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

I will say this: you haven't seen Mania's Special Stage

 

Oh so it's a bonus stage now (Also can we see something then :specialed ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cACZxuUy6zY

Hope we'll see some of this stuff.

 

Oh, you managed to make use Stealth's 60fps renders and perspective maps. Neat.

 

This was the most disappointing part to me. I really wanted to believe that Sonic 3 & Knuckles might be getting the remaster treatment, but they wouldn't use Sonic Mania shading in that.

 

I just wanted to say that the blue spheres special stages are very underrated in terms of never being reused in terms of other Sonic games' special stages. It always had to be the damn tube special stages or no special stages at all...shit got rather stale there.

 

Then I assume that's a minigame or something similar that. :^)

 

Feels like a red-herring. Maybe Taxman was just playing with his & Stealth's 2014 3&K proof of concept.

The special stages in Mania should be a completely new concept. The bonus stages on the other hand..........I'd be down with blue spheres. Perhaps all 134,217,728 blue sphere stages will appear in Mania

 

Sonic 4: Episode III would have had them.

 

Boy I'd love to assume the Blue Spheres is a hint to Sonic 3&K Remastered getting off the ground, but the Sonic sprite is closer to Mania's color palette/shading sprites rather than Sonic 3's. That alongside the fact that their pitch for S3&K remastered was turned down the first time as it is prompts me not to get my hopes up.

I'm taking Taxman's word for it that the Blue Spheres screenshot is likely not Mania's Special Stages. I don't think their inclusion in the game has even been mentioned up to this point, but maybe Blue Spheres has probably been recycled as a Bonus Stage? (Worth noting that the casino Bonus Stage from Sonic 3&K is a repurposed Sonic 1 Special Stage, after all.)

 

Mmm, it's been a while since we've had a good old-fashioned screenshot leak. Feels good.

I hope the SXSW panel shows this in action.

Also good to see Saturn controllers are used for testing.

 

Also going to rewind a bit to acknowledge this beautiful thing.

 

I'm going to guess that instead of Blue Sphere being a Bonus Stage, they're going to be an unlockable extra feature, like how you could get into just Blue Sphere through the menu in the PC S&K Collection. My reasoning is simply that the Bonus Stages in S3&K were mainly for getting lives or power-ups. Blue Sphere is essentially a win/lose scenario when you play it. A full round of Blue Sphere to get a Chaos Emerald is a decent challenge. However, Taxman just said that we haven't seen the Special Stages, and a full round for what's essentially either a Continue, extra life, or power-up is a rather excessive task for such an insignificant reward. As much as I love Blue Sphere, I'd quickly get to where I'd just skip it to not have to stop the general gameplay for so long.

Maybe something unlocked through a Red Ring-esque system? I wouldn't mind looking for Red Rings through the levels if they unlocked stuff like that.

 

Hush, at least its not Half Pipes again. dear god I don't know why SEGA/Sonic Team/Whatever loves the half pipes, DIMPS was the only recent team to ever try something different (Bar SPA and Rush).

Bring on the Blue Spheres again, hell for challenge Taxman make one of the stages the 8th emerald stage that couldn't be accessed normally in Sonic 3k.

 

I suppose I'm glad the special stage is different, but I've always really like blue spheres. Definitely prefer it over the half pipes (I hate those so much now).

I would love it if blue spheres was a type of bonus stage, like the S3&K bonus stages.

 

I see no reason to not believe the man at his word, but if the special stages are Blue Spheres but with different designs to them, I don't really think I could complain with that.

 

The special stage shown there has the same color scheme as the first S3 special stage, but the layout is different.

 

I have no idea what the special stages in Sonic Mania could be like. But I'd be very surprised if they were in saturnesque 3D.

DLC? Placing my bets on Blue Spheres mode as an unlockable.

 

Blue Spheres is great! Thinking there will also be a new bonus stage to replace gumball machine?

Also have to point out that Taxman looks like Noel Fielding. Legend

 

Sonic 3 & Knuckles remaster included in Sonic Mania :specialed:

If that was the case though I might have a heart attack and die. That's too much wonderful in one package.

 

I got an idea. What if the special stage you enter is specific to the game that stage came from?