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

Hey, go tell the Sonic Adventure designers! =P

 

Controversial perhaps, but I actually enjoyed the idea of Metal Sonic and how he was made playable in Sonic 4, Episode 1. The problem there was the execution of the gameplay, where he was given the homing attack and was pretty similar to Sonic in too many ways, hindered clearly by the level design. The idea was sound though and fans have managed to make his gameplay work. Would he be acceptable in this game? I can't say I'd welcome it particularly - in the classic series at least, Metal Sonic has been destroyed and replaced by a second one in S3&K - a further development as a boss would be a laugh though. Any asides to Knuckles Chaotix also very welcome.

Having Amy as a fourth character in Mania might not be a bad idea, if done well. It worked pretty well in Sonic Advance but my memories of that game were that it still paled in comparison to S3&K. If they can make the levels utilise the best qualities of the four characters, then they'll have a winner.

I'm very excited by the Mania reveals thus far. I have noted in one of the screens that other badniks from levels in the first Sonic game are present - the bat badnik from Marble Zone is hanging under the loop it looks like. So there's a potential for seeing something old in something new more and more.

I haven't felt this excited about a Sonic game in at least a decade. Generations came closest but ultimately the Sonic 4 saga did a lot to turn me away from the franchise.

But Christian Whitehead's Sonic CD - I fired it up again today on my iPhone. Such a complete game, beautifully remade. I hope I can see Mania on something comparable one day. It certainly looks to me like it is well worthy of the "next in series" moniker that Sonic 4 should have had.

 

They should bundle this with the remakes plus Sonic 3 and call it "Sonic Jam 2". Just sayin'.

 

That's more or less a license to print money for Sega, a man can dream.

 

I'd be up for the inclusion of Amy, she's one of the classic characters, might offer some unique gameplay, and be a great addition for the people who'd prefer to play as a girl + - other than Tails   . However, Sonic Advance's level design was pretty flat in comparison to what I've played of Studiopolis Zone, so I wouldn't be so sure that just plonking Amy in the game would work. Still if they could get a way to make her playable which fits in to the design then why not. I only ever play as Sonic these days anyway, so what do I know? Give me a playable Eggrobo, then we'll talk =P

As much as I use it in S3K, I'm not too upset about the loss of the insta-shield, and since it's been replaced by design I'll assume the team know best, at least until the game comes out proper and I can properly get stuck into it. Judging by the remasters I'd be surprised if there wasn't a toggle in a cheat menu somewhere, anyway.

 

Just to chime in on the Insta-shield topic, they could always add it to the no save level select menu. It would similar to how you can change the shields to elemental ones or add a 7th Chaos Emerald, change the ground/air speed cap, etc, in the mobile ports.

 

Personally, I think that if they did something like that, it would be more akin to the bonus features in Sonic CD 2011, where you had a menu in which you could toggle stuff from the beginning.

 

I dunno if you guys have seen this particular interview, It hasn't got much views and it's hard to hear so I typed it out. Some of it doesn't really make sense I think Taxman was ambushed.

Original video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rDCmCd8BVo





How does it feel to be working on a brand new Sonic game?

Christian Whitehead:
I think the really cool thing is like, it's almost like a natural progression of my previous work. Sonic CD introduced Tails as a new playable character and Sonic 1 had all the classic cast as playable characters. By Sonic 2, the remaster, we got to put in the Hidden Palace Zone and that was sort of a real test of a new team capturing the original feel.

To have the opportunity to springboard off that and then create something... it's sort of a more low key pixel art game but it's still a celebration of Sonic and we really wanted to make something that focused on classic fun.

It's like, get the game play right and focus on new ideas for all the new zones. Every level that sonic visits in this game is brand new.

Now can you tell me if the zones are linked, story wise? Is there progression from one to the next?

Christian Whitehead:
Yes. There is a story. We can't talk about what the story is yet, but it is going to be a brand new story. Sonic has a reason for coming back to these original classic zones.
We wanted Sonic's classic world to be like a living [world?] You know? They're not just fixed in time. They change and that sort of explains why there's new bosses in Green Hill.

What you would normally expect to happen in a zone from Sonic 3 and Knuckles, something totally different will happen.

Now upstairs playing the demo, I saw that there's the classic one-hit shield and you've got the fire and lightning shield in there. Can you tell me, are there new shield mechanics coming on the way?

Christian Whitehead:
The main new addition at the moment is the Drop Dash. That's replaced the Insta Shield which might be controversial for all the fans but sort of in our research for how many new players approach Sonic.

The Drop Dash basically allows, like if you've got a steep curve that Sonic needs to get up I found a lot of new players discover going backwards and forward and spin dash.
In the original one you've got to wait and come to a complete stop, so the Drop Dash alleviates that.

You exchange Sonic's InstaShield for the ability to charge up momentum in the air and then the Drop Dash allows you to unleash that momentum instantly on the ground, just for a quick boost.

More advanced players, they're going to be able to exploit the Drop Dash for speed running abilities, smash through item boxes and launch off of terrain in an organic way.
Classic Sonic is very much sort of like what Tony Hawk was in the 32 bit era in that the first time you play it, you kind of suck and land poorly on slopes and then you learn the mechanics and learn how to move through the environment.

