Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

What if though that's not an extra life box but a Chaotix esq character swap box? Their choice not to show a character in that picture is rather strange, maybe they're trying to keep that a secret.

 

Annoyed only Japan is getting the soundtrack - especially since it looks like it might actually be a complete soundtrack.

Has there been official confirmation on the ability to switch between characters like in Sonic Advance 3? I would think they would advertise that more to be honest - seems like a much better selling point than "lol we recolored the levels".

 

Perhaps the lives / tag-team oddity implies different modes. The non-competitive Encore footage is clearly solo play, with no hints of the tag-team system anywhere in the trailer.

 

They've only mentioned it in the Famitsu article so far along with some hints from screens. But nothing from Aaron and friends. Maybe they want to keep that a surprise?

 

I'm kind of surprised that there's no new level layouts to accommodate Mighty and Ray. I guess Mighty will stick to what Sonic & Knuckles can do while Ray will take advantage of his glide like Tails & Knuckles?

 

The patch that will accompany the game seems to be doing some core level layout tweaks. We already know there's a Mighty slam path in Lava Reef Act 1. With the core tweaks in the patch, the same level design will probably be shared with Encore accordingly as they then alter the object and enemy placement for Encore.

 

Ah gotcha, I was not aware of it but glad those are being implemented.

 

There's also a route for Mighty in Angel Island as shown in this screenshot, which is clearly designed for his Hammer-Drop.

 

The ledge nearby looks too high to jump up to with either character, so that's probably a sort of 'use your ability in a safe environment' tutorial for the little bit of Angel Island we'll get to play.

 

I think the character monitors could be a swap system instead of extra lives, but it could even be some sort of life system, like in your main character could die, so your companion becomes your main and only character, then you get a character monitor and that character becomes your new companion. It could just replace your main character or companion if you have both.

About Ray's ability, I thought about the hang gliders in Sky High, but I may just be forgetting how did caped Mario's flight work. I don't think Mighty could break standard spikes, but it worked with the icicle ones in the trailer because of its immunity. Might as well (pun intended?) break ice blocks from any side without being iced himself instead of just from above like other character do.

 

And thank god. Finally we have a complete Super Sonic sprite set. No game has had that ever (hell even some 3D games have fucked this up *cough cough Lost World*).

 

He still doesn't have a proper "floating while standing still" animation for the final battle, doesn't he?

 

Full Angel Island Zone in Sonic Mania? Hot damn :D

 

Not *full, unfortunately, or at least not insofar. Aaron said on Twitter that no new stages have been confirmed, but Angel Island will be playable in some form, most likely just a tutorial or introductory stage.

 

Thanks for the links. For anyone considering importing the JP release, I got confirmation that Japan is indeed the only region that is getting the soundtrack on CD. (At least with boxed copies of "Plus" at launch… they could very well release the CD by itself here further down the line, though I wouldn't count on it.)

Whenever we only had a blurry low-resolution image of the JP release I mistook the art book for the introduction manual that they gave out at events last year. It's the 36-page art book, not the manual. That said, the first page it shows for the art book (that says "Characters" at the top and has an image of Sonic and Tails) is from the first page of the manual, so it seems likely that most if not all of the material that's in the introduction manual will be in that art book. (I was wondering why they weren't including the introduction manual with the physical release since they'd already made a bunch of 'em for last year and it seemed like such an easy thing to include, but if the art book is most/all the same material as the manual but with a lot more pages of artwork then it makes sense not to.)

Also the art book in the JP release has 36 pages, while the art book in all other regions was advertised as having 32. Maybe they're identical and the difference in page count is just from the differences in language/how much space the different text takes up? (The preview image of the JP art book currently shows English text, but maybe it just hasn't been translated yet.) Or maybe the art book in other/all regions is now 36. Doubt we'll get clarification on such a granular detail--will probably just have to wait and see!

Regarding the OST on CD having 54 tracks compared to the 47 on the selected digital release: considering they made a point of mentioning it included music from Hyper Potions, I'd assume most if not all of the additional 7 tracks are from them. They've done 4 songs for "Mania" so far, right? (First trailer, pre-order trailer, opening animation, and "Plus" trailer.) Like McAleeCh said, maybe the "& Knuckles" ending song will be included. Dunno what the other two would be, but my guess would just be remixes or unused songs by Hyper Potions. If it was gonna include the 6 tracks based on Nakamura's originals, you'd think they would advertise that over (what would then) only be 1 song from Hyper Potions.

Anyway, placed my order for a JP import copy, really just to have most of the soundtrack in lossless quality (something I've wanted/hoped for since we first heard Tee's work on the game). I have a pair of Sennheiser 650s, an old pair of 595s, and an amp, so it's worth it to me, plus I just like having the highest quality for archival purposes/to play around with.

Such a bummer that the best quality versions we have of GHZ 1/2, CPZ 1/2, and OOZ 1/2 are the 156-188 kbps ogg files from the PC release. Wish Sega would be nicer to Nakamura and work out the rights/royalties issue--hell, I'd love if he and Tee collaborated on some tracks for the sequel. Sadly doesn't seem like those dreams will come true, though…

 

Oh you- gold star for a gold post.


(in all seriousness, absolutely agreed. I've not got the funds to import right now, but I hope the OST gets a seperate release worldwide after this initial run.)

 

Honestly, why is this still a hurdle after all this time? What does Nakamura want? Why is this allowed in-game, but not for release as a soundtrack???? Unlike the Michael Jackson case, this is easily solveable.

 

Is it really easily solveable though? Songs like Green Hill are taken from actual Dreams Come True songs so I doubt Nakamura wants to sell them.

Plus, why sell Sega the rights when you can have a nice paycheck everytime they use one of his songs.