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

Not as relevant as the information Yeow's usually gives us, but today I've seen Sonic Mania Plus is the 2nd best selling game for Switch at the GAME store I bought it. It felt great.

 

I don't recall this making the rounds, but I think it's rad.

 

This is incredible! I was fooled for a second, but wow was this convincing! #amylove

 

Same here. Managed to talk a buddy into getting Switch Sonic Mania who was "never into Sonic" in the 90's, and is now buying it to "see what the fuss is about".
(which is odd, as he always watches the Sonic sections of Games Done Quick each year..)

Still, a win-win situation for me, because even if he doesn't get along with the game that's still a sale in favour of Mania! :v:

 

Not sure if here or in a new thread but the Sonic Mania team are in Japan.

https://mobile.twitter.com/chibilola/status/1041609022858620929

Ready the hype thrusters!

 

Pleasseee results in something good...

Well they also deserve a vacation so if that's what they're there for then enjoy lol

 

Clarification on "the Mania team" in the photo: It's Taxman/Whitehead, Brad/Slingerland, Lola Shiraishi, and Hunty/Hunter Bridges.

Recall that Whitehead and Bridges, in addition to programming the game, also oversaw Mania's production as a whole--Whitehead served as the lead developer (and created the pitch that let to Mania in the first place) and Bridges operated as the project manager. Flick based from Mania's credits didn't fill any management roles, but he is still notable for being the only designer from Mania's dev team in the group. And of course you have Shiraishi there as Mania's game producer.

Making the assumption that Whitehead and company are meeting with Sega in Japan to talk about making a Mania followup. How likely is the chance that they will serve as the "core members" staff that will be instrumental/needed in getting another Genesis game off the ground? In the case that Sega is unable to or not interesting in getting --everyone-- from Mania's production back (such as Stealth/Thomley, Tee Lopes, Tom Fry, and others) and assigns a Mania followup to a different team, these four serve as "essential" developers needed that the new developer can integrate into their own development team.

 

If this is nothing special, good on them for having fun. They deserve it after working hard to revive my childhood dream again.

If this is something more, that's even better news.

Regardless, good to see these guys all still together.

 

Mania DLC is 25% off on PS4 until Monday.

 

Hype levels set to maximum! Seriously though this could be anything. A super important meeting with Sega about a potential Mania successor hence the need for most of the original team or just a friendly trip to Japan that won't amount to anything. That said logic would conclude that Sega should be desperate to hire these guys again given Mania's super success and glowing reception.

Definitely looking forward to future updates on this. Would love to know the true purpose of their trip and whether it pertains to a new game.

 

Some new sales results / observances.

August's NPD results came out earlier this week. Mania Plus didn't show up on any of the charts for last month either; so barring some surprise, it's probably best not to expect it to show up in the future. I'd advise not being too broken up by it though--from what I've looked up (GAF/ERA Sales Archives), historical NPD results haven't been kind to Sonic. Going back the past ten years, here are the Sonic-specific games (re: no Mario Olympics and no Sega compilations/ASR games) that have surfaced on posted NPD reports/results:

Sonic Forces - #7 (Top 10 - Nintendo Switch, November 2017)
Sonic Generations - #9 (Top 10 - Nintendo 3DS, February 2012)
Sonic Colors - #9 (Top 10 - Nintendo DS, January 2011)
Sonic and the Black Knight - #13 (Top 20 - Wii, April 2009)
Sonic and the Black Knight - #10 (Top 10 - Wii, March 2009)
Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis - #8 (Top 10 - Game Boy Advance, January 2009)
Sonic Unleashed - #7 (Top 10 - PlayStation 2, December 2008)

...it ain't writing home about.

Some quick observations from the listings:
- Right off the bat, it's clear all of these rankings only count towards platform-specific charts. No Sonic game has ever broken into the overall NPD charts over the past ten years.
- Up until Forces, Black Knight was the only Sonic game to chart in an NPD report the month of its release. It's also the only game top chart for two consecutive months (albeit falling out of the top ten for March). Pretty surprising given the reception of the game.
- Forces and Unleashed are tied as the highest-charting Sonic game on an NPD report (#7, again, both for a specific platform chart).
- Aside from Unleashed, these NPD Sonic rankings are otherwise entirely on Nintendo platforms.
- Forces is the only NPD Sonic game that is neither a spinoff/re-release or a "B-tier" version of a Sonic title (considering Colors and Gens are the "handheld" versions made by Dimps and Unleashed is the "last-gen"/SD version of the game).

(And speaking of re-releases, WTF at that Sonic 1 GBA 2009 listing hehe.)

Moving on, Mania also finally fell off the charts for Download-Only Games on the Switch eShop this week (Mania dropped off the All Games charts roughly a month ago back in August). It seems Mania's legs on the eShop are dropping off for real this time due to the time since the game's release as well as the constant stream of new releases surfacing on the charts. All things told, Mania had a good run overall, and the Plus re-release/Encore Mode did its part on giving the game a few more miles to cover on the charts.

There is still some good news though. Two weeks ago in the UK charts, Mania Plus (which had been steadily hovering around in the 20s) jumped up eleven spots from #24 to #13; and last week inched up one spot to #12--pretty amazing results, given the massive launch that was Insomniac's Spider-Man as well as the other notable big release that was Shadow of the Tomb Raider. There's a pretty good chance Mania Plus could actually sneak back into the UK Top 10 this week if its performance holds--but we won't know until Monday for sure.

A similar story is playing out in New Zealand, and to a more impressive effect--Mania resurfaced at #10 two weeks ago, and last week rose up to #6!

 

Sorry for the double post, but my hunch was correct: Mania Plus rose from #12 to #10 last week in the UK charts--making it back into the UK Top 10 for the first time since the end of July!

Is this the first sign of Mania growing into some seriously strong legs in the UK charts?

 

So it's looking like Plus won't be receiving any patches.

Damn shame. Mighty's Super palette shall remain broken forever :v:

 

Quick question about this - is it only detransforming via running out of rings which causes the bug, or is it detransforming in general? I only ask as I've been running through the Switch version recently and detransforming after the HCZ2 boss didn't cause the bug for some reason - possibly due to being underwater at the time I detransformed?

EDIT: Ah, disregard - it seems the circumstances under which the bug appears are different to what I'm remembering; I thought it always happened when detransforming, but noticed through the rest of my playthrough that in some stages it seemed to happen when transforming, some when detransforming, and others not at all - there were at least a couple of instances of the shade never incorrectly fading to black. My bad!

 

Not thread worthy but Classic Amy is getting her own merch. Not modern Amy mind you which is strange to say the least.

https://shop.sega.com/collections/amy-rose?page=1

If Mania 2 is coming, I'd say Amy is a given.

 

That's because it was recently the 25th anniversary of Sonic CD. Also there has been classic Amy merch before, at least in the form of plushies.

So 99% chance this means nothing as far as Mania 2 is concerned, however if Mania 2 does come to life I'd imagine she'd be part of the plot or DLC. I would hope the base game includes Mighty and Ray since they're already done.

 

Tails, Knuckles, and Metal Sonic have all gotten anniversary days in the store too.

 

Looks like Metal Sonic merch has been added as well. My bad, got too excited.

Still wondering why there isn't any Modern Amy merch though.

 

There's a Sega Shop coming for you guys so I hope they put up the stuff that we got here in the States.