The game feels like it came out of the Genesis but I saw that a lot of the animations seem new. Some of them look like they came out of Sonic CD, some of them I've never seen before. Are all the animations redone?

Christian Whitehead:
Yeah, so we looked at Sonic 1 and we kind of wanted to capture that, but we wanted to encompass al the games types of animations within one unified style. So even though some of the animations look the same, under the hood everything has been redrawn.

Obviously the fluidity of all the animations is much more high fidelity. Aesthetically we kind of modeled Sonic on what he'd be like on Sega Saturn. Like 1995 technology today was used to improve the game. Animation fidelity jumps so much higher, even though it's pixel art, you can just make it feel so much more alive by having more motion in all the animations.

It's a bit of Sonic 1, a bit of Sonic 2, a bit of Sonic 3 but it's all unified in to one style.

 

I think I've listened to that interview. Seems fine to me honestly. Do you mean you think Taxman was ambushed in that the interviewer pressured him into doing an interview?

Oh and thanks for pointing out the Amy stuff guys. I'm still not convinced though. :P

 

I love everything about his approach in that interview. I really need to replay all his updated games before Mania comes out.


With the question of whether Amy should Spindash, I can understand why the Devs didn't have that. Spindash implies certain traversal through the stage, and giving all the character spindash makes them feel less unique. Of course, I do object strongly to Tails losing his Spindash ability in various games, where they turned him into a fox version of Dexter which makes me regret the over-expansion of his mechanic backstory. With this in mind, if Knuckles and Tails can Spindash, why not Amy who is a Hedgehog?

Maybe if you gave her a weaker Spindash, the speed boost serving as a launching point for her increasing jumps? You could use it to run at moderate speeds in Sonic fashion as well.

We ought to make a thread specifically for this topic.

 

Maybe just a bit rushed, they both seem cool though no ones being a dick or anything.

 

Amy WILL be included, why?

1.) Sega wants to appeal to males and females, and young females often want to play as a female character (older females and males do too obviously).
2.) Sega has been putting more focus on Amy for a while now, because of #1.
3.) Amy is a classic character, so including her as playable won't necessarily be perceived as unfaithful, but instead expanding.
4.) The game appears to be borrowing heavily from Sonic CD, which in addition to the story arc of S1-S3K, encapsulates the brand identity of the Classic series. Amy was part of this narrative.
5.) All the Classic characters have been represented in their true original classic depictions, EXCEPT Amy. This suggests that her appearance will be changed, and she is most able to do this since her classic identity is arguably the least cannon of the 4 of them (others may disagree). She is also the most likely to receive a redesign for the purposes of being an appealing character, because her original design was more a traditional damsel-in-distress depiction, which is both somewhat offense by modern politically-correct ideas, incongruent with the idea of a female herioin, and less appealing to a modern female audience. By contrast, if she were not to be a playable character her depiction would have been more likely to remain true to the original.
6.) There appears to be multiple clues alluding to her inclusion in branded and marketing materials, and social media.

It's just common sense at this point...

I'm OK with Amy being included, but would prefer her classic design, personally.

 

I mean, yeah Sega wants to appeal to females. But that hasn't caused them to make Amy playable in any main Sonic game since Sonic Adventure or the Advance games.

 

One thing that I think would be pretty neat is to have the original level layouts for the returning zones as unlockables for free play/time attack mode. Possibly as a reward for beating certain time attack times like in Sonic CD? Should be pretty trivial to do considering all the levels from Sonic 1/2/CD have already been remade in the Retro Engine.

 

If Amy ends up being included, I really hope that they use the style MotorRoach used for his Amy. I find it very likely though that Amy could be included, seeing all the CD styled objects, references, and layouts in Studiopolis, and knowing Taxman's influence in this project. Another possible character choice I feel could be a "Modern" Sonic, due to that fourth cyan rectangle on the Zone introduction scene. (I haven't checked, but I think the other squares exactly match up exactly with the colors of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles).

 

That's true, but Amy has been included in recent games which allowed for multiple characters. With Sega trying to reboot a Classic line, with multiple characters, of which Amy was one of them, I expect she will be included. If Sega had come out from the hop and included Amy it might not have set the tone they wanted, being, a return to classic form. It would have led to additional speculation about what else Sega is changing, and increased criticism and comparisons to the failed Sonic 4. By revealing the addition of Amy later on, the optics are different.

At the moment, Sonic Mania is not a "Main" Sonic game, it's a classic branch. Sort of like how Paper Mario is not a "Main" Mario game, if you follow...

 

I'm all for Amy in Mania.

 

Dunno if Taxman or Stealth can answer this, but I'm curious; how much work does it take to re-imagine (aka reshading all the tiles, new layout, etc.) the classic levels like Green Hill compared to the new levels like Studiopolis? Does it take roughly the same amount of time and effort or do the reimagined classics take less time to develop?

 

My guess is that reimagining the old levels is always going to take less time since the trope is already established and at least part of the scenery/layout/gimmicks/enemies are already thought out.