Sonic Mania Plus (Consoles Physical; PC Digital) - Non-Leaks Thread

Ooh, great to see a first glimpse of Mania Plus stuff - can't wait to see a full quality scan of the article rather than Famitsu's own low-res image!

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Looks like several of the screenshots have Sonic and Mighty paired up with both characters' life icons displayed. Mighty appears to be the lead in some shots and Sonic in others - combined with the image of Sonic and Ray encountering the wrecked Hard Boiled Heavies, it looks like Encore Mode might allow the player to mix and match different pairings of characters similar to Chaotix or Sonic Advance 3. Very interesting if correct!

Also, as well as the sunset theme for Encore Mode's Green Hill, the 4P multiplayer shot in the top right suggests Encore Mode's Mirage Saloon will be at least partially set at night, also confirming at least some of the Encore Mode stages will be added to the Competition Mode.

 

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why does Angel island have the new grass in half the screenshots and the old grass in the other half?

Also if that's a new stage interesting choice, but you'd think they'd of pick a chaotix level or something instead

 

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I think the thing about Angel Island is that they already put effort into designing the assets for the original intro cutscenes, so :P

 

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Well Taxman did port AIZ to retro engine as a proof a concept. I guess they didn't want that effort to go to waste :v

 

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fair enough I suppose. Neat to see a potentially new level and pairups outside of Sonic & Tails though. I hope it extends into the main game.

Speaking of which though are mighty and Ray exclusive to encore mode? I can't tell but from the intros and such it kinda looks that way. It'd make sense but it'd be slightly disappointing, not that modders won't find a way to fix that but still

 

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If you look in the top right, it appears to be mirage saloon at night in competition mode, which makes me think that encore mode will also be part of competition mode. Though we wont be able to tell till a full res image comes out

 

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I don't think that's actually the case - that's almost certainly just the low image quality obscuring the striped pattern of the grass. You can't really see it in the smaller Green Hill screenshots either, and some of those are definitely from the existing Mania Mode stage.

Angel Island makes a lot of sense from a development perspective - since the location already appears in game in the Mania Mode opening, it means there's already a small amount Mania-styled graphics to use as a starting point, as opposed to developing another stage completely from scratch.

 

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A Chaotix stage would likely require a similar amount of effort. While all the tiles aren't there due to the kinda repetitive nature of Chaotix's levels, it's the only classic game that wouldn't have to have it's tiles redrawn due to the palette. Either way though I liked Angel Island so this is fine.

 

Hmm... I wonder if Ray's sprites were made by the new team by modifying existant assets, rather than from scratch like the original three characters. I mean, his "looking up" sprite may be matching Sonic's eyes (and height) a bit too much?

This would be perfectly understandable for Mighty's graphics, but for Ray's... not so much.

 

Why not? Ray and Mighty were basically Sonic clones in SegaSonic Arcade. Plus that animation isn't exactly the same as Sonic's. He's looking up, what's he supposed to do? Plus let's be honest, Ray's head is basically just a circle. One could argue he's the closest thing there is to a Sonic character template in existence.

Ray looks like he stands in a similar pose to Knuckles so that's a slight difference anyway.

Also the article says the game sold over 1 million copies, which is great don't get me wrong but you'd think it had sold more? Still good for a digital game I guess, hopefully Mania Plus helps things even more.

 

Over a million is a lot for a digital-only game, especially for one that hasn't really had any major discounts yet.

 

Ray was precisely the one character with animations that differed greatly from the other two. There's many ways of making a "looking up" animation that don't involve copying parts of Sonic's and/or Knuckles' already existant sprites.

Still hoping that they (whoever is actually in charge of the new characters) are not doing it here, but this was just a little bit suspicious.


EDIT: Just in case: Ray's sprites look fine to me. I'm not trying to imply that they look lame or anything.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about it yet. It's hard to grasp a character's entire sprite set from just 1 sprite.

That being said I'm surprised none of this stuff has been dumped yet from the most recent patch. Then again I don't know if the patch is all of Mania Plus just locked away or if it was just the stuff we got to see.

