Sonic Mania (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC...Netflix?)

I don't get this argument. The retro stages all have new layouts and designs. If the original Sandopolis was confusing, what's to say a Mania Sandopolis would also be confusing? Not liking the theme, the music, the look or anything else is fine, but the levels are being totally remade. You can expect new layouts, possibly even new gimmicks and changes to the things you're already familiar with.

 

I thought everyone would loved those zones. I love every one in Sonic 2 apart from Crystal Egg.

 

Just give the PC version Direct Input please.

 

This, this, and a million times this. The option of xinput or DirectInput would be very much appreciated.

 

I've thought more about the number of zones. I'm gonna take a guess at there being 12 in Mania and maybe another act for the final boss.

Taxman said Mania is bigger than Gens, and that the other new zone(s) (so there will be at least two more new) will be made up of completely new aesthetics (no Wood zone etc). Which means there will be at least four new zones. I'd guess at two re-imagined levels from Sonic 1, CD, 2 and 3&K (3&K to have one remade stage from the Sonic 3 half & one from S&K half).

So, four new and eight re-imagined sounds about right.

Whatever the number, it's obviously going to be a far more complete game than Sonic 4.

 

Now that we are going to get a western desert level I was thinking how cool it would be to get a new level mixing a finished Wood Zone with Jungle Zone.

 

Studiopolis and Mirage Saloon are my two new favorite zones in the series. I'm amazed at how gimmicky they are. Mirage Saloon, does it count as brand new or reimagined?

 

It's a reimagine zone of the scrap zone from the 2011 version, Sonic CD, Desert Dazzle zone. With a bit of Dust Hill in it. And it's brand new also.
So it's both : 3

I am so looking forward trying out that zone.

 

Mirage Saloon is only a reinagined zone in a meta-sense. Desert Dazzle was to be an adaptation of Dust Hill, but neither came to fruition. Mirage Saloon is an further adaptation of Desert Dazzle and deviates even further from the source material. It's pretty original. What it takes from Dust Hill is only really art and theme inspiration. If you didn't know about the history of other Sonic games, you wouldn't see it as any different to Studiopolis. It's definitely brand new.

 

It's been a while since I posted on Sonic Retro, but I'm back.
I'm pretty worried about the upcoming Sonic games and how Sega's bad management could affect them.

I'm afraid Sega's going turn Project Sonic 2017 into Sonic Generations 3... and turn Sonic Mania into Sonic Generations 2.
Project Sonic 2017 would get the Modern Sonic 3D/2.5D Boost gameplay and Classic Sonic 2.5D gameplay and Sonic Mania would get rehashed levels forced upon it, and I don't really like the sound of that.


Sega doesn't really seem to understand Sonic. I feel like I've learned more from Sega's mistakes than Sega has. The Sonic Mania trailer makes it sound like Sega's still looking for what makes Sonic good. So here I am, hoping my post will help things.

Now, I believe Christian Whitehead, Headcannon, and PagodaWest Games can make a great Sonic game... They really seem to know what they're doing. I trust them and I'm cautiously optimistic about their game. I think they understand Sonic. But it still feels like Sega could still mess Sonic Mania up... and Project Sonic 2017.

Where do I even start?

Green Hill Zone =/= Sonic
I'm tired of seeing Green Hill Zone appear in place of good content and creativity. Green Hill Zone references used to be ok previously, but Sonic 4 ruined it, then I put up with it in Sonic Generations (HD). But then what do I see the first time they announce Sonic Lost World? Yet another Green Hill Zone. > , < Instead of using Green Hill Zone well, Sega was just using it as a regurgitated meme. As much as I'm tired of it showing up in the main games and the racing games, it actually looks nice in Sonic Mania. It actually looks like it'll ADD to the game by comparing the Sega-Saturn-style graphics to the 16-bit graphics and injecting new level layouts and creativity into the existing Zone.
But one thing I really don't like is Sega just slapping a generic picture of Sonic in Green Hill Zone on the Sonic Mania Box Art as if that's all that game is--generic "nostalgia" rehash. I'm not even sure that's an original picture. It was posted on the Sonic Twitter before Sonic Mania was even announced.

You know, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the gameplay footage of Sonic Mania. Polygon's gameplay of Mirage Saloon (and GameXplain) actually made me realize how some of this works.

The way I see it, there are three levels.

