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Sonic Mania |OT| Dreams Come True

Berordn

Member
It does have SOME of that, like popping out of the pipe into Studiopolis Zone. The nature of its time travel plot makes those moments more difficult, naturally.

It's just weird that we get things like Eggman warping us in some zones (PGZ -> SSZ, for instance) and cool little background gags like in Studiopolis's tranistion to FBZ, but then it just sorta vanishes.

All the act 1 -> act 2 transitions are done really well so it ends up being kinda minor and I can easily forgive it, I'm just surprised they didn't even keep up the eggman activating the warp thing.
 
Played this with my boyfriend last night. Had a lot of laughing and excitement over the stages and the boss fights. Truly the game evaluates Sonic to where he should have always been.

It's great to see him back in good form. It's so refreshing!
 

atmuh

Member
How are people doing with the collect blue sphere levels? I have a little over half done, most are gold I think 5 silvers. Some of these are really difficult! I assume we can go back and select the silver ones to replay once we've cleared them all?
 

Ferr986

Member
It's just weird that we get things like Eggman warping us in some zones (PGZ -> SSZ, for instance) and cool little background gags like in Studiopolis's tranistion to FBZ, but then it just sorta vanishes.

All the act 1 -> act 2 transitions are done really well so it ends up being kinda minor and I can easily forgive it, I'm just surprised they didn't even keep up the eggman activating the warp thing.

Yeah, especially when you go back and forth between the islands and Little Planet without any scene.
 
As much as I enjoy CD (which I would personally rank below Mania), it's hard to give it full credit due to its poor performance on original hardware. Yes, Christian's version is top notch but it sucks that the Sega CD version is so poor. The frame-rate is really lousy.
I would have thought 60fps on sega CD, especially with the extra 68000 processor.. Regarding the bonus leves,I know the Sega CD had much more powerful scaling/rotation built into the hardware (Batman Returns, anyone?), so for a mode 7 type bonus stage, I can't see why it would have been a problem. I guess it was rushed?
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Mania is really good. I restarted the game today as I only had 1 emerald and played a chunk of it drunk. I was at the 6th stage I think. I fucked up a lot and missed a lot.

Now i'm sober and the level design is amazing. I'm now at 3 emeralds in zone 4, and fucked up 2 special stages.

I don't know what stages they've put in there but i've been pleasantly surprised by what i've encountered so far. Its pure fanservice and i would've been pissed if I was spoiled, for example the stage 2 boss etc.
 
I think
Hydrocity
being played relatively straight, and getting less of a radical makeover, along with Blue Spheres just kind of showing up, is probably a really bad sign for the future of a Taxman S3&K.

As a complete Somic noob, what exactly is the purpose of Tails? He just seems to follow me around. Do something cunt!

In this game, you can press up and jump in the air, and if Tails is jumping it will get him to fly. Jump into his arms and hammer the jump button to airlift Sonic, even in single player.
 

Wingus

Member
Couldn't be happier with the game. My favourite zones from S&K made it in.

Flying Battery Zone may be long, but that's fine with me since the music kicks so much arse. I love it.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Tails is kind of easy mode. He does grab rings for you and he will suicide hit bosses. Its all sort of random but you do get free attacks with him.
 

13ruce

Banned
Mania > Sonic 2+Knuckles = Sonic 3+Knuckles > Sonic 1.

Need to play Sonic CD again soon because i was like 10 when i played that for the last time so i can't rank it in fairly now yet.
 

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
How are people doing with the collect blue sphere levels? I have a little over half done, most are gold I think 5 silvers. Some of these are really difficult! I assume we can go back and select the silver ones to replay once we've cleared them all?

Did 'em all on my first run. I've played too much Blue Sphere in the past...

The trickiest one to Perfect was the one with an extremely low number of spheres. I ended up jumping through a whole bunch of bumpers to complete it in a weird order.

