Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

I really hope a few of Encore modes palettes get tweaked a bit more, Hydrocity Act 2 and Lava Reef Act 1 both made my eye's hurt and eventually gave me a headache. Sorry devs, but the large amount of red in those stages imo is simply too loud.
OcelotBot, did you have any issues playing those stages by chance, any eye strain, or was everything fine?

 

From what I saw of OcelotBot's playthrough the colour changes range from "fuck yeah" to "fuck no" across the board with some turning out beautifully whilst others representing a significant downgrade that screams of time constraints. Hopefully our master theory is correct and the final release will be a much later and more worked on build that'll finalise some of these artistic changes. Guess we'll know upon release.

 

One can only hope so, I like most here am really looking forward to playing Plus, but I sure as hell don't want to keep aspirin on hand each time I decide to play HC2 or LR1

 

In my eyes, the largest missed opportunity colour palette wise, is the lack of using purple rocks in Lava Reef Zone Act 1. This would be an apt nod to Marble Zone, considering that they share themes and (Especially in Sonic Mania.) level design gimmicks.

 

I honestly still think the pallete swaps are incredibly lame. That's the kind of think a kid does for his first rom hack. Hopefully they will all end up looking decent.

I'm much more excited about the other Plus additions - especially the ability to swap characters at any time.

 

Maybe you're never intended to play as Tails or Knuckles in Encore mode and those switch monitors just swap Mighty & Ray? To be more specific, we've seen from trailers and screenshots that you can play the encore mode stages as characters by themselves but as far as I remember, none of the images we have with the swap mechanic ever show Tails or Knuckles. We've seen them in the Encore versions of levels, the credits for Mania Adventures Episode 2 was tails by himself in Encore mode, but we've never seen Tails or Knuckles paired up with Mighty or Ray. (Unless I'm wrong?)

What if, for the sake of throwback to SegaSonic Arcade, it's just those three characters? And after you finish it in combo mode then you're given the ability to play the stages as anyone solo? I just don't see as much value in pairing Tails or Knuckles with Mighty & Ray as you get when pairing them with Sonic. Sonic lacks a special ability that promotes stage exploration so Mighty & Ray can complement that by adding specific pathways, whereas Tails & Knuckles special ability already gives them alternative routes. There are basically no Sonic-specific routes, because Tails can take all of the same ones. (I can't say this about Knuckles due to the jump height difference)

 

The other day, Sony put up pictures on their Japanese blog with of some new Encore Mode stuff (https://twitter.com/sonicparadise/status/996674732547244032). In one of the screenshots, you can see a Tails monitor in Encore's Green Hill, so maybe it could actually switch out to him or something.

 

Wait...... if the character swapping/tag team mechanic ends up including every character, what will happen to “and Knuckles” mode? Will partner Knuckles become part of the regular roster, and “and Knuckles” mode will only apply to the Knuckles and Knuckles team? I can't imagine that choosing Knuckles as a partner for Sonic or Tails would grant you the “and Knuckles” ending, so if the tag team theory turns out to be true for all character pairings then that will definitely have to change in some way.

 

If that does turn out to be the case, I'd imagine "& Knuckles" mode simply won't be available in Encore Mode - since Encore is a separate mode, it could still be an option in Mania Mode without interfering with Encore Mode's partner swap gimmick.

 

I have to say, I'm loving Encore Mode. Palette changes are hit-and-miss, but I've always been a fan of palette changes (as long as they have some use - in this case, to distinguish Mania Mode and Encore Mode). Level design is... actually good? There's still a lot of automation but almost all of it was already there in Mania Mode, and there's less of it now; the ways of accessing alternate paths are pretty clever, and go beyond just using Mighty's and Ray's special abilities. Lava Reef continues to be the best (seriously, at this point I might make a mod that's just S3K Lava Reef, Mania Lava Reef, Encore Lava Reef as a set, it's consistently amazing) but Mirage Saloon 1E looks to be giving it a run for its money - Mirage Saloon 1K was the best act of the zones new to Mania and 1E blows it out of the water.

I'm really looking forward to this. At this point I can only ask for improved bosses.

 

This screenshot does not refute my theory. It does not show the character swap mode at all. It could just be Tails alone like shown in the credits of Mania Adventures Episode 2, and that's a standard extra life monitor.

Edit: To clarify my theory, because it sounds like multiple people did not understand: I'm proposing that Encore mode might just be Sonic, Mighty & Ray. You can play the encore stages with all characters individually, where the game mechanics work exactly the same as mania mode with lives & such, but the actual encore mode might just be those 3 SegaSonic Arcade characters with the new game mechanics. This would explain why the only screenshots we've seen featuring the swap mechanic have Sonic in them, while the videos & screenshots with Tails & Knuckles are by themselves in those stages. It would also explain why you revert back to Sonic upon entering GHZ if you try to Combi Mighty/Ray with Tails or Knuckles in the 1.04 build.

 

But there are no lives in encore mode, right?

 

I found more footage of Angel Island on youtube. The background at the beginning of AI in this video isn't glitched.

Apparently if you press restart whilst in AI the background is fixed when you restart again. However, this doesn't work when I try it. I get the glitched version when I press restart, or when restarting after dying.




This guy has also uploaded footage of Encore mode

 

Nice find. You can really tell Angel Island was worked on by the same artists that worked on the main game--the pixel art and animation is beautiful. (Other footage including yours that shows more of the Bloominator and Rhinobot badniks shows that their art and animation is gorgeous as well.)

 

Ooh, interesting! Much better to see it as intended, rather than with the wrong background and a missing foreground layer. Looks very nice! = )

Now that we can actually see the start of the stage, we can see it matches the released screenshot of Sonic with the Phantom Ruby portal above him, so it seems that shot is from an intro cutscene of some kind.

Have you tried only restarting once you're in the short section of the stage where the background usually displays properly (i.e. between the large waterfall and the quarter-pipe ramp that leads up to Mighty and Ray)?

 

It's making me consider that Mania mode was intended to be the more "approachable" of the two campaigns, so perhaps for Encore mode they're trying a more focused, challenging design in terms of the levels and how they test you. I haven't looked at a lot but given these comments I'm glad that the level design actually is significantly different!

I've only peeped the palettes and I think most are fine, to be honest. The worst they are to me is inoffensive and inferior, but at their best they are fantastic.

 

Quite possibly; it makes sense from a business standpoint too.

The level design isn't significantly different for many of the early zones, but it seems like as the game progresses there are more and more differences, with much of the later zones being virtually unrecognisable.

 

I think it makes sense to have the level design differ more later than earlier, just to keep a sort of difficulty curve present and because even in encore mode you don't want to like, overwhelm people. I think doing this also kinda ups the level differentiation and the uniqueness of the overall levels in the game too.

It does feed into my idea that Mania Mode was the way it was not just because of preferences but also cause it may have been designed with the notion of unfamiliarity for a lot of long-time fans who fell off during the later era of Sonic.

 

Tried this many times and it didn't work.


However, I've now done it! I can now get the act to start with the complete background. How did I manage this? Well:

In the Angel Island act I entered a bonus stage (I used debug-mode to create a star-post and gave myself 50 rings). I entered the bonus stage (blue sphere), immediately excited and restarted the act. It now starts with the correct background!

EDIT:

I have removed my previous video of Angel Island and uploaded this new one, which now has the correct background from the very start. I played Angel Island with Sonic, Tails and then Knuckles:



At 5:55 when I start playing with Knuckles, I show how I change the incomplete background to the fully complete background.

 

Man, seeing Angel Island zone like this is such a tease. I don't need to say why. Thanks for the videos!