Sonic Mania

[bloodteller]

>Sonic 3&K can still kick my fucking ass on those final boss fights

How? The final boss of 3&K is, for the first part, just that giant robot slowly slamming its fingers down, and you can just spindash into them. And then after that, all it really does is fire the big laser and shoot fire from its nose, both of which can be easily dodged. Not trying to brag or anything, it’s just I’ve genuinely never had any trouble with it so I’m wondering what you do to make it kick your ass

[Dave]

No, the final boss of S3&K is flying through space in the Doomsday Zone.

[bloodteller]

Oh, I didn’t get all the Chaos Emeralds so I’ve never played that level

[Dave]

Ah, fair enough then. The emeralds-only bosses do make it confusing when talking about ‘final bosses’.

Not to mention that the final bosses of S3&K are all different depending on if you’re playing as Sonic, Tails or Knuckles.

[Moonlight]

Doomsday Zone is a bitch. I grew up with Sonic on the Genesis, but I didn’t get the & Knuckles half of Sonic 3 until Mega Collection. 2006 or 2007 was my epic quest to 100% Sonic 3&K, and I actually did it. At that point, I’d never legit beaten a Sonic game before outside Adventure 2. I’d only gotten near the end.

In 2 I’d always get stuck at the Wing Fortress boss. I honestly can’t remember if I’ve legitimately beaten Sonic 2 under my own power. No rings and a boss before the final boss? That’s evil.

In Adventure 1 I used GameShark to bypass Big because I couldn’t fucking figure out how his janky-ass fishing worked and it had no place in my game about speedy bois who run fastly. This is the Dreamcast era, baby. I demand nothing less than the mega blast-processing this GD-ROM-cycling shrine to all games digital shows off in levels like Speed Highway and Windy Valley

Also Sky Deck has the most bitchin’ guitars to ever exist. God that game had an amazing soundtrack. I forget what we were talking about. Go listen to Sonic Adventure’s soundtrack. It’s really damn good.

Oh, I didn’t get all the Chaos Emeralds so I’ve never played that level

Don’t forget the Super Emeralds, you yokel. With lock-on technology you had whole second set of MacGuffins to go after with even more unforgiving Blue Spheres mazes. I still remember that glorious moment when I could now become Hyper Sonic.

If you thought Super was OP, Hyper Sonic is basically God Mode. He can’t drown, and the insta-shield is replaced with a wave of energy that destroys all enemies on screen. His palette cycles iridescently. He hasn’t shown up since, because the Super Emeralds only existed because you had a second game’s worth of special stages to do for & Knuckles and they needed an extra special reward for them. Hyper Sonic is amusing for the novelty, but totally and utterly game-breakingly deitic.

That’s not a word, but it should be.

[Warbodog]

I played S3&K so much in the 90s that I could do Doomsday easily on muscle memory. But in recent years on PC emulators I’ve never been able to do it. I always give up after losing a couple of lives, it’s too stressful.

[Dave]

The feeling of getting Hyper Sonic for the first time is second only to getting Super Sonic for the first time in Sonic 2.

On Sonic 2, the first time I got all the chaos emeralds I didn’t manage to get the seventh until Wing Fortress, so I only had a brief few moments of Super-ness until it was snatched away for that evil Death Egg double-boss. The next time I managed to get them all by the end of Emerald Hill and blazed through the entire game.

Sonic 2 was tough in places, but great. I found Sonic 3 and S&K relatively easy after that. Apart from that fucking barrel.

Some of my favourite gaming times ever.

Sonic Adventure was a little bit after my time, but my younger brother had it and I thought it had some decent bits (and yes, a good soundtrack). SA2 was alright too.

[Warbodog]

My brothers had most/all the consoles between them when I was a teenager, but my prematurely aged brain couldn’t be done with your Sonic Adventures and Super Mario 64s, I never played past the first level. I’d moved on to the Final Fantasies by then, nice and slow and waiting your turn.

Super Mario World was the only Mario game I ever loved and obsessed over to a Sonic degree. Completing that with all the secrets felt like a more satisfying and personal achievement than getting through the Sonics, but then it didn’t have the same endless replay value afterwards.

[Dave]

Weirdly I’ve grown to appreciate Mario more as an adult. I found it a bit slow and boring as a kid.

[Moonlight]

I just find it hard to find a platforming game I like because Sonic is my gold standard.

[Dave]

I’ve been playing through Ristar on the PS4 megadrive collection – I always had a soft spot for that one and it holds up reasonably well.