Once you beat them all, the game will randomly give you repeats that you have yet to Perfect. You'll never see a repeat of a stage that you've perfected until you've perfected all of them (and at that point, there seems to be no reason to keep playing them anyway).
 

I Wanna Be The Guy

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
God I hate these special stages. They're so goddamn hard to find and then when I finally find one it's too goddamn hard. The next one could be ages away and I'll fail it when I find it anyway.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Mania > Sonic 2+Knuckles = Sonic 3+Knuckles > Sonic 1.

Need to play Sonic CD again soon because i was like 10 when i played that for the last time so i can't rank it in fairly now yet.

CD is really oddball, level design is all over the place. It encourages exploration, and triggering time warps to destroy the generators. Future signpost were useless though and bad level design shines through when you need high speed to warp and all they bothered with was placing two springs next to eachother as you can't properly build speed in a lot of these layouts anyway. Bosses were stupidly easy, probably the worst in the series.

Its overrated, though I did enjoy to 100% the game. I think Sonic 3+K is the best, though it were 2 full price purchases with the lockon being marketed as something awesome. But I also like S3 on its own merits (Angel Island, Icecap, Hydrocity). Sonic 2 is very good as well. Sonic 1... well I think its slow and sort of boring. Good platformer though.
 

Tsunamo

Member
God I hate these special stages. They're so goddamn hard to find and then when I finally find one it's too goddamn hard. The next one could be ages away and I'll fail it when I find it anyway.
I was the same, but returning to them after i'd cleared them for another run they became pretty easy.

I think the key is to follow the bots path/route and just try to keep on getting rings/orbs following it until you catchup. If you take a detour/the slower path you'll never be able to catchup.

Worst one I personally had trouble with was the 5th ring stage.
 

Evilmaus

Member
Man, hearing so many people explain the don't "get" the gameplay and struggle with so many bosses is weird.

Granted I'm stumbling on a few hurdles too, but I'm late-game. I guess growing up with these games gives me an edge, but still. Hearing how much trouble people who are too young to have played the originals (or simply didn't care to) are having is weird!

Hope they all stick with it though. This is probably the best sonic game I've ever played! Bloody amazing!
 

Big One

Banned
Just did
Oil Ocean Act 2
and holy hell it's actually one of the best stages in the game! The boss keeps kicking my ass though.
 
That music to Green Hill Zone that always makes me happy, it never fails. Loving the game and this is really what should have been on the Saturn as a stop-gap with say Sonic CD on the Saturn but with Saturn sprite effects and better gfx on the bonus rounds. until Sonic Adv was ready on the Saturn.
Fun game but I still find the 3D games better myself.

Also speaking of Sonic CD, all those lovely sprite effects like rotation on Sonic and the bosses in Maniam could and should have been done on the Mega CD by SEGA to show off the ASIC hardware.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
I love what they did with Chemical Zone boss. I didn't expect them to squeeze in a
functional working Mean Bean Machine / Puyo Puyo boss like that
 
We ranking this with the classics?

Sonic 3+K > Sonic 2 > Sonic Mania > Sonic CD > Sonic 1

It might be a bit unfair to tag 3 and K together, but that joint cartridge is one of the greatest games of all time.
 

FaintDeftone

Junior Member
Loving the game so far. I love how it mends together the feeling of wanting to replay an old Sonic game with the feeling of wanting to play a new one as well. It scratches both of those itches for me.

My only real complaint I have with the game is that some of the new stages are really long and drawn out. The bosses are much trickier this time around and one of them (the
spider boss
) I lost all of my lives on and had to start all the way from the beginning of act 1 in that zone. This isn't anything new to a Sonic game (and frankly its more generous than the older ones) but having to be kicked back to the beginning of that long ass zone was kind of annoying. I had to just turn the game off and walk away for a bit.

Other than that one minor complaint, the game is excellent.
 

Jazzem

Member
I think
Hydrocity
being played relatively straight, and getting less of a radical makeover, along with Blue Spheres just kind of showing up, is probably a really bad sign for the future of a Taxman S3&K.

