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

The good thing about Kirby is that while the series does play the nostalgia card a lot, it's never in your face about it. It's redone in fun ways that old fans of the series will enjoy seeing familiar areas. Heck, Kirby's Adventure for NES had a Game Boy inspired level, and that was released only one year after the original game! Sonic is certainly not out of the ordinary about this (Mario Galaxy 2 had a Mario 64 level in it, A Link Between Worlds used most of ALttP's overworld, etc) but where the other series do it for a level or two occasionally, Sonic is doing it so much it's removing the appeal.

 

Yeah, Kirby's brilliant, but it easily is more rehashing than Sonic.

They've reused the first boss loads and loads of times.

 

I'm a bit of a Kirby fan, and I enjoyed the fan service that was in Robobot.
The secret final bosses were pretty amazing, and I loved a lot of the remixes.

Honestly, I think nostalgia can be pretty entertaining if it's done right. A perfect example is Mania itself, a nice mix of old and new.
(Even if I personally think Mania has a little more "old' than "new". But hey, I'm not complaining!)

 

Surprised we missed this.

@chibilola on Twitter (according to her profile, she's a producer at Sega and part of the Sonic social media team) posted what's apparently a joke mockup of Eggman she got from the dev team (in a Sonic 2 Emerald Hill mech).

https://twitter.com/chibilola/status/799710299754352640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

May not be what Eggman actually looks like in the game, but it does give us an idea of what they may be going with. (For example, they're actually giving him his blue spectacles he has in the classic-era Japanese/current artwork and in Generations. Previous depictions in the Genesis games showed him with his black dot eyes instead, akin to the classic-era Western artwork.)

 

That sprite is fairly small. That could be a tiny Eggman a la the Metropolis decoys.

 

I think the black eyes were more due to palette limitations. He had blue glasses in Sonic 1 with no issue but once super sonic came into the mix he'd start having some flashy shades (S3K hyper glasses)

 

As soon as they posted the list of publishers attending a couple weeks ago and Sega wasn't on it, I questioned it on Twitter. I'm glad they changed their mind or whatever happened. I can't wait to finally play it next weekend. When I made the decision to go, I had hoped Mania would be there because it was the 2nd most exciting thing I hoped to see at PSX.

Can anyone in-the-know confirm which demo they'll have, or is that information off-limits? I'm assuming that the newer demo with classic level select was for media only and it's going to be the GHZ / Studiopolis one again, but the demo with Mirage Saloon would be cool too. If there's not a huge line I'll probably visit on both days. I'll be wearing my Sonic Mania shirt one of the two days, probably Saturday.

 

That, or a stylized badnik. Eggman's got quite an ego on him, so it's in character in addition to the reference.

 

That's actually a really cool idea. He should make more badniks in his image. I mean you kinda have the fat egg pawns but I'd love to see more of that.

 

No more Egg Pawns ever, please.


Decoys are fine, though.

 

Hopefully them showing off Mirage Salooon and therefore another completely new stage indicates that the game has a decent amount of fresh and new stages. That quotation from an interview a while back indicating there's more remixed stages than new ones still has me worried. Then again Taxman indicated the game is pretty lengthy (I believe he posted on Twitter that Sonic Mania is a "big game") which allays my fears somewhat. I'm sure the game will be awesome and feature a wealth of content but I'm deeply hoping there's at least seven or so new stages i.e. the length of a Genesis Sonic game. Hopefully the game has that amount of new content. Remixed stages are cool and all but I want more of that Studiopolis magic.

Will the build shown off at PSX be a new one do you think? They just showed off Mirage Saloon so I would have thought so. It'd be cool to get some new footage!

 

Ah okay cool. Thanks for the update and clarification. Some cool tweets from Taxman there. Looks like we'll see a little more much closer to release.

 

And it's still 89.99€ ($95.33) in Europe, for those who were wondering.

 

A rather ridiculously expensive £80 ($100) for those in the UK. Americans are getting this for almost half the price with the discount. As usual we in the UK get shafted with a price hike. I'd love to buy the CE but £80 is way out of my price range for something like this. Think I'll stick with a digital download upon release.

 

The Generations CE had an RRP of a whopping £100, and as a result only few retailers chose to stock it. Amazon lowered the price of it to £75 before release. Not sure why, but it was still cheaper than the Mania CE and contained a lot more. I really don't understand the high price either, especially because Mania is likely going to have a lower price.

 

The whole case with Collector's Edition is utterly disappointing for me - beginning from the fact that initially there was no sign that it will be sold somewhere else than in US, later that in Europe we don't have PC version (not to mention about high price). I've checked how much would it cost to order PC version from US, but it's 117$ (with current discount). Nope, nope, nope.

I'm wondering if there are any chances that a bit closer to release date it could be available in bigger "local" stores, maybe even PC version... But probably not.

By the way - have I missed something or (so far) planned price for Sonic Mania (game only) is at this moment unknown?
(don't know if it's rational assumption or not, but I would bet something around 15-20 euros).

 

The price of the base game is yet unknown. I think that a £15 price point would be likely, considering that it's a 2D, digital only game in 2016. It's happily pay more, but the market kind of undervalues "retro" games.