I wouldn't be surprised if these were originally going to be piloted by Eggman but they later replaced him with Mecha to convey that Eggy was still on the Death Egg and getting away while desperately throwing his minions at you.
Speaking of Heroes, i actually remember playing the game on my ps2 along side sonic unleashed. And, not gonna lie? They were the shit for my 7 year old brain. Sonic 3's Sonic looks like a plastic toy you get in McDonalds with the highlights he has
I always hated the sprites in that game and the highlights, especially on Knuckles, are a big reason why. I always found the JP Tidal Tempest music to be really... overdramatic? It's just Labyrinth Zone 2.0 with a bright color palette and everything, and the music implies all sorts of ambience and awe that the environment itself can never hope to capture.
I feel the Sonic 1 sprites did the highlights and shading the best. In fact, I'd say they had my favorite style in the classic games (Sonic's purple palette aside). Everything looked so vibrant. Sonic 2's sprites and palettes in general looked duller and less vibrant to me, especially from comparing Mashers and Buzzers to Choppers and Buzzbombers. As for the Tidal Tempest music, I think it's supposed evoke a nostalgic feel to go with the ancient ruins theme.
I love his sprite in 1. The color palette in general of the game greatly pleases me. Also, this weird quirk of Mania's Flying Battery has stuck in my head ever since release. A little overhang at the start of Act 2 changes texture in between act transitions. There's also this spike that totally implies that you can push it to uncover some sort of pipe to a secret, yet you can't.
Mecha's having fun both trolling you and using his boss' car while boss is not looking at. Then he notices he's being goofing around too much and gets serious only to notice serious Sonic is a better fighter. The funniest thing of this all is that, while it can't fly, Mecha's good at falling from great heights and not break apart even when damaged, just like Sonic.
Even though they may not seem like much today, I recall having my mind blown by all the details in the game's environments back in the day. The character models were fairly polygonal and awkwardly animated, but the devs went all out with the environments. The orca escape sequence was jaw-dropping for 1998.
I can chime in and say how odd I thought it was that in Sonic 2, his egg mobile had helicopter wings to fly him into the vehicle. Yet, in every other level it can hover by itself. What....exactly was the point of the helicopter part of it?
I've been messing with Sonic Chaos objects in a hex editor and discovered this extremely important fact, there are two types of 10 ring monitor in the game! The normal one, has an animation where the picture moves up a little bit and disappears with a high pitched beep sound effect. The alternative one just explodes with no animation like all other monitors in the game. No other difference. You still get the 10 rings. That's it. Try sleeping egg 1 where the monitors at the top are the first type, but the monitor sitting on top of the breakable blocks near the end is the second type.
Because you're the bad guy and have to make a good entrance, but you're on the first level and aren't allowed to cut Sonic into pieces with your propeller.
There is a company called Studiopolis Inc.. It does audio-related things. Sega has worked with it on many occasions - a lot of the English voice acting in their games is recorded there. Which means "Sonic" went to Studiopolis years before Sonic went to Studiopolis. I find it difficult to believe nobody on the Mania team made the connection - the English voices for Sonic Forces were recorded there.
That's bugged me for decades, but I'd have to imagine he's just making a flashy entrance. This is the same guy who made the death star and put his face on it. He's all about spectacle. That flashy mech in Casino Night is another example of unnecessary flash
If I had to headcanon an explanation, the Sonic 2 Eggmobile model was still a work in progress by that point. Eggy hadn't fully implemented its hover function yet, so he installed a provisional rotor. By the time you faced him in CPZ it was already finished, so it didn't need to use rotors for flying.
From the horse's mouth in 2016: So not only were Taxman and the rest of the Mania team aware of the name being shared, they cleared it with Studiopolis Inc too. Plus we got "official" confirmation on how to pronounce it. Cool, isn't it?
The rings in Sonic Mania actually have different shading style than the rings in the Genesis games. Image for comparison with the colors changed: The rings in the Genesis games are asymmetrical and have the light source coming from the top right, but in Mania the light source comes straight from the top, making them symmetrical.
Oh, I have a bigger one on rings, because it's about giant rings. If you look at giant rings in Sonic 1 and CD, they're like perfectly done (in MD terms) when it comes to lighting; the fatter giant rings in S3K, however, have such a weird lighting... Even weirder when you see how it changes while they're growing (not because it changes, but because how it does). And then Mania implements 3D giant rings and, like what happened with 3D games, they made them a closed circular tube instead of preserving the actual ring shape of the originals; even the S3K one kept despite the change in their proportions.
