Sonic Mania

[Ben Kirkham]

Blah blah blah DRM blah blah Denuvo blah blah. There’s definitely a point to be made there – you should be able to play offline.

But I’ve not heard anyone talk about the game itself yet. I’ve been playing for a couple of days, and I’m really enjoying it. A smart and clever synthesis of the first four games, with a bit of Sonic CD, Sonic 3D and Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine thrown in for good measure. A bit like being 8 years old again!

Opinions?

Topic

[Ben Saunders]

I didn’t grow up with Sonic (Shadow was my first game other than some shit on GBA), so that just sounds about right to me. Sonic as a franchise seems to be pretty lucky, they’ve been getting regular games (of varying quality) consistently for years and years and years. But more and more if you’re a fan of a franchise like Elder Scrolls, GTA or Persona you’re waiting a decade for your next hit. And y’all have movies coming out too, faster than most TV shows can pump out seasons now. You’re eating good.

[Dave]

I downloaded the free demo of Sonic Racing Crossworlds to see what it was like, as Team Sonic Racing has been a bit of a family favourite since it came out.

The big gimmick of this game (with the track changing to a different one for the middle lap) is a fun idea but I wish it was an optional one, as the Sonic Racers have always felt like slightly more chaotic and unpredictable (and not 100% fair) counterparts to their Mario cousins thanks to the more extreme course obstacles and less balanced power-ups, and this just ups the unpredictability factor even further by throwing you into a level that you may not be fully equipped for or familiar with.

(Plus, for me the three-lap nature of these cartoon racers has always made for a nice initial learning curve where everything is new to you on lap 1 but you gradually get used to the tricks and traps of a track on laps 2 and 3. Here, you suddenly have a new course to deal with on lap 2, and by the time you return to the original course for lap 3 you’re thinking about the new course instead.)

Outside of that, everything is pretty much as you’d expect for a modern kart racer – colourful pin-sharp graphics, a wide variety of courses with fun themes, loads of customisation options and seemingly lots of different play modes too. I do wish the demo had a two-player option though as that’s always been how we’ve played these games at home and knowing how well the crossworlds gimmick works in multiplayer would probably have helped me to decide whether to pick up the full game on release or not. As it is, I’ll probably just wait for a sale – possibly at a good Black Friday price.

[Dave]

The G&T preoccupation with insane time discrepancies might reach its peak with Sonic 1 and Sonic Adventure being only 7 goddamn years apart, as opposed to an entire human generation.

Having lived those years in real-time waiting for each new megadrive Sonic game to come out, I can confidently state that under the 1990s/2000s exchange rate, each year spent waiting for a new Sonic game works out at around five years in modern time, so really the stretch of Sonic 1 to Sonic Adventure was slightly longer than the time that elapsed between the broadcasts of The End and The Promised Land.

[Warbodog]

I was giving too much credit to Sonic Adventure’s boundless 3D environments in my mind, forgetting that it’s not that much of a step up from Sonic 2’s GET 50 RINGS! bonus stage a lot of the time.

[Ben Saunders]

Who the fuck was in charge of the audio mixing for Sonic Adventure -> Shadow The Hedgehog btw, you can barely hear what anybody is saying half the time (I played the originals so no blaming ports)

[Dave]

I was giving too much credit to Sonic Adventure’s boundless 3D environments in my mind, forgetting that it’s not that much of a step up from Sonic 2’s GET 50 RINGS! bonus stage a lot of the time.

Well, the main advantages Sonic Adventure has over the Sonic 2 special stages are that: A, it’s true 3D; and B, it doesn’t have aggressively disorienting acid jazz playing constantly.

[Moonlight]

being taunted with Sonic 3D music.

Ssshhh, nobody tell Warbo about Twinkle Park.

[Jenuall]

[Warbodog]

[Jenuall]

[Dave]

[Warbodog]

[Moonlight]

[Moonlight]

[Dave]

[Moonlight]

[Dave]

[Moonlight]

I’ve been making these standing behind a cash register on a very slow day. I am quite literally being paid to create absurdly niche memes.

[Warbodog]

That’s a good idea. Unfortunately, I only get paid when I submit work, and stupid Red Dwarf gifs are a better use of my time.

[Nick R]

[Warbodog]

[FutureEchoes]

Making my first post unconventional by jumping right into the Sonic thread (that’s why we’re all here really, right?)

Recently I discovered a surprising Sonic/Sega and Red Dwarf link that I’ve not really seen discussed much

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TLQKh5c_yPA

I played All-Stars racing a lot when it first came out and I’m surprised how I never noticed before…

[Warbodog]

If Sonic got out of that car he’d win easily.

[Dave]

[Flap Jack]

A warm welcome to you, FutureEchoes. As with everyone else, I’ll try my best not to hold your fondness for the blue spiny one against you.

[Nick R]

Next we’ll discover that Norman Lovett did the “Yeah!” and “I’m outta here!” in Sonic CD.

[Dave]

Ok, this isn’t exactly Sonic-related but I think it might still be of interest to people who click on this thread. Let’s say Sonic-adjacent. Because for Christmas I got Terminator 2D: No Fate, which is a fun new retro run-and-gun pixel-art game that basically seems to exist to give us the perfect ’90s movie tie-in that we never had.