• memes
• references
• continuity

Memes are very shallow. Surface level stuff. Like yelling "Gotta go fast!" as if Sonic is ONLY about going fast. Or yelling "Bounce pad!".
References go a bit deeper. They can be pretty cool when done right and if people don't get the reference, the reference doesn't necessarily hurt. Stuff like the van in Studiopolis Zone with "Hornet" and "High Class" written on it is pretty cool I guess. But when done wrong, it can break a player's immersion.
Continuity is way deeper. The guns in Mirage Saloon that look like Egg Robo's guns from Sonic 3&K, that's continuity. The painting of Egg Robo with a yellow scarf that makes him look like a promoted General or an owner of the Saloon... and the way the eyes follow you around. That's continuity. The ancient prophecies in Sonic 3&K in the Hidden Palace Zone and Hydrocity Zone, that's continuity. The way the images on broken Item Boxes disappear like a tube TV being turned off in the recent Sonic Mania footage... The totem poles in Green Hill Zone and the chiseled figures of bird heads on Labyrinth Zone's walls, that hints that there's something deeper.

I guess I like things that have meaning behind it.

Sonic memes are tampering with Sonic's continuity, and they have been for a long time. In Sonic Generations where Classic Tails said "Doctor Robotnik!" and he said "Nobody calls me that anymore!" didn't make sense. He looked like he did on the Genesis, and even when he was redesigned for Sonic Adventure, he was still Robotnik. And in Sonic Adventure 2, he was Dr. Eggman Ivo Robotnik. At least it doesn't make sense until you remember... memes.
It's kind of odd how the game calls him "Classic Eggman".

And of course, Sonic 1's marketing making it sound like Sonic 1 is ONLY about speed has been pretty damaging to the development of future Sonic games. Speed (and the illusion of speed) are important factors, but there's way more to him than that. He's a hero, an icon, who thinks for himself. He has attitude and skill that happen to make him cool.

The player psychology and tutorials hidden in Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 (but not Sonic 3) do a great job of driving this home. The developers wanted to have that thing in Marble Zone where you ride on a block in a pool of lava, but how do they teach you how to even push the block? A tutorial DISGUISED as a puzzle.
In Sonic 2, Act 2 of Emerald Hill Zone starts with a spring that aims up and to the right. You assume that's where you're supposed to go, so you just lazily flop yourself on to it. Later in the level on the lower pathway, you come across 2 springs aiming at each other. Running in there just makes you bounce back an forth between them. It really slaps you in the face and says "Automation is stupid. Think for yourself!" Now the springs after that become more interactive. You actively have to decide to use the springs because you said so, and not the developers... just like the developers intended.
It makes a really nice contrast between Sonic and Robotnik.
The springs told you automation is stupid. You're entering the Special Stages by thinking for yourself and using your own skills. Yet Robotnik is using automation hoping his badniks can retrieve the Chaos Emeralds.
You're playing a platformer to get the emeralds.
Robotnik is playing Cookie Clicker.
(Warning! If you Google Cookie Clicker for the first time, you may end up spending the next 3 days playing it. It's pretty compulsive.)

So it kinda bugs me how Sonic 3 doesn't use American Escapism, but ends up using passive Japanese escapism. At the beginning of Hydrocity Zone, there are 2 springs that bounce you back and forth, but it's not to force you to think for yourself. It's to move the camera quickly around so you can see the environment quickly. It's a form of automation to compensate for their lack of wide screen TVs back then. And the way they teach you about blocks in Sandopolis is by pinching you in a hallway and making you mindlessly run forward until your run into and push a block. Then you passively sit there and watch the block interact with stuff on the walls you didn't notice before.
Sonic 3's story and world building is way better than Sonic 2's, but I like Sonic 2 better overall because of its level design and player psychology. Plus Sonic 3's tutorials have that one fatal flaw... the barrel of doom.


...
...
Did I just start this post by talking about memes and let that get me sidetracked? Hmm...
Not quite what I intended.
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So what I've seen of Sonic Mania looks awesome... but what I've heard about it worries me. I've heard that Sonic Mania is planned to have more old Zones than new Zones.

So Kinda Funny Plays played an early build of it while interviewing Lola, the Producer of Sonic Mania who works at Sega. The guy playing wanted another Chemical Plant Zone and Sky Sanctuary Zone in Sonic Mania even though we already saw it in Generations. And Lola was like "Oh, ok."