Yeah, those were almost certainly salvaged from the S3&K proof of concept they made and showed to Sega
 

jmartoine

Member
Loving the game so far. I love how it mends together the feeling of wanting to replay an old Sonic game with the feeling of wanting to play a new one as well. It scratches both of those itches for me.

My only real complaint I have with the game is that some of the new stages are really long and drawn out. The bosses are much trickier this time around and one of them (the
spider boss
) I lost all of my lives on and had to start all the way from the beginning of act 1 in that zone. This isn't anything new to a Sonic game (and frankly its more generous than the older ones) but having to be kicked back to the beginning of that long ass zone was kind of annoying. I had to just turn the game off and walk away for a bit.

Other than that one minor complaint, the game is excellent.

I struggled on the same boss for a while and got a couple of game overs, looking at it positively I have both acts of that stage memorized quite well so it should be quite quick on subsequent playthroughs.
 
For those who finished the game with all 7 chaos emeralds:
Is it possible to only replay the Super Sonic part (like Doomsday in S3&K) after finishing the game, or do you have to play the entire Titanic Monarch Zone again?
 

TannerDemoz

Member
Just hit a bug at the end of Chemical Plant Zone 2 in handheld mode Switch.

After the boss battle at the end characters became stuck then everything crashed.
 

Aki-at

Member
For those who finished the game with all 7 chaos emeralds:
Is it possible to only replay the Super Sonic part (like Doomsday in S3&K) after finishing the game, or do you have to play the entire Titanic Monarch Zone again?

You have to replay Titanic Monarch Zone.
 

Ferr986

Member
Man those Special Stages are hella hard. I had lvl 3 speed and still I was never able to close the gap and ran out of time. Even if the UFO doesn't have rubberbanding he can get a big ass gap from you.
 

nowarning

Member
spiderboss
is super easy and enjoyable, possible to hit him multiple times and you can
push him into the spikes just by jumping into him normally
 
Just hit a bug at the end of Chemical Plant Zone 2 in handheld mode Switch.

After the boss battle at the end characters became stuck then everything crashed.

Happened to me in Hydrocity on Switch. This game really knows you to fuck with the OS. Game got stuck, OS menus could open but the input was still in the game. Had to hard shut down to get out of it.
 
Just hit a bug at the end of Chemical Plant Zone 2 in handheld mode Switch.

After the boss battle at the end characters became stuck then everything crashed.
Happened multiple times to a friend and I while playing. Inexcusable, and a shame, really. The game is damn good, it shouldnt have glitches like this
 

Gartooth

Member
Agreed. My ranking:

Mania > Sonic 3K > Sonic 2 > Sonic CD > Sonic 1

This is my ranking too. Sure Mania owes a lot from the old games with how much it borrows, but it had the most clear vision and best execution on what classic Sonic is. The only game I could flip flop with it is Sonic 3&K since I admittedly haven't played it for a few years.
 

Big One

Banned
I actually agree Mania might very well be the best 2D Sonic yet. I played the old 2D Sonics in preparation for Mania, and Mania so far has surprisingly controlled even better, and the level design is more consistent and unique than the older ones (there isn't a single level that annoys me). Mania feels like a refinement of the classic formula.
 

Renna Hazel

Member
As a complete Somic noob, what exactly is the purpose of Tails? He just seems to follow me around. Do something cunt!

The point is to tell someone the game is co-op, make them play as Tails, causing them to forever hate Sonic.

I can't believe this is still happening to me 20+ years later.
 
So I still suck at the sphere bonus stages (originally in S3) but at least this game is some solid fun. Hopefully I can circle back and redo those emeralds I missed too. Fell off the map. :(
 

chris121580

Member
Help with Hydrozone second boss
what do I need to do to hit him? It's not clear to me but it does look like there's something I can do with the cannons? I just don't get enough time to figure it out since I run out of air
 
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