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

[Flap Jack]

Fuck my last ring we’re on the 17th page

[Dave]

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.

If they just adapt The Sonic Terminator from StC for the fourth movie then I will not be unhappy.

[Jonathan Capps]

Yeah but Metal Sonic is Sonic CD era, so they’re suitably mixing things up.

[Dave]

I think Flap Jack’s joke is that they are adapting this monstrosity:

But yes, it looks like movie 4 will be in no small part a Sonic CD adaptation.

[Flap Jack]

Right. Of course the key question is whether they’ll be able to adapt Sonic the Hedgehog 4 as just one film. Video games are longer than films, so I reckon a 2 part game would need a 4 or 5 part movie to do the story justice.

[Dave]

Video games are longer than films, so I reckon a 2 part game would need a 4 or 5 part movie to do the story justice.

Luckily the third movie omitted the scene where Sonic increasingly angrily jumps up and down on a barrel for five hours.

[Flap Jack]

Damn. Well, as long as they included the part where Sonic collects blue spheres.

[Warbodog]

I didn’t get it because I’m only vaguely aware of that thing existing.

Unrelated, I realised the Aquatic Ruin Zone music kind of does the Red Dwarf / Loving the Alien dun-dun-dun-dun-dun thing at 0:28.

[Moonlight]

The third movie wasn’t Shadow the Hedgehog, it was Sonic Adventure 2.

[Dave]

The third movie wasn’t Shadow the Hedgehog, it was Sonic Adventure 2.

Flap Jack’s Sonic 4 joke has opened a massive can of worms hasn’t it.

(For those confused I was of course referring to Shadow the Hedgehog the hedgehog, not Shadow the Hedgehog the game.)

[Moonlight]

I should’ve guessed it wasn’t the game when your post didn’t go on for fourteen minutes and require me to kill every enemy on the map.

[Warbodog]

I should’ve guessed it wasn’t the game when your post didn’t go on for fourteen minutes and require me to kill every enemy on the map.

Are you one of those people that zooms past badniks rather than bopping every one (except the ones that get away)? I didn’t encounter that behaviour until I was an adult and I was appalled.

[Moonlight]

Early in Sonic 2 I try to play the levels as fast as possible and largely ignore the badniks. Then in Casino Night I fuck around with the bumpers for ages, and play more casually for the next few zones. Then in Metropolis Zone I start killing them all because every badnik in that level is a miserable fucking bastard and probably blindsided me the moment they came on screen.

[Dave]

Then in Metropolis Zone I start killing them all because every badnik in that level is a miserable fucking bastard and probably blindsided me the moment they came on screen.

“Let’s give all the badniks fast-moving multiple projectiles that you can barely see and which they can fire at you from off-screen before you’ve even encountered them.”

[Warbodog]

[Ben Saunders]

Took me a few watches to get that “it was a Friday” wasn’t just him qualifying his statement with extra context and that it was actually a joke that he did it last minute/low effort

[Moonlight]

It made my year that somebody did this song in the style of Mania.

[Jenuall]

Then in Metropolis Zone I start killing them all because every badnik in that level is a miserable fucking bastard and probably blindsided me the moment they came on screen.

Absolute state of the hit boxes on these pricks 😡

[Moonlight]

I honestly couldn’t figure out how I was meant to consistently jump on those things without getting hurt until I saw the actual hitboxes.

I still fuck it up a lot.

[Warbodog]

Re: Hydrocity, what were your childhood Sonic mistakes? Here are some of mine, some of which were other people’s fault.

– Misreading and mispronouncing “echidna” as “echinda” (“ch” sound and more natural English arrangement of the letters) and reading it aloud to my brother this way through years of Sonic the Comic. I eventually heard the animal name spoken on TV in my late teens.

– A friend referred to the spin dash as the “triple spin,” maybe influenced by the Adventures cartoon. I hadn’t absorbed the proper term from the manual, so this was regrettably adopted in our household and is still synonymous with spin dash in my mind. (But he also called the chicken badnik in Wing Fortress “Scratch” and I wasn’t having that).

– The Sonic 2 manual or some other text about the Chemical Plant Zone mentioned Doctor Robotnik’s new chemical “Mega Mack.” For some reason, I didn’t think this was referring to the pink chemical water and instead assumed it was those blue dots that shoot between tubes, and I wondered why they were highlighting such a relatively minor aspect of the level.