I'm sure there's stuff Lola is keeping a secret. Keeping it hush, hush. Maybe not being able to tell him "No, we're not doing that". But to suggest we're going to see them rehashed just for the sake of "nostalgia" bugs me. Please don't force the Sonic Mania team into doing levels they don't want to. Please don't back them into a corner. Let them do their own thing.

I think part of why Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric was so bad was Sega making decisions without knowing how they'd affect its development. The game was running in CryEngine and it was probably being planned for PS4 and Xbox One. Then Sega decided it would be the third exclusive Sonic Game for the Wii U, a console that CryEngine wasn't really built for. All the bugs, all the lag, all the bad level design and poor conveyance, the boring mach speed sections and the repetitive voice clips to disguise its boringness, the concept art that looked so much better than the final game... all of that likely stemmed from the decision to make it a Wii U game. How can they focus on making the level design good when they're fighting the engine tooth and nail the entire time?
(Note: I haven't played Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric myself, but I saw a lot of Let's Plays of it on YouTube.)



Sega seems to like to divide and conquer themselves a lot. Sega was broken into so many mini teams for Sonic X-treme. It's one of the big things that killed the project. If they finished that game, they could have used the Sonic X-treme engine to make production of Sega Saturn games easier.

Then with Sonic Adventure, they had 6 different playable characters with different play styles. Sort of made sense at the time when trying to sell a new console, but being a Sonic game, Sonic was given the most development time and was the best playable character. Everyone who played like Sonic was cool (basically Tails) but decisions made for Sonic affected other characters negatively. To make sure Sonic doesn't stop dead all the time, made it so running against a wall could alter the direction Sonic was facing. This ended up messing with Gama's section because it was hard for him to am his gun where the analog stick was pointing. And then that carried over to Sonic Adventure 2's more sizable mech stages. And then it carried over to Sonic Heroes. Didn't hurt the normal levels too much, but it really did a number on the Special Stages. The engine didn't like hills very much, and it was hard to tell what was and wasn't a hill in the Special Stages. It caused the characters to move pretty erratically.

Then Sonic 06 was a huge train wreck. Half the team left to port the game to the Wii, decided it wouldn't work, and decided to make Sonic and the Secret Rings. Sonic 06 had 9 Different playable characters, about 18 different gameplay styles. They can't make Sonic's gem bar deplete correctly if they're busy trying to fix Knuckles' problem getting stuck on walls. And they can't fix Knuckles' melee attacks if they're trying to make Shadows vehicles handle correctly. They can't focus on giving Silver those item shop things so he can run reasonably fast if they're trying to make it so hopping in and out of a town mission takes only 2 loading screen instead of 4.

Then Sonic Boom. Instead of being separated into 6 playable characters like Sonic Adventure, it's originally separated into 2 videogames, 1 TV show, and a comic book tie in. There's now at least 3 or 4 Sonic Boom Sonics that I know about, all contradicting each other while pretending they're the real Sonic.
Instead of playing as Sonic or Tails for the best part, people tend to watch the TV show.
Instead of playing Gama's story that's short, kinda fun, and mostly harmless, people can read the Sonic Boom comic tie in.
Instead of playing Amy Rose's mediocre story, people can play Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal the 3DS game that's supposedly ok but super drawn out and boring.
Instead of playing Big the Cat's terrible story, people can play Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for the Wii U.

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"That which is missing" from modern Sonic is focus.
Sonic 1 is very complex. It has momentum, physics, and timing is very important. If the game engine's timing was off, it could lead to getting stuck in a lot of walls. So the developers had to focus most of their effort into that one gameplay style to make sure it worked. It also had Special Stages, but those were relatively simple. Sonic 1 is a AAA game that used to be sold for $60 and that $60 mainly went into that one main gameplay style.
Sonic 2 is a AAA sequel that also had a lot of focus in its development. That's about $120 of development.
Counting Sonic 3&K's 2 cartridges, that's about $240 of development. Even though Sonic 3&K had multiple different characters, they all played like Sonic except for a few unique moves. It's not like the had to start from scratch when programming how Knuckles ran.



And then there's Sonic Unleashed. It's actually like 2 separate games, the daytime parts, and the nighttime parts.
It looks like a $60 game, it sounds like a $60 game, but on a gameplay and interactive level, it feels like a $30 game that's twice as long as it should have been.
The daytime boost sections didn't get the same level of development as Sonic 1 did, so it's more like a Sonic 0.5... And the Werehog sections are like a Sonic 0.5 as well.