The Rocket Knight games were cracking too.

[Warbodog]

I put Earthworm Jim up there with Sonic, I really appreciated that they made the effort to make it properly funny, weird and full of distinctive characters like a top quality 90s cartoon (I know there was a cartoon, but I didn’t see much of it). Bogey bungee, banjo asteroids, the Jekyll & Hyde puppy stage. I didn’t get to play EWJ2 until years later, so the humour felt more forced.

[Dave]

Oh yeah, Earthworm Jim was fantastic. Genuinely quirky and very inventive, and the animation was beautiful.

The cartoon was actually alright.

[Warbodog]

I wrote about 20+ A4 pages of Earthworm Jim fan fic in tiny handwriting when I was 10, it sparked my imagination so much. I never really did that for anything else, apart from attempting some shitty Sonic comics and meticulously copying out half of Decap Attack from STC for some bizarre reason. Glad I’ve grown out of that sort of obsessive fandom. Hmm.

[Dave]

STC was wonderful in a similar way to Earthworm Jim.

[Warbodog]

I arranged all of STC into pretend paperbacks a while back, since they never released any real ones. Roughly 1 year / 250 pages of hedgehog action per book, then catching up with Tails and the other sods along the way. Grow up when I’m dead.

[Moonlight]

Meanwhile, I had my shitty MS Paint sprite comic phase around age 10. My favorite character was the color-inverted Sonic.

[JamesTC]

>In 2 I’d always get stuck at the Wing Fortress boss.

Me too. I could only do that boss by getting Super Sonic which was a pain. That boss and the Metropolis Zone 3 boss can go to hell.

I’ve never found the Doomsday Zone to be too difficult but I only played that from Mega Collection Plus. On the Mega Drive I only ever had Sonic and Knuckles. As a kid I never even knew that Sonic had a different ending as I always preferred playing through as Knuckles so I only ever got the Mecha Sonic final boss.

I adore Blue Spheres so I always go for the 14 emeralds.

One thing I am amazed by is how glitchy Sonic 3 and Knuckles is. Never noticed despite playing Sonic and Knuckles so much as a kid. It is all due to being a rushed game. There is a great YouTube channel which goes through all the glitches in the game. You can find it if you search Sonic 3 and Knuckles Glitches and Oversights (turn subtitles on for explanations). I would highly recommend the video for Lava Reef Zone Act 1. The mega glitch needs to be seen to be believed.

[Nick R]

Weirdly I’ve grown to appreciate Mario more as an adult. I found it a bit slow and boring as a kid.

I occasionally played Mario games as a child, but not often as I never had a SNES, NES or Game Boy of my own. My problem coming to the Mario games years after growing up with Sonic as my primary platform games is not so much the speed, but the vulnerability. I’m used to being able to recklessly careen through Sonic levels curled up in a ball, able to hit enemies on the way up in a jump as well as on the way down, and with the knowledge that even if I get hit I’ll probably just lose rings and get a second chance. So whenever I play a Mario game and am in Little Mario mode (or, for that matter, if I go back to most single-hit-death platformers of the era), I find it as constantly tense as if I’m playing something notoriously challenging like Dark Souls!

There is a great YouTube channel which goes through all the glitches in the game.

My favourite S3&K glitch demonstration is Mike89’s AGDQ2012 speedrun of the game. He and many other players have done faster speedruns and used even more ridiculous glitches since then, but the commentary of this one – “and if you thought I broke that level…” – makes it my favourite.

In 2014 for S&K’s 20th anniversary he did this video, a comprehensive tour through the game, collecting every Giant Ring and Extra Life monitor in a single run – which means showing off many bugs and tricks in order to switch between Sonic and Knuckles’ paths through the levels.

Also, Summoning Salt does many really videos on the progression of speedrun world records, which make compelling viewing even if you don’t time attack those specific games. (I particularly recommend his video on Mario Bros level 4-2.) Here’s his video on Sonic 2:

[Moonlight]

That was gripping. Of course, it totally blows my dreams of having an impressive speedrun. I don’t want to replay _that_ much. It’ll spoil the fun.