 

Mixed on the sales numbers, though I'm pretty glad we've finally gotten them.

With the great reception it got, the Sega report of it doubling the amount of packaged games they sold that quarter compared to last year, and becoming an Nintendo Switch eShop best-seller...I was hoping for something more than this. At least two million were my personal hopes. Timmit does make a good point about how it's been able to sell that much as a digital-only title and with hardly--if any--price cuts; but at the same time, there are other digital-exclusive games that have performed better (i.e. Cuphead sold one million in its first two weeks, and sold two million by December; and that was only on two platforms--PC[/Steam/GOG] and Xbox One).

But on the other hand, I think I even called it a while back prior to the game's release, that the game would do modest numbers, rather than do gangbusters; precisely due to the digital-exclusive release (and to a lesser extent, the retraux presentation). I'd say it's also worth pointing out Sonic was coming off the back of a series of mediocre-to-outright-lousy games, such as Lost World and the Boom series (and Sega releasing another game in Forces shortly afterwards couldn't had helped, especially when that turned out to be subpar as well); and the notorious delay of the PC version couldn't had helped.

I guess the least I can say about is that it was announced to have passed one million downloads faster than Sonic 4: Epi. I did (eight months vs. one full year) and outsold Lost World and the Boom games (though that's not too hard to do at all). We also actually have a hard sales number source for Mania to go off of compared to Forces for that matter (which are being reported to be estimates).

I really hope the game gets a significant boost in sales with the retail release of Mania Plus, but I'm worried Sega releasing it months after the vanilla release and the competition it might square off against may hinder its performance.

 

Hopefully Mania has sold very close to two million. I wouldn't have expected strong sales on Xb1 or in Japan and the DRM kind of screwed the Steam sales, but surely the game sold well on PS4 and exceptionally well on Switch?

Regardless, it's obviously performed strongly enough that SEGA deemed it worth opting for an updated version with a packaged release. So SEGA must see it as a success.

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In one of the Angel Island screenshots it looks like the capsule from the beginning of Chaotix where you rescue Espio. So, I'm guessing Ray and Mighty are trapped inside. Nice to see so many Chaotix references.

The main screenshot suggests it takes place after the end of the main story due to the pile of HBH's. Perhaps the Heavy Magician is the only one who survived and she brings the other HBH's back to life using the Phantom Ruby?

In one of the other Angel Island screenshots you clearly see at the top-left corner a score, time and rings counter which indicates it's more than just a cutscene. That it's at least a fully playable act-hopefully a full zone with two acts. The original Angei Island intro cutscene in Mania of course does not have a score, time and rings counter. This only appears once Sonic, Tails or Knuckles arrive at Green Hill.

I wonder what the purpose of the purple "portal" in one of the new AI screenshots is for (which is the same type of portal as the one which sends Sonic to Sonic Forces at the end of the game)? Perhaps this is how Sonic returns after the events of Forces?! I appreciate this theory probably would clash with Sonic Mania Adventures interpretation.

So maybe Encore mode takes place after Forces, where Sonic arrives in Angel Island, rescues Ray & Mighty, then encounters the Heavy Magician who brings the other HBH's back to life and they (using the ruby) force Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Ray or Mighty to play through all zones again, which this time have visual changes and new routes.

One of the normal GH screenshots does show Ray. So hopefully Ray & Mighty are playable in both Mania mode & Encore mode?

 

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It would be hilarious if Angel Island Zone Act 2 became FROZEN instead of catching fire.

 

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Given the lack of Ice Cap representation I'd love this

 

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Fuck, now I want to see a mockup of this. Imagine a "Frozen Angel Island Remix" song!

 

Precicely :D

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I'm already imagining a Tee Lopes mix of AIZ Act 2 and Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be Groovy. It avoids the whole music lawsuit business and puts Hard Times out to pasture.

 

Nope, or else it would have been phrased as 'almost two million'. It's also less than 1.4mi, as they would also have used 'almost 1.5mi' sales. Remember magazine articles are written to praise and to make numbers bolder to the readers, the figures are certainly in between 1.1 and 1.4 million.