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

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Chris Highwind, Mar 16, 2018.

  1. Jason

    Jason

    *Results not lab tested. Member
    Going into conspiracy territory, because Forces is now $20 at retail, Sega may not want Mania to be more expensive than it on the shelf. The digital Switch version of Forces is also $20.
     
  2. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    That'd make sense actually. And wow Forces is only $20 now? Yikes what a dumpster fire of a game
     
  3. Glaber

    Glaber

    Has Beaten Sonic Genesis for GBA Oldbie
    if you want a dumpster fire of a sonic game, go back to Sonic 06. Sonic forces is just bargain bin treasure at this point.
     
  4. Gestalt

    Gestalt

    Sphinx in Chains Member
    ^Never played it, is it that bad? :V

    No really, if it'll ever pop up on Steam, I'd happily spend a few bucks to experience it first hand.
     
  5. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    I doubt 06 will ever leave the 360 and PS3.
    You're not missing much. Game's awful, and that's been pretty well documented over the years online.
     
  6. NyaNyaLily

    NyaNyaLily

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    Eh, I've party played through the Sonic campaign. What I can say is that the game basically plays like Adventure 1, except that there's no momentum. It's playable but not great.
    Anything that isn't a standard Sonic level is genuinely awful though, except for Silver's levels, they just are mediocre.
     
  7. Gestalt

    Gestalt

    Sphinx in Chains Member
    Nevermind, now I remember (what the heck is a Bound Jump?). Thanks guys.
     
  8. Lilly

    Lilly

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    There's enough excess vocabulary in your post, I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me or invalidating your own argument, sorry.

    But I do have a reply for that last paragraph: Mania Plus didn't fix some of the known hard crashes, either. There either wasn't time to fix them, or they weren't known to the team. Mania wasn't perfect on launch and neither is Plus. I don't feel like SEGA allowed them enough time and budget to support Mania, it's honestly sad.

    While I will always agree that the contents of vanilla Mania did improve after Plus, there were some fun physics quirks that got arbitrarily patched out, (For instance, jumping while holding down on a downhill slope to gain more momentum via hopping.) and it sucked the fun out of Time Attack Mode for me. I already found Mania's time attack mode setup woefully lacking compared to Freedom Planet's time attack, but that was the last nail in me grinding out personal bests in Mania stages.

    Whenever I am playing it lately, it's largely to either play it casually, or analyze the game's level design, and the finer points of what movement mechanics it improves on compared to the classics. (In short, it does a lot of things better!)

    I totally understand that! I've done the same thing with Freedom Planet and Hollow Knight. (Just bought the FanGamer physical release of Hollow Knight this afternoon, even, despite already owning the Steam/GoG and Switch digital releases.)

    When you love a game enough, sometimes you want every other version of it that exists. One copy for yourself is never enough, never! :specialed:
     
  9. Naean

    Naean

    Naean H.F. (Nez Man) Member
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    While I'm not completely sure what you mean by "excess vocabulary", I suppose I could have stated my points in slightly less words, maybe? I tend to be someone who 'waffles on quite a bit', for the main purposes of me trying to put across my thoughts and whatnot in a way that thoroughly explains my points with reasoning, and also hopefully can't be misunderstood or taken in wrong context(s).

    To clarify, I was disagreeing with the section of your post that I quoted. The line "I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me or invalidating your own argument" is about the last kind of response that I expected. Perhaps I'm missing some wording oversights/mistakes in my post which are noticeable or very obvious to others? Apologies if my post, and my opinions/perspectives, came across as confusing or convoluted. Definitely not my intention! If anything, I thought that lengthening my post with fuller explanations/elaborating would minimise the chances of confusion. Ah well, win some, lose some. :)

    I was unaware that Sonic Mania Plus didn't fix some of the game crashes, so thanks for letting me know about that! I agree that it's a bit depressing that such great potential is restrained by overly strict deadlines and limited budgets, moreso upon hearing that some game crashes were not fixed even in Sonic Mania Plus. Also, I completely forgot about that physics quirk of jumping on slopes, which was quite a bit disappointing to see removed in a patch, as it looked fun and harmless. Speaking of fun quirks, the removal of in-air Spin Dash charging off crumbling ground (right from the get-go in base Sonic Mania) is a great shame. :(

    I agree that neither games are perfect. No game (in fact, absolutely nothing) is perfect, although there are some aspects of Sonic Mania Plus that I prefer over the original Sonic Mania. A notable one is being the change to the main menu: the menu options and associated animated graphics being unified into their own respective consistent areas satisfies my O.C.D. very much, hah. Another notable change is adding the missing level transitions, which were a very striking omission in base Sonic Mania. Having said that, the added transition between Hydrocity Zone Act 2 to Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 doesn't make much sense, and leaves too much to the imagination. It's unclear how the two areas are travelled between.
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
  10. Sid Starkiller

    Sid Starkiller

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    My headcanon (and what I was hoping that cutscene would do) is that the section of Hydrocity you walk to after the boss is big enough for the remaining characters to bring in the Tornado to pick you up, explaining why all 3 characters are together at Mirage Saloon's opening.
     