[McAleeCh]

Slightly tangental, but it’s related to Sonic Mania – for anyone who enjoyed this game and is also a fan of LEGO, there’s currently a very nice-looking submission on LEGO Ideas for a set based on this game’s version of Green Hill Zone:

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/d7fef363-ead4-413e-a3e2-d9aa848e1cee

The set includes a reworked “classic” LEGO Sonic, brick built figures of Dr. Eggman/Flickies/a Motobug, a few pieces of scenery (including a loop-de-loop and a ramp with a working spring), and a really nice rendition of Eggman’s giant Death Egg Robot boss machine, complete with rotating/extending hands, movable arms/legs and the ability to open it up and sit Eggman in the cockpit. It also includes a few smaller accessories, such as the Phantom Ruby, a ring and an extra-life item box.

If you’d like to see it developed into an actual set, please head through to the page and click the ‘support’ button – you can sign in with a Facebook/Google account if you don’t want to sign up for an account on the LEGO Ideas page. The set needs 10,000 votes to be considered for development, and it’s currently just over 1/3rd of the way there with over 3,300 votes at the time of writing. Likewise, if you know anyone who enjoyed the game/is a Sonic fan and also enjoys LEGO, please share the page link with them so they can add their support – every vote counts~! = )

[McAleeCh]

Also, related to the game itself – per the following tweet, it looks like they’re finally removing the Denuvo DRM from the PC version. Better late than never, I guess!

It appears that the latest update for Sonic Mania removes Denuvo Anti-Tamper completely, I opened it up in a disassembler and looked for traces but in the short time I looked, I couldn't find a trace of it anymore.

Nonetheless, the EXE went down from 117MB to 3MB. pic.twitter.com/Fti0vjD8yh

— ⠋ Sewer56 ⣠ (@TheSewer56) March 8, 2019

[Dave]

That Lego set is really nice.

I heartily recommend the Sonic The Hedgehog pack for Lego Dimensions to anyone with an interest in these things. It’s really nicely done and Sonic interacts in some great ways with some of the other minifigures.

[Warbodog]

Finally played Sonic Mania this week. It is good! (Newsflash). But since I avoided reading much about it and didn’t know it was an anniversary thing, I was expecting more new zones and less of a mash-up. Why didn’t they just make it all new, like a proper Sonic 4?

Most of those new zones are good, but that desert saloon one zipped by too fast for me to appreciate its sensory overload the first time. Some of the “classic” zone choices seem questionable, like Oil Ocean over anything else from Sonic 2, but I like what they did with it.

Not completed it yet, I can only handle so much fun at a time.

[Ben Saunders]

>Why didn’t they just make it all new, like a proper Sonic 4?
Nostalgiabait

[Dave]

For the same reason that so many modern continuations of old franchises are half-remake and half-sequel. They get to have their cake and eat it.

[tombow]

When I completed the Master System Sonic I ran around the house yelling. it was the first game I ever completed.

[tombow]

wasn’t there a crap Sonic 4 on phones/tablets a couple of years ago?

[Dave]

I finally saw the Sonic The Hedgehog movie this evening.

The kids loved it, laughed a lot and enjoyed the action (there are a couple of nice Quicksilver-like slowdown scenes in there which my son thought were great).

I found it very likeable and charming too, although I’m a fan of the games and it included plenty of nods and winks to keep me happy. (My wife isn’t and she was fairly indifferent to the whole thing.)

I think they made the right decision to pare it all down to a simple story template (rather than trying to incorporate all the additional characters and mythology of the cartoons and later games) and to pitch it fairly young. Carrey’s gurning works and feels like a performance of the kind we haven’t seen from him in a while.

Also, the mid-credit scene is nice, and got a gasp of recognition from the kids that made it feel like their version of Nick Fury showing up in Iron Man

[Seb Patrick]

I enjoyed it. It’s largely a middling kids movie that I wouldn’t have bothered seeing if it wasn’t Sonic, but it’s elevated by Jim Carrey being spectacularly Peak Jim Carreyish as Robotnik. Maybe he’s not a “classic style” Robotnik but he’s an awful lot of fun and you can really imagine him going further with it in the sequel. Mid-credits scene was an absolute joy, really didn’t expect them to do that in as full-on a fashion as they did (I expected a teasery hint and nothing more).

In not unrelated news, I’ve only recently started playing Mania, when it showed up in a Humble Bundle a little while back. It’s taken me fucking ages to get past that fucking spider on Flying Battery Zone but I’ve finally just managed to do it without throwing my controller through my laptop screen, so that’s nice.

[Dave]

That boss is a bit tricky until you get the hang of it.

Did you get the regular or Plus version? I bought the Plus upgrade when it came out and I got a lot of extra value out of the game with the new characters and Encore mode.

