Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

I don't see Angel Island anywhere. It's not selectable on a clear save file either, as I understand it, so the only way to replay it is by starting a new file.

 

Thought the Collector's Edition and the Plus retail release wasn't enough in regards to special goodies?

Then check out this surprise Mania Plus press kit! Sent out of the blue to certain places in Europe, without warning.









Thanks to Mayor D (SSMB) for making a thread about it.

 

Impressive of Sega to make a trailer that dunks on things either a year or a decade too late.

 

So wait. Was playable Angel Island already known or wah? I swear I saw that in the infomercial gag there but I'm at work and can't screenshot.

 

I just wanna know when Sega is releasing their lootbox FPS.

 

It's a mini level that only serves to introduce Mighty, Ray and Encore mode, but yeah. When I say it's mini, I mean it. The entire level is about as long as the original AIZ1 up until the point it gets set on fire, and has absolutely no secrets, including the ones present in the original S3. It's a really nice little extra that they didn't have to bother with, but it's not something to get too excited about. It's over in under a minute.

 

Props to Sega for producing such a cool advert that derives from their legacy. Very appropriate given Mania Plus itself does the same. For those who don't know - though the origin of the promo video is that similar nineties-era Sonic 1 commercial the true origin is Tom Kalinske's idea to set up demo stations with Super Mario World running side by side with Sonic 1 around the US back in the Genesis days to show that Sonic 1 was the superior game. This in tandem with that cool press kit they're pushing out to the gaming media shows that they're at least giving Plus a strong marketing push which is awesome.

Hopefully all this translates to decent sales. It's going to be interesting to see sales numbers in a few months. Even 500K would be great though hoping it surpasses a million.

 

I wouldn't put them that high up. Considering the base game is about a year old, and sold ~1 million already, I'd put my armchair analyst estimate at ~150K over the course of the fiscal year. I don't think there's as big of a market left to tap by a physical release, and double-dipping is not going to be as common as us hardcore fans are going to make it out to be.

 

We don't know what its name is. We can't extract it properly until we do so. It's corrupted until then.

RandomT did find some other filenames though. SoundFX/Global/RingO.wav is a new one that sounds a little different than Ring. SoundFX/SSZ2/SSBomb.wav is also new but seems unused.

This next one is interesting. Every folder in Stages has 3+ files. These include the 16x16tiles.gif (holds a palette for the stage and the 1024 tiles it can fit), TileConfig.bin (collision for tiles), StageConfig.bin (holds palettes, sound effect info, object names, etc), and the Scene#.bin (the number is replaced with the number of the file in the stage. There could be many scenes or just one. For instance, GHZ has Scene1.bin and Scene2.bin for its two acts. LRZ1 has Scene1.bin because it's the first in the folder. LRZ2 is in a different folder and also has a Scene1.bin. Blue Spheres has like 36 I believe. Anyway, every stage has those four basic files (with some not needing a TileConfig like DAGarden). However, unlike any other stage, MMZ has a "Temp.gif" in its stage folder. It's half of the sprite of the Titanic Monarch in the cutscene at the end of act 2. It gets mirrored. It's now not even used, because I looked at MMZ2 in the updated Maniac Editor I'm working on and it's all tiles.

Another interesting bit is that the new MSZEnding doesn't have a Scene1.bin. It only has a Scene2. This probably wasn't the first ending.

There also seems to be an unused GHZ Encore palette that I didn't notice before. In Data/Palettes, there are two different palettes for GHZ. EncoreGHZ.act and EncoreGHZ2.act. Putting EncoreGHZ2 in the game looks like this: https://twitter.com/Axanery/status/1018833727185702912 . Looks much worse. Either that or I didn't apply it properly.

 

Not getting the game early has never felt like such a delay I tells ya...
(although that means we do get to watch the end Mania Adventures before firing up the game which I'm guessing is what SEGA planned!)

 

So do we know when the DLC will be available for those of us who already have Mania? Obviously it'll be out tomorrow, but does that mean tonight at midnight or tomorrow during the day?

 

Hmm. Perhaps my estimate was somewhat over optimistic though I'd still say 500K lifetime across all platforms is still a realistic and achievable target that the game should probably surpass. That'd make total sales for both Mania/Mania Plus at between 1.5 and 2 million which would be a massive success. Comparatively Sonic CD's remaster did some insane numbers (though admittedly with a lot of flash sales/repeated discounts and over quite a number of years) so I'm confident Plus has the same potential to also do well.

Guessing it'll be when Steam updates which is around 5pm GMT/BST on the day of release. I remember when Mania came out I had to wait for Steam to update at the usual time - at least for here in the UK.

