences as the Death Egg ascends etc. It's a real shame because there could have been some really cool moments here, I still think the HBH are really cool enemies and would like to see them back.
I think all the Heavies are brilliant and it's a shame they had very little narrative to work with. I really hope they come back in some form.
So I see topics online where people try to list all the inside references in Sonic Mania, and regarding Spoiler Metallic Madness Zone, almost nobody seems to recognize that the background-plane gimmick seems to be a throwback to the Tiara Bobowski levels from Sonic Xtreme:
You can place it, it just automatically moves to the nearest surface of water and moves on top of it.
Does everything have to be a reference? Are we the Undertale community now? + - what if sans made the phantom ruby???
You're right, the thing that is just like an obscure call back in a game full of obscure call backs isn't a reference.
Sky Babylon on Sonic Rush Adventure has the same mechanic. I doubt they went the 'X-treme' route. There's a pathway on the front layer too!
And here I thought it was a reference to this. Or maybe Abe's Oddysee. Or maybe it's such a generic mechanic that it's not really a reference to anything.
All that's similar is that the character is slung to a background area which has been done in other video games. If they were shooting for reference to X-TREME, wouldn't they have at least used the pinball plunger?
The Green Hill objects are than like just leftovers/Easter Eggs from the mobile version, where those items also existed in debug. In fact, I think the wrecking-ball in the mobile version is slightly different in terms of harming enemies and Sonic (it's harder to kill yourself with it in Mania). The water skater badnik in Chemical Plant's debug confused me at first too, but then I discovered that you can place it. The only caveat is that it will always appear on the surface of the water or goo, regardless of Sonic's Y-position. There's similar behavious for other enemies that need to be above-, on- or underwater. Unless there's a similar badnik I'm missing that's closer in colour-scheme, it's based on this guy from CD. But yeah, as far as I'm aware he's actually unused outside of debug. The boxes at the beginning of Press Garden 1 can be broken with the bubble shield hidden in the ceiling just past it. You need to bounce off a conveyor belt to knock the monitor down (there's a ring monitor too).
So one thing I was curious about. Why is Lava Reef no longer completely underground? Did the cave fall in when the Death Egg was relaunched? Also, speaking of unused debug content, you can place to plane switching panels in Startdust Speedway, although they don't do anything.
In a game that references a popcorn machine, why would you doubt they'd reference one of the most well researched and long sought after sonic games in the entire series? Besides, the way they did it in Mania looks way, way more like the way they did it in Xtreme than it does in rush, with the background segment being contained to a square area with lots of loops and curves visible, as opposed to just being a track in the background with no discernible level layout. Other video games.... such as Sonic Xtreme.
Lava Reef is set inside a volcano/volcanic region. S3K has the cast enter the depths of it, but in Mania they also explore closer to the surface. It's all Angel Island, so you could argue that Red Mountain makes up the higher regions, and Lava Reef the lower parts. And when you're particularly deep into act 2 and can see Little Planet in the sky, you're looking through the crater that Death Egg left. Actually it even ties is perfectly fine with the SK title screen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhhOURIo-II Lava Reef Mania takes place closer to the crater.
Did anyone notice the SegaSonic reference? The target icons for the Titanic Monarch boss are the same icons as those used to signify which level you're on (those little Eggman icons with the numbers on them).
Because the pop-corn machine was recently dumped by this same community? The thing that bothers me is that reference of yours is that it stops showing the first plane (like the implementation of Sonic Boom).
Doing a bit of time attacking, I find myself wondering... have they put a bit of a speed cap back in place? Going straight into Chemical Plant 1's first 2 loops, then jumping over the red spring at the bottom, I swear I'm seeing Sonic's speed being clamped down. Other places too, it looks really obvious. It's weirding me out. Anyone know if there's a new speed cap sometimes applied in Mania? And on the topic of character control, they've removed Knuckles' ability (which may have been a glitch) to spin dash from his glide-landing/slide-standing up animation. It let him charge up a spin dash absolutely anywhere and with complete disregard for momentum. If you were really used to playing Knuckles like that, Mania's change to his control is a bit frustrating.
Here's a glitch showcase because eh, why not: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfDxm-vkec I don't recall seeing a game in such recent memory that has caused people to jump on it this quickly. It's kind of great.