  11. Naean

    Naean

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    For a while, I've had this idea for how I'd like them to have tackled the transition:

    The cracked bricks get blasted away by the Tornado's propeller acting as a saw-blade, while the plane moves on-screen and enters the defeated-boss area.

    Then, the characters hop on the Tornado, the plane reverses out of the hole and off-screen accompanied by reverse beeps, and Hydrocity Zone Act 2 fades out.

    After that though, I'm not sure how I would handle the entry transition for Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 in Encore Mode.

    It's such a shame that the transition was left so ambiguous, as it sticks out like an awkward sore thumb amongst the other transitions.
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
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  12. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Pretty much this. This is such a typical Sega move that I'm not sure what else can be said about it.

    It also confirms that they totally could had done a physical release of the original Mania all the way back in 2017 (like they should had done to begin with) but they didn't because of """"""reasons"""""".

    Whatever. I'm just going to approach the glass being half full here and take this as a sign of Mania still having enough demand in stores to continue receiving prints of physical copies, in one way or another. Hopefully the announcement of a new Genesis Sonic in development by Evening Star and/or similar company is closer than we think....

    As for the patched-out stuff like the Metal Sonic fight and old menus--I can't say I'm upset about them being replaced but I'm surprised they weren't hidden somewhere in the updated games, just for historical / curious interest. You'd think just for posterity's sake, the developers would had preserved access to them through a special debug code or something. (Although in fairness, I was also surprised the Metal Sonic Kai boss replaced the old wall boss in Mania Mode to begin with. I thought the Kai boss would be planned as an Encore Mode exclusive.)

    Pretty sure if you look up "mediocre" in at least one dictionary there's a picture of Sonic Forces next to it.

    But from what we know, the game's sales performance on digital stores and retail charts was anything but a sign of success. Which makes it all the more confusing that Sega said the game "performed strongly" on their IR reports. But hey, Sega never made a statement about how many copies Forces sold, which they eventually did for Mania, so that should be a good hint towards where the truth lies in reality.
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
  13. Pengi

    Pengi

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    Sonic Mania was an unknown quantity at the time. Now it's proven itself and they have two years' worth of sales data to go on. Sega will publish whatever they determine is financially viable.

    Hydrocity Zone is right next to Angel Island Zone, which is where they left the Tornado. Maybe they just retraced their steps?

    There are more gaps to fill with Encore Mode, since the Tornado was last seen crashed in the desert. But Sonic was missing long enough for Tails to recover and repair it.
     
  14. MH MD

    MH MD

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    It depends on their expectations in the first place, it can be as simple as them expecting the game to doing a certain "low" number and the game did exactly as they predicted, maybe even surpass it, and in that way it can be considered a success, even if it is less than Mania and not exactly lighting fire on charts, but doing good enough, which i believe what happened , given it is a budget release, SEGA is not afraid of calling bad sonic sales like boom are Runners in their financial statements
     
  15. Beltway

    Beltway

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    For an "unknown quantity" Sega seemed pretty confident in it enough to merchandise the heck out of it and allowed it to be in the same room as the big 2017 Sonic game by the official studio in regards to advertising. They didn't have to make booths of it playable at E3 or Gamescom and have giant signs promoting it as playable there. Nor did they have to give it a $70 Collector's Edition with a statue and ring; something that neither Forces, Lost World, or the game that was literally branded "next in line after Sonic 3" received. Someone even found money from underneath their accountant's couch to put up poster advertisements in a train and around a mall in a country Sonic isn't popular in at all.

    And I mean, how couldn't they. On paper, it's kinda hard to pitch making a(nother) followup to some of some of your franchise's/publisher's most successful games as an untested concept, even for the small-scope production that it was. Just look at the amount of people asking about a retail release from the moment the game was announced. It got to the point that Limited Run Games offered to pick up the tab themselves on that front if Sega wasn't interested on Twitter.

    I'm sure a lot of people were more forgiving on this front since it was cool that we were getting a genuine classic Sonic sequel at all and not another "wasn't that bad" plate of warm tap water like the last attempt(s). I probably would had been too if it was actually promoted in the scope of the indie-level production that the game actually was.

    Fair point, but it should also be noted both of those events were released before / during the 2015 restructuring. Their IR reports (unfortunately) don't really talk about sales of their packaged games anymore, unfortunately, barring certain releases (i.e. Persona 5 and more recently, Total War: Three Kingdoms).
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
  16. Pengi

    Pengi

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    You're looking at it from an outsider's perspective. Aaron Webber and others have talked about how the physical version came into being, and how it isn't as quick and simple as people may think.
     
