Congrats to the music team. The track that plays during the Mean Bean Machine boss is still one of the best Sonic tracks I've ever heard and this is a series renowned for its amazing music. Tee Lopes' work was incredible. Real zen moment when that track kicked in. One of my favourite moments from the game. Some of the best music in a Sonic game ever so the accolade is beyond deserved.
Nintendo posted a list of the (Top 20) best-selling Nintendo Switch games of 2017. (As of this writing, it's presumed that the list includes physical and digital sales and covers worldwide sales.) Mania is #11, fellow Sega release Puyo Puyo Tetris is #18. Forces is MIA.
Good to know. Sales are relatively lukewarm on Steam (just above 115K months after launch) but we know from Mania's consistent and sustained high chart placement it did insanely well on the major console platforms and this just adds more fuel to the fire that it was a super success on Switch. It definitely sold millions of copies overall, as that Sega Sammy financial report indicated. So now all we need is hard numbers. I'd expect PR from Sega once Mania hits a notable milestone, like 5 million sales or something akin to that.
The hits just keep on coming. From the Steam Awards 2017 Nominees Announcement page, here are the candidates for the "Even Better Than I Expected" Award: -Assassin's Creed Origins -Cuphead -Call of Duty: WWII -Hollow Knight -Sonic Mania Voting for this award takes place on January 2nd and the voting period is only 24 hours. Winners for all categories are announced on January 3rd. e: (Reposting this for the new page). The People's Mania's Choice has spoken, and they've chosen you two, Tee Lopes and Falk! Sonic Mania won IGN's Best of 2017 People's Choice Awards for Best Original Music! Congratulations!
These kinds of games seem to be resonating well with the Switch audience. For example, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap sold more on Switch than it did on PS4, Xbox One and PC combined. I wouldn't be surprised if the same happened with Sonic Mania.
That was fucking marvelous. Everything is wonderful news. If we get some confirmation on the Plus branch, then this definitely will be one of the best years for Sonic.
Yassssssssss! Congratulations! Seriously, everything else sounds quite flat in comparison to Mania's music. I cried the first time I heard the Hard Boiled Heavies Mischief theme....I knew this wasn't some half ass return during that moment. I'm still trying to figure out what Jun Senoue did. Why is his name in the credits? :v:
Sound Engineering. Similar to Falk's role, but were as Falk was in charge of mixing the songs for the final game, I assume Jun was more involved with any potential live performances that went into the soundtrack (if Falk or anyone else wants to correct me on that please do).
Congratulations to Tee, Falk, Jun and the rest of the Mania team. You deserve it for such an awesome final product!
Congratulations and well done guys! You did what Sonic didn't do for years and got nominated. You guys rock. Some bug reports for the Switch version: -Not sure if this is intended, but in the mania special stages where you get hit by the bombs, there is no invulnerability meaning that it's quite unforgiving when you enter it as there's no way to escape and you watch your rings go to 0. -In Mirage Saloon (Sky Chase part) when you are in the middle part where the background switches to a desert hue, go to the bottom right and spindash to die. Upon restarting, you will see knuckles's sprite for 1 second and then he disappears way before the heavy knocks him. For the Sonic 3K special stages, I feel the speed increase is too sudden. It should build up a bit and blend with the current speed but in a way as it still gives a challenge. Yes, git gud whatever.
So you can totally super transform though the moving blocks of Chemical Plant and get trapped. Is this something that happened in the originals?
Yes, this is 'intentional' behaviour (it's in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, not too sure about Sonic 2), but probably not for reasons you might think. Neo posted about this behaviour in Sonic 3 & Knuckles on his blog a while back, here.
About Blue sphere, I think the speed up is just fine. I did a blue sphere play through of 7 stages unlocked via other genesis games and I had to get their codes on actual genesis hardware. The speed up in mania feels just as fast, but I'm finding it hard to just jump over 1 sphere instead of 2. I blame mussle memory on that though due to that marathon I did.
Actually, in S3K Special Stages, you speed up every 1800 frames (30 seconds), but in Blue Sphere, you speed up every 2700 frames (45 seconds). In Sonic Mania, at least on PC, it's always 1800 frames (30 seconds).
I'd strongly agree that it has been an amazing year for Sonic. A beyond fantastic Sonic game and potentially the best in decades, released to a glowing critical reception and insane sales, winning awards left, right and centre and potentially solidifying Sonic's future trajectory i.e. a potential Sonic Mania 2 and more games that focus on old school Sonic in the near future. Yeah we had Forces which was disappointingly mediocre, but we also got Mania and it's the most successful Sonic game since Sega's hardware days. So now all we need is confirmation and news on this Project Plus mystery and we're set. Definitely a good year for everyone's favourite blue blur. Here's to more years like this one.
Sonic Mania was released on the 40th anniversary of the Wow! signal. Coincidence....or Phantom Ruby? :v:
