Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

Seems the press will be getting advance copies / be reviewing for Mania Plus after all (tweet is in French). (Not a hoax this time--tweet includes pictures of the French/EU Switch retail copy of Mania Plus, which has a photo of the reversible cover). Kudos to BlueParadox/Parax for spotting this / posting this to SSMB.

On that note, I wonder if Mania Plus might get a street date broken/early leak? Especially considering that some store somewhere in the wild did so two weeks early for Forces last year?

e: Parax says he got in touch with Aurelien (who posted the above tweet) and the latter confirmed it is indeed a review copy.

 

Lord that Megadrive Cover is gorgeous.

I need this now.

 

And the review embargo has been lifted folks.

http://gamingtrend.com/?p=173570 - 95/100
http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/07/10/sonic-mania-plus-review - 7/10 (for some reason)
https://www.destructoid.com/review-sonic-mania-plus-510893.phtml - 8/10
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/sonic-mania-plus-review-a-fine-master-quest-for-the-gotta-go-fast-crowd/ - No number but positive
http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2018/07/10/sonic-mania-plus-review-bigger-blue-blur-team-ps4/#/slide/1 - 9.5/10

So overall positive, as expected. It seems like "your milage may vary" when it comes to both the new bonus stage (which you can catch a glimpse of in the IGN video review. Looks cool and not what I expected) and Encore mode (which I guess that makes sense. If you don't know the main mode like the back of your hand you likely won't notice too much of a difference save for difficulty spikes, and I even know some people who had a hard time with the main game). But everyone seems to love Mighty and Ray, so that's good.

Just 1 more week!

 

Significant chunk of Mania Plus footage from IGN here - not had a chance to watch properly yet, but from flicking through looks like it contains a lot of new footage of Encore Mode etc. in action.

There's also a video review here which includes footage of the new pinball bonus stage. As for the review itself, they're not too impressed with Encore Mode and seem to have been expecting it to be much more than it is, and don't really like Ray's abilities or the fact you can't switch at will between all five characters in Encore Mode. Personally, I reckon being able to switch between all five characters at will would make you massively overpowered - having to decide whether to switch when you find the appropriate monitors adds a bit of strategy to the whole gimmick!

 

Ok this is the most nitpickiest of nitpicks, but does it bother anyone else that the sprites they use to show how the character swap mechanics work don't match? For some reason they use Migthy and Ray's continue sprite but Sonic's mini Metallic Madness sprite.

Why?

Also here's 14 minutes of Mania Plus footage from IGN. Shockingly it actually looks like they know how to play the game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irEn_JGOZKI

 

Here's an extended look at the new bonus stage, courtesy of someone who clearly struggles with pinball games. It's even more involved than Blue Spheres.

Spoiler

I see they managed to sneak in the bumper/flipper designs from Sonic CD in there, and obviously the combi catcher from Chaotix.

 

That looks really fun and really annoying at the same time.

At least we have a more proper bonus stage now.

 

I like how the new bonus stage combines aspects from Chaotix, SegaSonic arcade, and Spinball. It's nice seeing nods to the games that were otherwise overlooked (Well, Mighty and Ray aside of course)

 

Spoiler

Oh, no!

 

Am I the only one who feels Ray's sprites in general are drastically different compared to the other characters? Like maybe it's just me, but compare him to the other characters and he just looks out of place.
Here's some screenshots I got from some video comparing him to the characters Sonic, Tails, and Mighty. Haven't found a Knuckles one for comparison:



He even looks a little too big and looks like a Sonic reskin. But to be fair, that was the original point of Mighty and Ray. Their debut was just a simple arcade game anyways.

 

Ok so I'm not alone there. I mean Ray's sprites look fine, yet for some reason they seem to match and not match at the same time and I can't put my finger on why.

Maybe it's his slightly different muzzle shape and his perma raised brow (it's like inbetween what Sonic normally looks like and how Ron Lim used to draw Sonic)



Actually I have another question about Ray. His official art has a circle on the back of his shoes yet that detail doesn't seem to appear on any sprite or in Sonic Mania Adventures. It's clearly not a shine though, so I wonder what that's all about.

 

I just want to know if the final boss is any different in Encore.

 

Mighty and ray having while soles on their shoes really messes up the sprite style, they should have been flat like the main cast.

Ray also has a HUGE head and some weird angles especially looking up, I hate to think along these lines but they feel... rushed, sloppy somewhat.

 

Those are some weird highlights. Probably would have been better to omit those

And the white soles aren't that drastic of a change. Knuckles has soles to his shoes too, and Mighty had soles in Chaotix.

 

Nintendolife has a overlook of the Plus retail copy [US, Switch], which has photos of the bells and whistles--packaging, a couple of pages of art book, slipcover, cartridge, and Mania Plus running on Switch (the screenshot of which has the start screen--which has a couple of noticeable changes).

The one that really caught my eye was concept art of the logos:



On one hand, I like how the concept logos on top tried to go with 90s-era text for the Mania text logo and go with the "blue-in-yellow" Sonic logo text a-la Sonic 2 (as opposed to the yellow-in-blue text for most Sonic logos); but I like the final logo we got more. But on the other hand, I really, really love the the near-final logo that has white color/red highlights for the Mania text that's at the bottom. Part of me wishes they chose that over the red Mania text in the final.

Concerning aggregate reviews, Mania Plus is reviewing fairly similar to the original.

MC Switch - 85 (8 reviews) [OG Mania on Switch - 86]
MC PS4 - 84 (6 reviews) [OG Mania on PS4 - 86]
Opencritic - 88 (14 reviews) [OG Mania - 87]

(No reviews for MC Xbox One counted on MC yet. OG Mania on Xbox One was an 83 MC.)

Ought to be interesting on how this develops. Encore Mode seems to be the main deciding point between a 7-8 or a 9-10 based on the reviews I've read--which can either put Mania Plus slightly behind the original (84-85) or put it ahead of the original by a good 2-4 aggregate points (88-90).

 

Aww I wish they used the Blue font with the yellow outline. I always preferred that style tbh (especially considering how Sonic is, well, blue, you'd think the logo would follow suit. Idk why they decided to go with yellow).

 

Heaven forbid we get a full view of the page spread XD. I defintely think the final logo works best. The older ones look a little too menacing/serious. The current one gives the old Japanese box art style some love.

 

Based on that 13 minute IGN video it seems like Robotnik's Mean Bean abilities have gotten slightly better since last we saw in Mania mode. (Not by much, just slightly, but still.)

Seems like the thinking for Encore mode was to make the whole game at least slightly if not moderately more challenging than the main game. Makes sense since they intend/figure most people playing it will have played the main game a bunch. And even first-timers will still likely check out the main game first since it is the first option on the menu. Super happy they went that route. Still need to dig in to all this new info before giving any more thoughts. Definitely can't wait for the 17th, though!

 

Ray's head is so big because proportionally in most of the original art I can find of him, it really is that big compared to his body. I guess it was emphasized because it's the other most distinctive part of him besides the arm flaps? It looks fine to me, maybe a little tall but not too proportionately off. It's likely the result of not having any sort of sprite reference at all in 2D for scale (Mighty has Chaotix to work with at the very least).

We're all kinda used to Ray's newer appearances (posters, comics, etc.) where his head actually shrunk, but in the old SegaSonic days he had a very big lobe. It probably looks even bigger than it is because it's just a chestnut shape as opposed to Sonic's more sleek look.