It’s lots of fun, especially if you’re a fan of the movie. There are loving recreations of classic moments from the film, as well as a few extra levels and story scenes that expand on it (with moments that are set both before and after the movie) in a fun and imaginative way.

That wouldn’t mean anything if the gameplay wasn’t enjoyable, but luckily they’ve nailed the simple-but-compelling nature of those 90s platformer-shooters, with a regular supply of power-ups, new enemy types and big mid-level and end-of-level bosses to keep your interest.

And there’s a fair bit of variety in the play style too – the T-800’s arrival and barroom brawl becomes a Streets Of Rage style scrolling beat-em-up; the T-1000 chases in the canals and on the road to the steel mill become driving levels with oncoming obstacles that test your reaction time as well as requiring you to shoot back; and there are stealth aspects in levels like Sarah’s escape from the hospital with the T-1000 stalking the corridors and you having to hide from him and the guards on your way out.

The games it reminds me of most are the megadrive game based on the original Terminator and the Alien³ megadrive game, neither of which were perfect but both of which translated the movies to games in an engaging way. There’s nothing here that reaches the inventiveness or “wow” factor of a Gunstar Heroes or Probotector, but it’s a solid game that goes from Good to Great if you’re a fan of the movie.

The one mark against the game is its short length. While there are a dozen or so levels to playthrough in story mode, you can still get through them all in a couple of hours, which isn’t very much for a full-priced game.

However, to increase the longevity they’ve included a variety of difficulty settings – which become pretty tough pretty quickly, and provided enough of a challenge for me that I struggled to get through the full game on even the mid-level setting.

And more notably they’ve also included a branching story mechanic that’s effectively a New Game + mode, which lets you make certain different choices on subsequent playthroughs that change the way the entire story plays out and even lets you access certain different levels. (One example is that you can instruct the Terminator to help you kill Miles Dyson, which leads to Sarah ending up in a police station charged with his murder, which she has to then escape – another callback to the old megadrive Terminator game.)

All of this doesn’t entirely mitigate the shortness of the game, but it at least provides some replay value with a genuine incentive to revisit the story mode to see all the possibilities play out.

Finally, there are some touches of polish that just make this game extra fun. There are a ton of great recreations of moments from the movie, both big and small, that give you a smile when you see them. And they also have access to a lot of actor likenesses, so Sarah and the T-1000 and John look just like their movie selves – and the likenesses that they obviously don’t have rights to (most notably Arnie, but also Biehn at one brief point) are worked around quite inventively.

Overall this is a must-buy for T2 fans like me, who will find the whole thing a joy and a great authentic throwback to an earlier era of gaming. But for people who aren’t particularly fans of T2 (I hear they do exist) or who didn’t grow up in the 16-bit era, this might be one where it makes sense to wait for a decent discount.

[Moonlight]

[Warbodog]

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Nick R]

[Flap Jack]

[Warbodog]

[Dave]

[Moonlight]

[Moonlight]

[Warbodog]

[tombow]

I was just thinking I remember a friend at school with a new Mega Drive excitedly telling us about Streets of Rage, only his accent made it sound like “Streetser Ray” so I thought it was about a hero cop called Streetser Ray. Until I saw a copy playing in Game, realised it’s what he was telling me about and though “oh..that’s what he was saying”. I think I remembered there being a hero called Axel because that had really excited my friend thinking he might be based on Axl Rose.

[Dave]

This is like the time I only knew Street Fighter II from screenshots and thought a shot of E.Honda’s hundred hand slap showed him having a single hand on a string that he could throw at people.

[Warbodog]

I never played Street Fighter II (we were a Mortal Kombat househould), it just always makes me think of the Rik Mayall ad.

[Dave]

I never played Street Fighter II

In truth I also loved MK. I got the recent retro collection of the original games for Christmas and revisiting MK2 in particular has been a joy.

[Warbodog]

[Jenuall]

Not sure if it’s already been mentioned in here, but worth getting on this if you haven’t already: https://sonicmegamixmania.github.io/

[Dave]

Coming in a year.

I’m hoping the fourth movie will be like 70% Robotnik dance routines.

[Flap Jack]

Finally, they’ve got through all that Mega Drive era crap and are adapting everyone’s favourite Sonic game.

[Dave]

[Dave]

I hope that the fourth movie uses Lock-On Technology and comes in the form of a disc caddy for your existing Blu-Rays that adds Metal Sonic and Amy into the second and third movies.

(It won’t add them into the first movie but it will let you play an infinite number of procedurally-generated trailers.)

[Warbodog]

Hopefully they pay Nigel Kitching royalties for making it about an army of metal Sonics.

Although his were just Sonic-shaped Daleks to be fair.

[Flap Jack]

Of course not! But I’m not talking about Shadow the Hedgehog, I’m talking about Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3.

It would make some sense to make to make a Shadow movie first, but there are already so many games they’re skipping over to go straight to 4 – Adventure, Heroes, Unleashed etc. – so if they’re going to skip so many main entries that actually have Sonic in them, then they’re obviously going to skip spin-offs too.

[Author]

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