– Pronouncing Sandopolis with a capital “O” in the middle, like it was an Irish name and not a riff on Metropolis, even though I got what it was doing.

– Thinking Eggrobo in Sonic & Knuckles was called “Eggrobog” because of misreading this speech bubble.

It also looked less like Sonic was humping Knuckles when I was 9.

– Thinking Sonic 3D looked worth buying.

[Dave]

Re: Hydrocity, what were your childhood Sonic mistakes?

Thinking you could destroy Robotnik on Labyrinth Zone Act 3 before the top of the climb if you could just hit him eight times.

Believing there must be a way through the rock wall to let you access the Knuckles-only route on Angel Island before S&K was released and the reason for it was revealed.

Treating the Kintobor origin from StC as canon.

The barrel.

Thinking I could destroy this fucker on Spring Yard.

[Jonathan Capps]

Thinking you could destroy Robotnik on Labyrinth Zone Act 3 before the top of the climb if you could just hit him eight times.

I believe you can but it will only ever be once you’re at the top anyway.

[Jonathan Capps]

Ignore me, I mis-read what you said.

[Warbodog]

Treating the Kintobor origin from StC as canon.

StC is the main canon I’ve ever been aware of, but I know some other issues are:

– The colours of Knuckles’ shoes and “socks” (or top-bit-of-shoes) being opposite to the games, because they were based on some early promotional image.

– Knuckles wearing a metal collar/necklace, which I only learned in recent years was supposed to be a white patch of fur that they misinterpreted.

– Amy’s hair – I mean spines – permanently sticking up because it was based on one specific image where she was in motion rather than stationary.

– The island where Sonic 3 & Knuckles is set being called “The Floating Island” and Angel Island just being one zone thereon.

– Sonic being a complete cunt because that was their interpretation of “attitude.”

[Ben Saunders]

what were your childhood Sonic mistakes?

Downloading Sonic 4 off the Xbox Live Marketplace

[Dave]

Downloading Sonic 4 off the Xbox Live Marketplace

[Ian Symes]

I remember being completely baffled when seeing the word “chaos” on the screen, and I somehow interpreted it as being pronounced “catch us”. Sonic collected Catch-Us Emeralds. The emeralds that loved being caught. 

[Nick R]

Gotta Chaos all!

– Rejected Pokémon tagline.

[Dave]

[Moonlight]

Thinking you could destroy Robotnik on Labyrinth Zone Act 3 before the top of the climb if you could just hit him eight times.

This is single-handedly the reason I could never get past that boss until I was older playing the game again on Mega Collection. They change the rules without any attempt to convey it to you. Also, the only way to get continues in Sonic 1 was by collecting rings in the special stages which I didn’t know, so I pretty much never had a continue.

[Dave]

[Nick R]

They’re not calling it Sonic CD, then.

[Warbodog]

Woke madness. Women can’t be sonics.

[Moonlight]

Woke madness. Women can’t be sonics.

I beg to differ. I just rolled down a hill yesterday, and it was almost on purpose.

[tombow]

For some reason I spent my childhood assuming that the master system Sonic 1 was the original and the mega drive Sonic 1 was a later remake of it. I only found out later they were released the same year, with the mega drive one being the original. I wish now I’d been able to enjoy the master system sonics more as separate interesting games, rather than inferior versions of the mega drive games (as I thought at the time)

[Warbodog]

We got a second-hand Game Gear a while after the Mega Drive and I really enjoyed its alternative Sonic 1 with its chippy soundtracks, I even beat it eventually. We didn’t have any of the others though.

[Dave]

We got a second-hand Game Gear a while after the Mega Drive and I really enjoyed its alternative Sonic 1 with its chippy soundtracks, I even beat it eventually. We didn’t have any of the others though.

Meaning you never had to suffer through this.

[Moonlight]

I still find it appalling that they’ve never repackaged the Master System version where there’s actually enough screen space for you to fucking see the game.

[Nick R]

[Dave]

As Sega April Fools go, it’s good but it’s no Li Poo Farl.

[Moonlight]

I’m still trying to find Rankles and win my one million pounds. I heard a tip from someone on the playground that if you beat Sonic 3 without dying 15 times in a row he appears and you unlock Sally Acorn.

[Author]

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