With Sonic Colors, they kept the boost, threw out the Werehog and added Whisp... vehicle sections, I guess. They certainly aren't "power ups" like they'd have you believe. They're not as simple as a shield nor temporary invincibility. Even Mario's Fire Flower doesn't stop Mario from running and jumping like he normally does. The Whisps completely change the gameplay and controls. This can really eat up the development resources. They probably made Sonic Colors more 2D so the Whisps and environments were easier to develop.
So the gameplay of normal Sonic in Sonic Colors was probably on par with Sonic 1 with around $60 of development. And the Whisps were probably like a Sonic 0.5 with $30 of development.
(Note: I haven't actually played Sonic Colors on the Wii much. Never owned it. But I've seen a lot of footage on YouTube from Let's Plays.)
Seems like when Color's gameplay got $60 of development behind it, fans started to think it was special. That's when they really started to like it and recommend it to other people.

Sonic Generations, still not confident in its boost gameplay, threw away the Whisps and added Classic Sonic as its new crutch. With $30 of development, Classic Sonic doesn't play anywhere close as well as Sonic used to in the old Genesis games. Rolling down hills, into badniks, and trough loop-de-loops isn't anywhere close to what it used to be. But it was still fun. And it was cool to see a 3D model of Classic Sonic in action. And it was cool to see a new take on most of the Zones... except Green Hill Zone and Planet Whisp. Sonic 4 had already ruined Green Hill Zone, but I put up with it on the HD version. But reusing the exact same level layout in the 3Ds version was cheap. And Casino Night Zone on 3Ds was really rough to make it through with the new physics. It wasn't designed with those new physics in mind. And Planet Whisp wasn't that old and--
Ok, I'm getting side tracked. The Modern Sonic sections must have had about $90 of development, being on par with a Sonic 1.5. But then again, there were a lot of optional items you could use to change how both Sonics played. Sega seemed unsure on what the best thing for the gameplay was. There were a lot of options there for changing how Sonic's acceleration, braking, boost, spin dash, and wall jumping worked. It was still very interesting to see though.
Sonic Generations (HD) was the first Sonic game in a long time that was awesome and super easy to recommend. The gaming community spoke more fondly about Sonic after that.

The Sonic Lost World on the Wii U threw all of that away. And what it replaced that with wasn't good. Most of its game systems seem to get in the way of each other. They're incompatible. The kick and the homing attack bring a level of randomness and uncertainty to each other. There's usually no good way of knowing what attack will actually work on the enemy until you try it out. And Sonic runs differently when moving forward in 3D than when he moves left or right in 3D. And he even moves differently in 2D. All these walking and running speeds affect the arc of his jump. Spin dashing, parkour mode, and the returning Whisps (including some 3D Whisps) operate very differently from each other. All eating up precious development time and resources.
With all of Sonic's different movement types, it's hard for me to divvy up where all the development went, but here's a quick guesstimate.
Sonic's base movement over all probably got less than $20 of development because of how many times it was divided up. Worse than a Sonic 0.3.
Sonic's parkour system probably got about $20 of development. Somewhere close to a Sonic 0.3.
There's a lot of new Whisps. Some of them are relatively simple, but a lot are complex. With the development spread so thinly, the Whisps' quality is less than $20 of development. Less then a Sonic 0.3 in most places.
A very misguided game.

Sonic 1 = $60 of development
Sonic 2 = $120 of development
Sonic 3 = about $180 of development
Sonic 3&K = about $240 of development

Sonic Unleashed ? Sonic 0.5
Modern Boost = $30 of development
Werehog = $30 of development
Average = $30 of development

Sonic Colors ? Sonic 1
Modern Boost = $60 of development
Whisps = $30 of development
Average = about $60 of development

Sonic Generations ? Sonic 1.5
Modern Boost = $90 of development
Classic Sonic = $30 of development
Average = about $90 of development

Sonic Lost World ? Sonic 0.3
Sonic base movement = less than $20 of development
Whisps =less than $20 of development
Parkour = about $20 of development
Average = less than $20 of development

(Estimate for) Project Sonic 2017 ? Sonic 2
Modern Boost = $120 of development
Classic Sonic = $60 of development
Average = $120 of development