And yeah, Robotnik in the movie is a vintage Carrey performance, the kids found him a lot of fun. Hopefully he comes back for the sequel and goes full-on crazed-genius with it, giant robots and all.

[tombow]

I haven’t seen it yet but after hearing spoiler-ish hints that there’s a little more of the game/mythos than it first looked like, I’m a little more eager.

[bloodteller]

I saw the Sonic movie over the weekend with my boyfriend, who was expecting it to be a so-bad-it’s-good kind of movie, but ended up really enjoying it and admitted it was way better than he expected. I thought it was really great too- it’s definitely the best video game movie out there, for sure. There are a few flaws with it (Sonic’s owl mom being weirdly realistic despite everyone else from his planet very obviously being a cartoon, and Robotnik’s sidekick just vanishing halfway through the movie) but it was overall really enjoyable, funny, and had a lot of heart, which is something I definitely wasn’t expecting. I’d probably give it a 8 out of 10 or something, it’s not perfect but it’s definitely really good.

Also I could never really get into Mania tbh, it feels a bit too silly and sort of doesn’t quite capture the atmosphere of the originals. For example, Robotnik in the first four games looked comical, sure, but he was still a villain you took somewhat seriously, and all of the robots you fought seemed quite practical. In Mania he fights you in a game of Puyo Puyo and then later one of those rubbish toy-dispenser machines. It all just feels a bit ridiculous really, and I’m not immersed the same way I was with the originals, where I could sort of believe the world the game takes place in. Just my two cents on that whole thing

[tombow]

“I think Sonic 1 is very much the first series of Red Dwarf and Sonic CD the second. Sonic 2 acts as the III-IV era and Sonic & Knuckles is V, with Sonic Adventure playing the part of series VI”

the master systems Sonics would be Dave Space Cadet

[Moonlight]

Sonic CD is Dwarf USA and you fucking know it, bt. That comparison makes more sense than you’ll ever know.

[Seb Patrick]

>In Mania he fights you in a game of Puyo Puyo

In Mania he fights you in a game of Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, thank you very much.

[Moonlight]

Yeah. Try having some knowledge about the series you’re complaining about, bt.

[Dave]

Checking out a few reviews of tomorrow’s Streets Of Rage 4 and it seems like it’s being universally praised – I’ve seen multiple comparisons to Sonic Mania.

It seems like this is going to be everything that I hoped it would be.

[tombow]

I haven’t played Mania or Forces, but I really like Sonic Generations. I think it’s more replayable than the mega drive games – it has a better balance of rewarding you for having quick reactions and letting you fast without the obstacles being too hard to dodge. I really want to catch up on the series and play Lost World, Unleashed and all the other games I missed.

[Dave]

Generations is ok, and maybe the best of the 3D Sonic games, but it still has loads of annoying shit and cheap deaths, and the physics for 2D Sonic are way off. Fun enough though, and it still gets played regularly in our house.

[Dave]

Oh, and Streets of Rage 4 is great, by the way.

[Kris Carter]

Over a year later, Titanic Monarch Zone can STILL GET IN THE FUCKING SEA.

I cannot pass that piece-of-shit level!!!

[RickLee84]

I haven’t played this in ages, I think I’ll start a new file tonight and give it another play through.

[Ben Kirkham]

When those purple portals appear, does anyone else have an overwhelming urge to whisper “Sssllliiidddderrrss?”

[tombow]

what about Sonic Colours on wii? Is that considered crap by 16 bit purists? I never played it, but always heard people with good memories of it.

[Jonathan Capps]

Is that considered crap by 16 bit purists?

If it’s 3D, it’s crap.

[Dave]

Although Sonic Generations has its moments.

[Ben Kirkham]

Sonic 2006 and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric are unspeakably awful.

[Ridley]

I had Sonic Adventure 2 on the GameCube but briefly dabbled with the first Adventure after playing Mania and was surprised that the game all but ties an anchor to Sonic for the opening minutes of play for that Chaos 0 fight rather than doing something, y’know, speedy.

[Dave]

I remember being excited for Sonic Adventure when the Dreamcast first came out and persisting with it, even though so much of it was just clearly wrong for a Sonic game. Still impressive in a lot of ways though. Just not that much, y’know, fun.

[tombow]

I thought most of Colours was 2d or at least on a Crash Bandicoot style fixed track. I still haven’t played it though. But I remember it being hailed as a return to form at the time.

