Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

Yeah, I'm not gonna very original here, but godamn do I want a S3K remaster in the style of mania seeing angel island zone like that was both painful and very satisfying.

 

Remember that Mania uses two layers for the foreground art - presumably one of them is mistakenly turned off until the background corrects itself, as you can see a foreground waterfall pop into existence at the same time.

Mighty and Ray being copies of Sonic seems to screw up the cutscene a little here - presumably the player normally has the chance to walk to either Mighty/Ray to choose them as a partner (with the other then turning out to be fake), but since "Mighty" has jumped forward while doing Sonic's victory animation he's already touching Sonic and so ends up automatically selected. Incidentally, I love that the little jingle from Chaotix plays when the partner is selected!

Interesting that the unused "Sweep" badnik from Mania's Chemical Plant Zone is present alongside the Zone's badniks in the debug list - I wonder if it's finally used in this Zone? We don't really see more than a glimpse of the area with the water in this footage, but considering the enemy's fully programmed it'd make sense to actually use it somewhere! On a related note, I'm actually kind of surprised Catakiller, Jr. shows up in this Zone - since it's already used in Chemical Plant Zone I just sort of assumed it'd be omitted here. Would that make it the only badnik which is used across multiple Zones in the whole of Mania, or am I forgetting something?

Speculation time - some of the Japanese articles have mentioned switching between all five characters in Encore Mode, but so far we've only seen Sonic/Mighty and Sonic/Ray as pairs. Since it seems the partner who isn't chosen turns out to be the Heavy Magician in disguise, I wonder if we'll be rescuing the real version of them later on in the game? Maybe the capsules at the end of certain Zones will be replaced with these Chaotix-style versions, each containing one of the remaining three characters. That would mean you'd unlock Tails/Knuckles and the partner you didn't choose at the start as you progress through Encore Mode, which would then fit with what's been said about being able to swtich between the five characters.

 

Also, since placing the end sign in the cutscene version of AIZ has activated it, I wonder if the only reason this Zone's made it into the update patch rather than the DLC itself is because the Zone's files are counted as "Act 2" of the existing Angel Island cutscene map? Since there are assets which are identical between the cutscene and the actual level, it'd make sense to keep it all wrapped together in the game's internal structure rather than duplicating art, palettes etc.

 

Thanks for the clarification, Hinchy - much appreciated.

Couple of other interesting things to note:

• The Zone appears to have been worked on further since the Famitsu screenshots - Mighty's Hammer Drop path now begins with a block of 'proper' breakable ground, rather than a rock wedged into a pipe as seen in Famitsu scans. Rings are now visible beneth the block to make it more obvious to the player that there's an accessible route down there.
• Although many things are glitched out in this footage due to Debug shenanigans and the fact the stage is being accessed in Mania Mode, it's interesting that once the area with Mighty/Ray is reached the background fails to load correctly. If it were simply switching back to the intro's clouds/water background as seen in screenshots I'd expect it to load properly, as the game seems to have no trouble displaying that background earlier in the available footage. Could it be that there's now a separate background for this area, which isn't loading properly for some reason? Or could this just be another example of things glitching out due to Debug/Mania Mode shenanigans?

 

About the BG -A wider gradient and subtle colour change might have been nice.


But I personally don't think it's too bad as is.

 

The colour could probably benefit from a little tweaking, yes - however, the expanded gradient wouldn't be possible without editing the actual artwork, which as far as we've seen the Encore Mode stages don't touch - hence slight oddities like the colour separation towards the back of the lake in Green Hill Zone, which is hidden in Mania Mode where the colours for both sections are the same, but obvious in Encore Mode where the colours differ from each other.

 

That's a pretty good point - what we have here is technically a prototype version of the update patch, so it'd be good to be able to investigate what's different once the final version releases.

 

Exactly what I was thinking, nice work.

 

So, it seems obvious now that Encore Mode is really the s3&K Knuckles playthrough of Mania, taking place after the first (Sonic) mode, and expanding the gameplay in both story, at least some paths, and replayability.

We've got a completely different story into via Angel Island, the heavy magician's shenanigans, the return of the Ruby, ect. All likely leading to a second ending and possibly even a new final boss.

I don't know if the different pathways will be as diverse and Knuckles paths were in s3&K, but it's good to see them expanding on both the experience and story as well.

Although the return of the Ruby makes one wonder... does this take place before Forces, after, or skip it altogether?

 

I posted about why I think it's unlikely we'll ever see a 1:1 faithful 3K remaster and how I think "Mania" essentially is a greatly evolved, expanded upon version of it in the thread leading up to the announcement of "Plus." (Figured I'd just link to it instead of repeating the same info.)


So, don't see any star posts in that video of Angel Island in the leaked 1.04 PS4 patch, but you're in debug mode so you can place one--really seems like someone should do so and check if it takes you to the new pinball stage instead of blue sphere. (I don't live in the region where the patch leaked and don't have it so I can't check myself, unfortunately.) Also you should be able to place yourself under the Mighty breakable barrier path at the end and see what's down there, right? Seems like there's potentially more interesting stuff to find in just Angel Island itself, if that's indeed the only Encore data that exists in the 1.04 PS4 patch. Hopefully someone is able to check those two things and just explore the zone in total and upload the footage of it.

 

Yeah, highly likely it's just blue sphere. But someone should definitely still check because holy shit what if it goes to a version of the new one.

Might be worth doing the debug cutscene glitch for every cutscene it's possible for in the game (don't know if it's every one; never done it myself) and placing/going through a goal post just to see if anything else crops up. (Again, unlikely, but ya never know.)

 

A lot of stuff in that video is so unpolished that I'd take it with a grain of salt.

 

Does anybody here, or in SSRG, have the patch? Also, do you need a modded PS4 to grab the file?

I honestly thought the same, but the AIZ full song is TOO DAMN GOOD to be false. Hell, if it's revealed to be a hoax, I want to know who the fuck made that track and pay him to make a full S3 remastered OST, I don't care.

 

Perfect!

 

According to Tracker sounds like *everything* from Encore is in that leaked 1.04 PS4 patch. He didn't describe how to access it, but someone somewhere likely has. Man that person at Sony really really done goofed up accidentally pushing that patch.

(I guess the silver lining is thank god it was only in one specific region for a handful of hours on one platform. Probably only a couple thousand people have it, at most. Would be more of a catastrophe if it'd been pushed to *all* PS4 users that have the game.)