 

Got the physical game early !
The artbook is pretty nice, I wish it has more pages though

I've finished Encore mode. Those new special stages are hard, I couldn't get any emerald. Is there a easy-to-find-early giant ring in a specific level ? (like the one near the beginning in Mania's Press Garden 1)

 

Oh, very interesting info. Excited to see any unused material that y'all manage to dig up. The unused color scheme for Green Hill Zone is very orange. Makes me think of Hi-C and orange soda. Definitely glad they changed the water to the purple shade they did, though honestly they could have kept the brighter sky or just gone with a slightly less bright shade--they ended up going with a shade that is a bit too dark. Still I think it looks fine, though there are lots of other zones I like more in terms of the color changes.

No idea what time it'll be at, but it'll be whenever the 1.04 patch gets pushed (which will probably vary across the various platforms the game is available on). When you search the PS4, Switch, Steam, and Xbox stores for "Mania," nothing regarding "Plus" or Encore comes up. So I think the only way to make the $4.99 digital upgrade purchase to "Plus"/Encore will be that option that is on the new menu in the 1.04 patch.

I really hope they also have a separate way to get it digitally, either through a $4.99 listing on the various system stores that you can only purchase if you already have bought the game digitally, and perhaps a $24.99 listing that gets you the main game and "Plus" for those that haven't gotten the game digitally yet but want to. But a separate $4.99 listing on the various system stores that you can only buy if it detects that you already have "Mania" digitally would be the best way to handle that, if that's possible to do. In any case, I hope there is a way to get "Plus" digitally other than just from the new menu, because not having a listing for it on the system stores hurts visibility of it existing for more casual players that aren't in the loop.

 

To be fair, most of the levels in Sonic 1 could be finished in under 1 minute. =P

 

^ I can't speak for eShop / XBLA / PSN; but Lola Shiraishi (Mania producer) on Twitter said the DLC will be available to purchase on Steam tomorrow at 3PM UTC.

For other timezones, that would be:

8AM PDT (Los Angeles)

9AM MDT (Denver)

10AM CDT (Houston)

11AM EDT (New York)

4PM BST (London)

5PM CEST (Paris)

12AM JST (Tokyo)

~150K in a fiscal year would be barely be one-fourth the combined sales of Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal in their fiscal year (~620K).

The two of which are the Sonic franchise's absolute worst-selling games.

Despite being one of the best-selling games on the Nintendo Switch (eShop) platform last year and even selling over one million in the first place, even putting aside its critical praise.

I'm not expecting Mania Plus to sell gangbusters myself, but are some of ya'll being serious with these sales takes. This is the second time someone here on Retro said it would sell worse than the Boom games.

 

It's DLC of a year-old game coupled with a physical release. The Boom games, even knowing what they are, were new games with a new take on the series. It's not exactly apples to apples. I'd love my low-ball estimate to be just that, but I'd compare it more to DLC attach rates for other games rather than a new release.

 

Even still, I think 150k is glaringly unfitting. I don't know about a million because I'm not sure how much of the demographic is going to be physical only vs. the original digital only, but I'd definitely say the boxed game is going to sell more than 25% of Boom's sales at the least. Reason being mostly because Boom was critically panned, whereas Mania Plus is critically applauded. Boom started at full retail price while Mania Plus is only $30. Mania Plus is also gonna be a lot more friendly to window shoppers because of the fancy packaging and bonus content, with a somewhat familiar face on the package, whereas Boom just looks like a Sonic track and field fan fiction to anyone passing by, with characters that parents and kids will vaguely recognize but probably not connect with at first glance.

Maybe we're being optimistic, but I have a feeling Plus will do fairly well compared to the vanilla digital-only Mania, and I'm fairly certain it'll surpass 150k pretty soon after launch.

Unrelated, but how is everyone getting their copies so early? I'm going in to Best Buy today and I almost wanna ask them if they have it ready today, I feel like I'm missing out.

Update: I tried asking them if they had a pre-order under my name but they told me it won't be ready until tomorrow :/ y'all cheated the system lol

 

FFFFFFFFFf--

Knew I should have resisted the temptation to take the day off tomorrow - with that release time I'll barely be able to play anything before the evening! Managed to avoid making this mistake with the base game - I took the day after off that time specifically to avoid this sort of thing.

...Thankfully Mania was only one of the reasons I was taking the day off - just means I'll have to find other stuff to do in the few hours between lunch and 4PM where I'd expected to be blitzing my way through an initial run of Encore Mode, haha! = P

 

I'm going to check out my gamestop after work and see if they're going to release it a tad early. Otherwise I'll see what the PS4 has to offer. Worse comes to worse I pick it up for the Switch at 10 AM tomorrow.

I want to play this damn it

EDIT: I can pick the game up in 3 1/2 hours. Yeee!