Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

Would have been a nice call back to the transition to the Sky Chase stage in Sonic Pocket Adventure. Where Knuckles punches Sonic through the ceiling and he lands on the Tornado (to make it look seamless, simply have Tails disappear for the second half of the boss battle).

 

Thank you very much for the great YT rips of the new music in "Plus," but why did you credit Hunter Bridges for "Angel Island"? I could be wrong, but it seems near impossible to me that the full version is not composed by Tee. The first 14 seconds are near identical if not completely identical to the 14 second snippet he did for the main game. And the remaining 55 seconds of the "Plus" version are so consistent with the beginning 14 that like I said it seems almost impossible to me that a different musician with a pretty different style would be able to match the style/have it be as consistent as it is.

For that matter how do you know Hunter Bridges composed the other new tracks in Encore? TimmiT said no one was credited for the new music in the "Plus" section of the end credits. Are you just crediting Hunter in your Youtube videos because he's listed under sound design in the "Plus" section of the end credits and for some reason the "Plus" credits do not list anyone as composer?

Very curious about all this. Would greatly appreciate any info. Thanks (if you're able to give any).

 

That bad ending laugh is the same sample as the one used for the JP boss fight music from Sonic CD. Nice touch.

 

It's just the Sonic CD Try Again music: https://youtu.be/xS3yARL0inE?t=3m26s

 

So for anyone who has it, is your data from regular Mania re-usable in Plus, or are all your saves gone when you start the Plus disc version?

I don't mind restarting, but I am curious. I'm not sure if I want to collect the Emeralds again 6(7? 5 chars, once with Sonic only, once with Sonic and Tails, and once for Encore) times total for a complete save selection.

 

I'm also curious on that one. Judging by the production quality of the other tracks, there's no way Bridges is responsible for AIZ, unless for some reason Tee handed him the source files from the Mania intro and had him take care of the rest. It's a little unfair to say that it was “composed” by either of them anyway, considering that it's a transcription and resynth.

But also I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that they probably just copied the description between tracks so it was probably just a subconscious thing and really not a big deal. Thanks for the uploads!

 

It's the exact same game and isn't recognised as any different by your console (Switch, can't verify other platforms). This means that it isn't added as a separate title to your games log and all data is intact.

 

(For those who haven't gotten Plus early, myself included. :v)

 

With help from RandomTalkingBush, Tpot, Beta Angel, Slashiee, and Rubberduckycooly, we've published the first version of the Mania Plus Extractor. It adds support to EyeKey's tool. There are 17 missing files that we cannot find the names for, but they seem to be unused. https://github.com/Axanery/rsdkv5_extract/releases/tag/rsdkv5-tools-plus

Also, the Hunter thing y'all have been asking me about is purely assumption from what we've seen from the credits and his general style. I could always be wrong.

 

Great to hear clean rips of these - hoping someone can produce versions which match in with the official "Selected Sountrack" release, similar to what Neo previously did for the six missing Nakamura tracks from that release.

 

IIRC the soundtrack album getting released in Japan includes those tracks, so ideally you'd fetch a lossless rip from there -- no need to mess around with the ogg files in the RSDK. Though sometimes that might not be the worst idea.

 

RandomTBush mapped it out in a file he sent me. There is some kind of debug configuration file (I don't know what is it and there's no header extracted), 5 models of the DDWrecker, a circle model for Trap Tower (seems unused), an extra palette (as I mentioned before, Encore mode uses .act files instead of having the palettes built into the stageconfigs like Mania Mode), some wav file (probably used, it either starts with a D or F), another wav (starts with R), an MSZ wav (starts with any letter P-Z), two SSZ2 wavs (one starts with any letter M-S and another one starts with SS (I couldn't find the name in the StageConfig)), some sprite bin file for Lava Reef (probably used and I wasn't looking hard enough), a gif file for Press Garden 2 (unused), a UI gif that starts with D-H that I couldn't find mentioned anywhere, an MMZ gif that I couldn't find mentioned anywhere, and that's all.

Also I'm out of posts for my trial membership so I can't respond for a while.

 

So tomorrow's the big day! Do we have any idea when the DLC launches across the various regions and platforms? Hopefully I'm able to get one of the downloads early prior to picking up my copy of Mania Plus for the Switch tomorrow (although maybe I'll be able to pick that up early, sometimes Gamestop gives out games a bit before release but not always).

 

Guh, the Lava Reef Zone Act 2 boss still damages you as it's in its death throes. Would've thought that could have been fixed.

Also, the game suddenly knocked me out of my Super Form on Heavy Rider before I actually defeated the boss:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQQktFtidpY

 

Ah, good to know. I'd say there's a 99.99% chance the full "Angel Island" is Tee. Honestly I would not be surprised if the other new tracks are by him as well. "Double Take" has that characteristic funk, and the guitar in "Trap Tower" sounds like his work, too. Also a sound designer and a composer are entirely different things; sometimes the sound designer happens to also be the composer, but often they are two separate people. I wouldn't take the weird "Plus"-only credits as an indication of much of anything (when it comes to the music). Hopefully we get clarification on this aspect of "Plus" at some point. I don't have my JP copy yet so I don't know if the soundtrack CD metadata will clarify all this.


Also would love to see the extra palette y'all found. Is it an unused entirely different palette for one of the zones? Would make sense that they played around with different color schemes quite a bit before settling on the final versions. Thanks for the composer credit info and for all your great work.

 

For anyone who has the game early, a quick question: I know the Encore versions of stages are available in Time Attack, but does this extend to Angel Island too? I know it's only short (and would have to end at the point you'd normally release Mighty and Ray, as the short final section requires their abilities), but it'd be great if it's included - would love to find out the quickest time in which people can speedrun it! Sub-10-second runs, anyone? Haha. XD

(Plus, it'd give you the chance to play the stage with characters other than Sonic, which I think I'm right in saying isn't possible in normal gameplay.)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiFgaatXuRc
Everything I needed today has come from this video.

 

Cracked up right at the end

Hoshino-san, I was not ready for you.

 

Nice to see Mania Plus get yet another throwback commercial.



Love how the atmosphere/presentation is unapologetically 90s, the riffs on some of the (obnoxious) modern gaming trends is cool too, even if a bit too on-the-nose and sorta five minutes late. (FPS oversaturation is more of a last-gen thing, live services, open world games, and MOBAs are the current rage for this gen.)

The 90s "SEGA!" scream, along with the forced zoom in on Hoshino's face (that was a total surprise!) was absolute perfection.

This is too good to be made just for online viewings; I hope Sega is able to sneak it on television airwaves somewhere, like they did with that one commercial for the Sonic social media advert that showed up on [adult swim].

EDIT: On second thought, that FPS game looks like a lot of those godawful FPS early access games you see on Steam, so it's actually right on time with the current era. =P