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

There's a dictionary argument against the "original" bit but that's unimportant. Again, I consider it nothing but a lucky break on Sonic Team's part. Remember that Sonic Generations on the 3ds did nothing on it's rehashing the classic stages. I commend the Mania devs for not going that route.

 

Correct if I'm wrong here - but wasn't the whole Sonic Discovery rumour i.e. Taxman/Stealth pitching a small game (and the remasters bundled) to Sonic Team/Sega debunked by Taxman on NeoGAF? He stated something along with the lines of "That's categorically not how the project came about" in response to Blaze I believe, in the Sonic Mania thread to which Taxman was part of with multiple posts.

Don't think that rumour is correct guys. Taxman debunked it. Memory could be failing me here, but I think I'm right on this one. That wasn't how the project started.

 

That's weird, because I remember Taxman himself saying this was how the project started, in a Sonic Mania panel - at last year's Comicon I believe.
I wonder if anyone has a recording of the whole thing, maybe I'm remembering wrong.

 

Rewatching the Comic-Con panel now, and yeah, it was definitely pitched as Sonic Discovery (around 10:40). I don't remember where the initial plan to bundle the remasters with a small original game was mentioned, but I definitely don't remember it being debunked.

Edit: Found it. Taxman said it himself, in this very thread, last June.

Spoiler

 

well, Zephyr beat me to the punch hehe

Here's the NeoGAF thread you were thinking of

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/sonic-mania-8-15-2017-sega-taxman-headcannon-pagodawest-ps4-xb1-pc-nx.1251267/page-56#post-228857427

https://gyazo.com/084aed2aaf052659fd2594663b9a7104.png

I believe that, Taxman may have been clarifying that Mania was always meant to be a game, and that the remasters were second to the actual game itself. The idea to have original levels as well as new ones wasn't directly influenced by the remasters, but instead due to it being an anniversary title. Not that Discovery was never a thing to begin with.

 

Sonic Retro's speed and accuracy knows no bounds. Glad we've clarified this and I'm impressed with the quickness you guys resolved it. I did also suspect my memory being hazy here.

So that is the genesis of the project then posted and confirmed by Taxman himself here. Good work guys.

 

How can Sonic Mania palette cycling work on my system, it doesn't support D3DFMT_P8, which method was used then?

 

It's been mentioned in the past that the game uses a software renderer. The output already has the palette applied.

 

A minor thought occurred to me: Could Titanic Monarch 2 had been considered to be a Boss Rush at one point? The way you select the path you take at the beginning is interesting enough, but the mural in the background almost seems to imply you'd encounter a specific Hard Boiled Heavy depending on the path you took. The amount of effort put into their encounters during the Phantom Ruby illusions almost feels like something grander was planned for them.

 

Seems like a pretty solid guess to me.

 

That would make sense.

It was weird how you needed to go through all four sections, but there was nothing at the end of each one. Each time one of the four paths would be sealed off by a door, but you never actually do anything to activate the door. And then after completing all four sections and closing each door a portal suddenly appears for no apparent reason. The objective wasn't communicated very well, there was little sense of cause and effect.

It's definitely something I'd like to see improved upon if Project Plus does turn out to be an expansion.

 

Wow I didn't even realize that. I thought that that stage's level design was just convoluted and confusing and simply written it off as "worst stage of the whole game"

Still hate that stage but now it's more understandable.

 

I hope that, whatever "Plus"" is, reinstates the unfinished Heavy fights at the end of those sections. Their "illusions" in the TMZ boss, which can't be defeated and feel like "memories", only accentuated that something was missing in the first place.

Also, pretty please, a fight against the Titanic Monarch, either before or after the current final boss (or just replacing it altogether, I don't think that anyone would complain if the "broken mech" fight was relegated to easter egg status).

But boss-wise, I would be happy if it just polishes them so that:

• They can all be defeated without getting hit once, no luck involved.
• There's no obvious advantages in defeating them by just abusing the ring loss invulnerability (like how the Green Hill miniboss can be hit when it's in its supposed invulnerable state).
• Learning the boss mechanics never involves sheer luck. Just placing warning signs in the right places (indicating where Sonic must latch on in the weather boss or pointing at the safe place in Oil Ocean's miniboss) could easily fix some of these.