Project Sonic 2017 will probably have really good gameplay, and that's great. But I can't help but think this future Sonic game would have been twice as good if given more focus. It's the fourth in the series, but it will probably have the quality of a second game of a normal game series. At least from an interactive/gameplay standpoint.
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Around the time of Sonic Colors, we got Sonic 4 Episode 1, a game sold for $15 that's supposed to be a sequel to S3&K, a game with $240 worth of development behind it.
They started with the Sonic Rush engine, but ruined it when they took out the boost. Sonic Rush was designed around the boost, and when they took that out, 2 very serious side affects came of it.
(1) To compensate for the high intensity gameplay, Sonic Rush placed springs around the level that let you do tricks to keep your boost meter/combo up. Simpler player interaction while making flashy stuff happen on the screen was a nice mental cool down while keeping the action up.
In Sonic 4, the boosters and springs take away player control and make it so the level is almost playing itself.
(2) With a boost, it was pretty important to be able to still change direction in Sonic Rush. Even when going right through a loop-de-loop, Sonic could boost to the left to run in the new direction.
With Sonic 4, you can still brake and slow down while going through a lop-de-loop, but you can actually get stuck standing on a 90 degree angle that way.
Things that are flaws in Sonic 4 used to be advantages in Sonic Rush.

Sonic 4: Episode 2 sold for about $15, but that's only about $30 of development. Improvements were made, but a lot of the problems of the first episode were carried over as well.
You can't just make two thirds of a Sonic game's level and say "Oh don't worry, we'll fix the game engine later". You have to have a strong foundation to build your game on. Once you got the physics and controls down, you can start learning how to design the levels. Then after that, you can learn how to use the levels to teach the players about the physics, controls, levels, storyline, etc through gameplay.

Christian "Taxman" Whitehead has probably been working on and off on his engine for 10 years now. And "Stealth" of Headcannon has probably been working with Taxman since the Sonic 1 iOS port.
Taxman ported Sonic CD, then they ported Sonic 1, then they ported Sonic 2.
I haven't played that much of these ports/recreations, but they're supposedly the best versions of those games. And now they're making Sonic Mania with it with the help of the people behind the S2HD Demo and Major Magnet.

The game engine looks fantastic. Sonic has awesome momentum. The visual style/world building looks like it's on par with Sonic 3, which is fantastic. I think they're going to do a really nice job on their tutorials. In Green Hill Zone, they even had a monitor under one of those big platforms that move up and down, showing you can actually jump through the part that's not green. (You can see this at the 2:50 mark in Polygon's 12 minute video.) Not even Sonic 1 had that. That was a good way to fall into bottomless pits.

I'm not 100% sure about their level design. Looks like the big open and kinda confusing feel from Sonic CD. They may have storyline reasons for this, and it's hard to judge later levels without seeing the levels that come before. But it looks really good.

I assume most Sonic fans don't know what they want because they haven't gotten it yet. But it looks like the Sonic Mania team can make a really good one.

I found it kinda odd that Sonic Mania wasn't planned to have a physical release. Just some download codes. Maybe in the future, could you sell a game disk with Sonic CD, 1, 2, and Mania?

I've posted about Sonic 1's marketing, tutorials, and Sonic 2's springs before, but I'm not sure if I want to link it here. Not sure if I want to make this long post longer.

I don't know how many people are going to even read this, but hopefully this will be useful. I might be making a few small comments in this thread later on.
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too long, didn't read:
"That which is missing" from modern Sonic is focus.

Sonic Mania looks fantastic. Sega, please don't force the Sonic Mania team to rehash old Zones if they don't want to.

Sonic =/= Green Hill Zone
There's more to him than that.

 

I've managed to read your whole post and trying to understand the point of it, Flipside.

One is for sure: While Sonic Mania looks very promising because of gameplay itself which is almost identical to Genesis' games, it bothers at the same time that many old Zones will be reused (if that's true, by the way..). Look at New Super Mario Bros. series by the way - very much assets are rehashed every new game. While the first one for DS was something, next main games as well as their spin-offs like 3D Land felt more and more generic.
And if this will be messed up like latest games of Sega, I guess many people will ultimately lose faith to Sega. I don't mean we would blame Taxman and co. - they are already doing fantastic work and I think they also would like to do some things better.
I'd say we would blame Sega aside for their marketing and managment. After all I guess, they still have control over many things.

Oh yeah, this meme thing - while in facebook and twitter was funny at first, it quickly got boring and old later. While jokes in marketing are nice IMO, it's usage should be rather scarce. Not only Sega, but many video game companies do that.

I'm optimistic but also cautious. That was sure that sceptism would slowly gather in each of us. I wanted blindly to pre-order when I saw the first trailer (and this could be my first pre-order in my life). Now I want to be sure if it's really worth pre-ordeing or buying after release then.