  17. TheOcelot

    TheOcelot

    Scooty Puff Jr sucks! Member
    Yeah, this idea always made sense to me. At the end of Hydrocity in Mania a gush of water rises from the ground (just like at the end of Hydrocity in Sonic 3) and Sonic & Tails are launched into the air and end up back in Angel Island Instead of Marble Garden, where they collect the Tornado and go to Mirage Saloon. Perhaps a tad long-winded but would have made for a neat transition.

    When I think of how much effort Team Mania put into the other transitions, the one between HC & MS whilst not particularly bad, feels so basic compared to the the others. It feels more like one of Knuckles transitions in 3K; for example at the end of Sandopolis where Knuckles just walks right and ends up in Lava Reef (whereas Sonic & Tails full down a long pit and then end up in Lava Reef).

    Maybe Team Mania didn't have the budget or enough time to complete a more detailed transition between HC & MS for both Mania mode (with the Tornado) & Encore mode (without the Tornado), so decided to create this very basic one to use in both modes. Although that doesn't explain why all the other zones got better transitions and why HC to MS drew the "short straw" as it were.

    The only other transition which didn't feel quite right was the one between Stardust Speedway to HC. The SS part of this transition works fine (Eggman uses the Phantom Ruby to transport Sonic & Tails to Hydrocity). However, in all other transitions when Eggman uses the Ruby to transport Sonic to the next zone you see Sonic "spinning" briefly as he arrives in the zone-just like at the beginning of GH, CP, SS & ER. Whereas in the SS to HC transition you don't see any spinning animation for Sonic when he arrives in HC (before he falls into the water). Why?

    Now yes, I know this is an incredibly minor omission and is not a big deal, but when you consider Team Mania's attention to detail, the omission of a two-second spinning animation is another strange decision.

    With HC having an arguably incomplete transition at the start and and a very basic one at the end, it does make me wonder if HC was one of the zones which had to be moved around late in development. Perhaps was initially supposed to take place earlier in the game and for whatever reason when it was moved next to MS; creating a transition to MS was more problematic than Team Mania anticipated. Dunno, maybe... ;)
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
  18. Naean

    Naean

    Naean H.F. (Nez Man) Member
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    Come to think of it, all things considered, Hydrocity Zone feels like the game's most rushed Zone in a number of ways:

    1 - Act 1 intro transition Phantom Ruby sound effects, visual effects and character animations strangely absent.

    2 - Music remixes for both Acts play it quite safe (less melody-tinkering and less instrumentation differing) compared to pretty much all of the other returning Zones' music remixes.

    3 - Act 2 contains the most bare-bones edits to level design in the whole game, containing fewer edits than even Green Hill Zone.

    4 - Aside from a handful of cosmetic changes, visual additions/enhancements/alterations are quite minimal compared to all other returning Zones.

    5 - Act 2 boss' second phase is missing the destruction/breaking-apart animation for the circular-mech's vertical stand after the boss is defeated. (This animation is present in the original, whereas in Sonic Mania it just pops out of existence.)

    6 - Act 2 exit transition feels too vague, and doesn't have context-specific differences for Mania Mode and Encore Mode. Further adding to the feeling of this transition being rushed, is that it's missing the skip transition functionality present in all other transitions of this kind.


    When you add it all up, yeah, it does make you wonder if the Zone was a last-moment addition to the roster. I mean, that's 6 key aspects of the Zone which feel "off" compared to other Zones in the game, which is quite a lot for one Zone.

    If it's indeed the case that Hydrocity Zone was added quite late in development, then the Zone changing position among other Zones (perhaps quite a few times, too) would make sense. Additionally, the music remixes being the most vanilla could also be explained, if the tracks were hastily remixed last moment.
     
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2019
  19. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Outside perspective or not, what does anything I've said about Mania's promotion come across as misguided in regards to Mania getting a physical release? Nothing Webber and company have said about getting the physical release greenlit contradicts the advertising and tie-in materials the game also received. You don't think those aren't elements that need to be considered in regards to making something that is financially viable?

    I also don't think saying "a physical release could had been possible in 2017" is saying "making a physical release is quick and easy," but I'll hey, I'll accept responsibility for thinking that the implications for the latter may be there in that comment.
     
  20. Pengi

    Pengi

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    A physical release for Mega Man 9 was possible. A physical release for Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth was possible. A physical release for Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I was possible.

    Ultimately any company is going to go with a strategy that they think makes most sense for their product.

    Sonic Mania got a physical release due to strong and consistent demand for one, in addition to strong sales and reviews. Even then, the special packaging, art book and extra content were all added to sweeten the deal for people who'd already bought the game digitally.

    Now that the game has made its money, and they have two years' worth of sales data, and a Christmas period with no new Sonic game, they've deemed it viable to release a budget stocking filler version.