 

I want to hear "Egg Panicky" in-game damnit! I mean, can we just get a sec to see Eggman go off running like he usually does and then do the final hit? I thought it extremely strange how the player doesn't even get to do the final hit in Egg Reverie. I get that it's really the beginning of a cut scene and they wanted to showcase the ring-draining boost (free of charge). At first I thought it was something I did by mistake and was like "Fuuuuuuck, I don't have that many rings left!" until I realized this is what happened.


Unpopular Opinion: I found Titanic Monarch to be the easiest final level of all time, once I got the hang of it. I don't know if all that time I spent on Sonic Time Twisted gave me really good practice or if it really is that easy once you figure out all the intricacies....including the TMZ1 Boss as Knuckles. I still think the level was balanced, but was still bad ass as it didn't try too hard to NOT be Death Egg Zone.

 

That's some really interesting insight about Titianic Monarch. Could totally see it initially planned as a boss rush then hastily changed at the last minute with its defined sections and Taxman's previous intentions to include boss rushes in previous projects that were shot down by Sega. I actually found the zone to be pretty decent and don't share the anger and fire people have for it. To me it's a fantastic final zone for the game - conceptually and aesthetically sound - but perhaps a little too frustrating for its own good. I love all of Taxman and Stealth's original zones for the game. Just wish there were more of them.

SXSW 2018 is just a few weeks away now so if Sonic Mania Plus really is a thing and a new version of Mania is coming we'll discover so soon enough.

 

Titanic Monarch is a level that grew on me the more I played it. I still wish that there was another gimmick or two to make the gravity orbs a bit less repetitive, but the level design is overall very understandably complex. Unlike final levels such as Metropolis and Death Egg, the zone from start to finish is very Sonic-y fast, rather than slowing down the speed and pace for the sake of more difficult platforming (something I feel Scrap Brain and Metropolis are fairly guilty of). It has a challenge and takes a long time to figure out, that's for sure, but it's far from unfair, which I think is what makes Titanic Monarch brilliant design wise.

 

So I fired Mania up after a long time (I've only played through twice), and now that the hyped has gone I can see it for what it is....

A fantastic game but for me personally, the reused levels are really off-putting and tarnish my overall experience.

I would have been happy to wait another year if the game was 100% original.

Hopefully Mania 2 (or whatever it's called) will fix this. I'm actually surprised as to how little I've played this game, I think a big reason for that is the re-used levels. Nothing wrong with the level design, I've just played the classics to death so it's getting really dull seeing them re-used over and over.

I doubt this is team Mania's fault though, as I can see Mania starting out as the 3K remaster, then getting carried away making original levels which then became part of the project. Could be wrong though.

 

It's true that if you played the classics over and over again the returning levels probably won't feel very satisfying. I personally didn't have this problem since I haven't played the classics that much, but still... I wish they would've created new level design for the existing zones. I know they're supposed to be "remixed", but it just feel kinda lazy at the end of the day.
I think it would've been really cool :
-If the level design was entirely new, with some familiar setpieces for the sake of nostalgia (kinda like Gens did)
-If sprites were entirely remade too. The backgrounds all got a makeover; but the foreground sprites are basically the same, with some updated shading. Lapper had a mockup of a remixed green hill zone as his signature for a while and I really wish this was the direction the team took when it came to remaking old stages. Shit looked fucking gorgeous.

I mean it's obvious they couldn't do that due to time constrain, but still, I think the concept of returning zones was kinda underdeveloped here.

 

I thought they approached the remade levels pretty well. For the most part 1 act was a familiar mashup of the original level and 1 act was pretty much completely different (Some exceptions of course, namely Hydrocity where they basically scrapped the original Act 1 and then reused most of the original Act 2, also Lava Reef, but that makes sense given that both acts were very different from each other. It'd be hard to combine act 2 into act 1). Could they have done more? Sure. But given the time they had, the constraints they had, and the budget they likely had, I think they did great.

That being said when I play through the game again I find Flying Battery exhausting, I don't know why. I think FBZ and HCZ should have switched places.

 

FBZ is exhausting... if you stick to the upper route in Act 2. The lower route is linear and very short, allowing you to reach the boss in about 3 minutes. Take any other route though and you'll be going through all the different sections of the ship, back and forth. It's a good level, but an absolute gauntlet that becomes bothersome to play.