[Moonlight]

I remember being excited for Sonic Adventure when the Dreamcast first came out and persisting with it, even though so much of it was just clearly wrong for a Sonic game. Still impressive in a lot of ways though. Just not that much, y’know, fun.

Sonic Adventure is really really fun if you just play the Sonic stages and also you’re a godtier player who knows how to exploit the spindash to use makeshift ramps out of the terrain to skip all boring parts of levels.

Also Gamma’s pretty fun but his stages are absurdly short except for Hot Shelter.

I thought most of Colours was 2d or at least on a Crash Bandicoot style fixed track. I still haven’t played it though. But I remember it being hailed as a return to form at the time.

Colors fucking sucks. I played almost the entire game on stream the other day and it was pretty miserable. #NotMySonic

[Phil]

It’s probably due to the announcement of the Origins collection or something, but I suddenly realized I’d never played the Sonic Mania DLC so I booted it up again, figured I’d play through a few levels to get back into the swing of things before playing with the new characters…and ended up just playing through the base Sonic Mania game again.

It really does get better every time I play it. I still haven’t come around on a few things (Titanic Monarch drags, it’s too easy to get into the Blue Sphere stages) but the game is so…damned…good.

I’m still holding out hope for a direct sequel. There are so many other classic zones I’d love to see them tackle, and of course more new ones would be great as well.

I’ll play through the new modes, certainly, but I’m impressed by just how easily I got sucked into the main game all over again. Just wonderful.

[Jenuall]

Sonic Mania 2 is probably the biggest open goal in gaming and yet SEGA still can’t seem to score

[Dave]

Yeah, I’m baffled it’s taken them this long to put it together. It’ll be a shame if it never shows up.

The Sonic 30th anniversary year is shaping up to be a bit like the Red Dwarf 30th anniversary year. A bit of stuff announced and teased for later, and a few new little bits and pieces (I grabbed the new Sonic-based Minecraft content “for the kids” today), but pretty light on anything substantial.

[Phil]

FANS: May we have Sonic Mania 2?
SEGA: What’s that? You want more Sonic?

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/06/rumour_sonic_the_hedgehog_is_reportedly_set_to_become_a_vtuber

[Ridley]

“Drop Sonic Mania, SEGA.”
“Already have done.”

[Dave]

“Drop Sonic Mania, SEGA.”

“Already have done.”

“Encore mode.”

[Jenuall]

Well played :D

[Dave]

Currently free on the Epic Games store, penny-pinching platformer proponents.

[Moonlight]

Everything I know about the corporate politics of SEGA, including from making friends with somebody who worked there as a translator and interpreter in the Dreamcast era, tells me that SEGA’s higher-ups are probably humiliated that Sonic Mania (headed by devs hired from the fan game community) was such a critical darling and the best selling Sonic title since Heroes in 2004, all while their in-house effort Sonic Forces was very poorly received on account of sucking incredibly hard.

We’re never getting a follow-up to Mania (whether fully original or based mainly on nostalgic zones) because it was so good it embarrassed the company. That’s my theory and I don’t see any evidence to the contrary.

[Warbodog]

The follow-up is Sonic Depression (about there not being a follow-up).

[Jenuall]

Largely I’m just glad that Mania exists at all, I never would have dreamed of SEGA actually going for something like it so for us to finally get a great classic Sonic title after ~25 years of thinking “nah, those days are gone” was great.

[Kris Carter]

I’m still fucking salty that I can’t complete Titanic Bollock zone.

[Dave]

Where are you stuck? The four routes at the end?

[Kris Carter]

Yeah, precisely – I take too long on those, end up running out of time on the boss. It would help if I played the game more often than once every few months though.

[Dave]

That’s weird. The timer should reset at the end of Act 2 before the boss.

[Kris Carter]

Huh… That is weird. I’ll keep an eye on that next time

[Warbodog]

Are you seriously telling me he was playing the prat version of Sonic Mania for all that time? For four years?

[Kris Carter]

No, I had it sussed right from the beginning!

[Moonlight]

You realize you can turn off the time over, right?

[Jonathan Capps]

Sure you can, if you’re weak.

[Jenuall]

Just remember you can clap your hands together at any time to exit the AR simulation.

I do remember Titanic Monarch going on a bit to be fair, I’m not surprised to hear about people timing out on that zone

[Kris Carter]

You realize you can turn off the time over, right?

… Huh.

[Rick]

There’s a clue hidden in the microdot over the I in Mania on the title screen… A blatant clue.

[Author]

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