 

Having read this whole thing, I've come to the conclusion that you might be a bit loony.

 

I do have a slight fear that Mania was forced to become essentially a 'Generations Classic.' But I consider it a progression from where Taxman and Stealth started.

Sonic CD: Proposed Desert Dazzle and a new final boss. Neither made it into the game.

Sonic 1: Only thing new that really made it in was Knuckles. But Sega permitted them to add a Knuckles-only path in Marble Zone allowing them to show off the idea that they know how to create new level concepts.

Sonic 2: Egg Gauntlet was dropped, but were permitted to create an all-new iteration of Hidden Palace Zone; essentially a brand new stage.

Mania: Several brand new standalone stages.

Basically, I consider having to re-hash old levels as a necessary evil until enough positive feedback comes back upon release that the new stages were better than the old. Then I think the next Taxman/Stealth/Pagoda project will be all new. But Sega needs to be eased into it. This is still a western development team essentially re-writing the only consistently good games in the series. I imagine that's a pretty ego-bruising experience for some in SoJ, so I'm content with the trajectory we have so far.

 

I still can't forgive them for canning that final boss. The idea was so great and so fitting and Sonic CD so desperately needs at least one boss that's not complete garbage.

 

I'm kinda hoping they use Taxman's final boss design as a boss for one of the Sonic CD re-imagined stages in Mania.

 

Along with what Flipside said, you have to remember when Stealth said that the different departments of Sega are like completely different worlds. While Sonic Team and our friends here want to do a great job, there's a part of Sega that doesn't seem to be impressed with anything and quite strict with what they consider worthwhile. Investor pressure could also be a thing, and it's not the first time they've been pressured to rush something (Sonic 06)

 

What I don't like is the insinuation that they're being forced to make old levels with fresh coats of paint like some sort of "restriction." I'm almost positive they signed onto this project knowing full well what to expect or at the very least had an idea. Let's not act like they're being held hostage here! This game is an experiment, and while WE trust them, we obviously have to see how good they can do with Mania. I have full faith that if this game is successful they'll be able to do their own fully original Sonic game, but for now let's just enjoy this nice little anniversary present as a taste of their potential. Pardon me if I sound rude at all, it's just sometimes the tone gets a little weird when it comes to this game's development.

 

I'm not sure how this: --> " I'm almost positive they signed onto this project knowing full well what to expect or at the very least had an idea. " ... does not say to you "restriction".

 

The word from the team is that Sonic Team/SEGA wanted retro stages included as Mania is part of the 25th Anniversary celebrations. Now personally I think that's totally unnecessary - it's an over-reliance on nostalgia to sell and misinterpreting what people like about the good games in the series. A new classic game is more than enough of a celebration without retreading old ground. Project 2017 is suffering the same problem with Classic Sonic returning. The series is also way too self-aware of it's anniversaries. Since Generations, we've only had one major new game and a handful of ill-recieved spin-off produced out of house, and yet they're ready to hammer down the anniversary stuff again? Wrong move. I'm sure everyone outside of SEGA HQ would like Mania to be focus on the new instead of the old for the umpteenth time. As long as that's what SEGA is insisting though, that's what we're going to get. I couldn't ask for the Mania team to be doing a better job of it either, and hopefully they'll work with SEGA again in the future to make a game that's totally new. They've certainly proven their worth.

 

Welcome back, Flipside, and thanks for the read. I appreciate the detailed insight and numbers. I haven't got much to add to the conversation except to agree that this seems like only a necessary evil, with regard to redoing old stages, but I think it's more than that.

At this point, we've only seen half of these zones so far. Yes, I do agree I'm tired of seeing Green Hill Zone all the time, and I would've preferred either Angel Island or Emerald Hill Zone, but I'm hoping like the rest of us that Knuckles may start in AIZ or something like that. And all that being said, we're still seeing them add to the stages in meaningful ways, turning it into more of a mashup than a rehash. This is an unfortunate side effect of SEGA still wanting to ease people back into Sonic, by celebrating what made him great, but for being in that place for so long--at least since Sonic 4--it looks like they'll finally learn. Hopefully they'll get the praise they need for it once all is said and done, and not have to deal with the tired meme of "Sonic was never good" from "game journalist professionals".

But even if they do, SEGA has also learned the power of memes, and can defend themselves.

Is there an image or concept floating around that I missed?