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Sonic Mania - Special Stages, Bonus Stages, & Time Attack Shown Off

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Dissent-

Neo Member
For real the people who worked on this are like god-geniuses.

I know I'm beating a dead discussion horse, but it still blows my mind that showing love for something through modding/fan creations is a valid way to get in to the industry. A bunch of insanely dedicated fans that worked on various Sonic hacking feats, fan-music/art, physics bibles and disassemblies finally receiving payoff for their teenage hobbies makes me feel fuzzy inside.
 

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller
I know I'm beating a dead discussion horse, but it still blows my mind that showing love for something through modding/fan creations is a valid way to get in to the industry. A bunch of insanely dedicated fans that worked on various Sonic hacking feats, fan-music/art, physics bibles and disassemblies finally receiving payoff for their teenage hobbies makes me feel fuzzy inside.

Well, they showed their passion and talent, and Taxman's been showing he knows the old Sonic games inside and out by remaking from the ground up Sonic 1, 2, & CD for porting, so now he has a chance to work with some other diehard fans and they have a chance to do Sonic Mania. It's looking fantastic and hope it does well for them and allows them to do more of what they obviously love doing.
 

Calm Mind

Member
82d.png

right click, save as
 

tkscz

Member
That special stage is insanity.

Taxman and Stealth doing work.



Have you played the Sonic CD remake? The special stages are much easier to deal with in that version cause it's not running at 15FPS or whatever it was doing on the Sega CD.

On mobile? They were still hard to control and the speed up makes things worse. The UFOs are still difficult to tell how close or far you are away from them, so you miss most of the time and some of them make you go faster. Touching the water decreasing your time doesn't help on stages where the coloring is weird and you can't tell whats floor or water, or what is a walled area and what isn't. The special stages are a mess in Sonic CD.
 

NOLA_Gaffer

Banned
Just to make sure, Blue Sphere is just the "bonus" stage this time around and not the special stage to get the Chaos Emeralds, right?
 

Guess Who

Banned
Just to make sure, Blue Sphere is just the "bonus" stage this time around and not the special stage to get the Chaos Emeralds, right?

Yup. Nick Robinson from Polygon on Twitter mentioned that, when he played Blue Sphere in Mania, he got some kind of bronze coin thing but doesn't know what that does yet.
 

HonMirin

Member
I swear, if you people don't buy this game and support Sonic's return to greatness, I will pray to every deity to delete your gamerscore/trophy haul. I will sacrifice anything and everything possible to ensure you face great trouble in setting up new consoles and/or TVs. Your pc upgrades will be hampered by static shock. Your leads will give off an annoying hum. The rubber on your sticks will rot. Your Bluetooth will have the most intense tooth decay. YOU WILL NEVER HAVE PEACFUL GAMING SESSIONS AGAIN!!!

But seriously. Please buy this game. Or you suck.
 

deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
Wait, the bonus stage will be like the special stages in Sonic 3?! That kinda sucks.

Special Stages as a runing 3d thing is GOTA thou.
 

Tarin02543

Member
Looks absolutely fantastic, this looks like a forgotten Sonic game from the Saturn days.

My Steam copy is paid and ready to download.

Also the Blue Spheres are back. The adrenaline rush when the tempo is increased, I remember that very well.
 

J@hranimo

Banned
I swear, if you people don't buy this game and support Sonic's return to greatness, I will pray to every deity to delete your gamerscore/trophy haul. I will sacrifice anything and everything possible to ensure you face great trouble in setting up new consoles and/or TVs. Your pc upgrades will be hampered by static shock. Your leads will give off an annoying hum. The rubber on your sticks will rot. Your Bluetooth will have the most intense tooth decay. YOU WILL NEVER HAVE PEACFUL GAMING SESSIONS AGAIN!!!

But seriously. Please buy this game. Or you suck.

Don't worry, I'll be buying this on Steam AND the Switch. They deserve it :)
 
Those new special stages look absolutely rad. Very curious to see how the S3K Special Stages have been re-jiggered for the Bonus Stage format too. And instant stage reset for Time Attack is a very good addition too.

Noticed some extended clips (the Green Hill Time Attack video in particular) were uploaded by other people. I guess they have the final game--game releases in twelve days, after all. Can't wait.

Think I need to tap out. I have never liked any of the old sonic games and don't know what i was thinking when i thought i would give this a chance. Those special stages look awful and now i have a splitting headache.

Strange response. Sonic Mania is entirely about going back to the original style of Sonic games. If you didn't like the old Sonic games, you very likely wouldn't had liked this game either.

It would be like saying you hated the original Naughty Dog-era Crash Bandicoot games, but then expressing interest in buying the N-Sane Trilogy.
 

clav

Member
No more RNG bonus stage on checkpoint is strange. I like checking which color the rings are, so I know what I'm getting.

That kinda takes me out of the nostalgia element the game is trying to push so hard.

Double 3D stages is kinda weird unless the reward for blue spheres actually means something.
 

MrBadger

Member
FUCK YEAH BLUE SPHERE IS BACK!



82d.png

lmao

Wait, the bonus stage will be like the special stages in Sonic 3?! That kinda sucks.

Special Stages as a runing 3d thing is GOTA thou.

I'd be disappointed if Blue Spheres was the main special stage but I think they work well as optional bonus rounds and it's good that the main ones are something new. Good for those people who wanted them back too
 

varkuriru

Member
Oh god just hearing the sounds effects of the Sonic 3 special stages is enough to give me stress.

New special stage looks ace at least.
 
seeing these bonus stages has me hyped!!!

any word how the port is to the switch? is it on par with ps4? not sure which to buy it for
 

Guess Who

Banned
seeing these bonus stages has me hyped!!!

any word how the port is to the switch? is it on par with ps4? not sure which to buy it for

Switch port is done by Tantalus (who made Twilight Princess HD) and by all accounts is identical to other platforms. As it should be, because this game was basically designed to run on hardware from 20 years ago.
 

MrBadger

Member
These guys should do a new Sonic R next that doesn't control like ass.

...huh, didn't realise I wanted this

I think their next game could be a new platformer IP that could have succeeded Sonic in the 90s if 2D wasn't taboo. Kind of like what Ristar tried to be
 
I understand they were going for a retro look, but was the massively low resolution + associated aliasing really necessary on the special stages? It looks awful. At least put a blur filter over it or something—to account for the fact that old CRTs would have had much less visible aliasing.

Not crazy about the draw distance either, but it's less annoying IMO.
 

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller
I understand they were going for a retro look, but was the massively low resolution + associated aliasing really necessary on the special stages? It looks awful. At least put a blur filter over it or something—to account for the fact that old CRTs would have had much less visible aliasing.

Not crazy about the draw distance either, but it's less annoying IMO.

Sonic Mania has filter options: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8zmICz4q_8
 

Guess Who

Banned
For some reason it puts a big smile on my face that the Blue Spheres music is just the classic Blue Spheres theme with a modern coat of paint and not a more drastic remix.
 

FinKL

Member
Oh man S&K Sonic 3 Special Stage was definitely GOAT. So much tension and relief when playing it!

Definitely need this in my life
 

jett

D-Member
They've really gone whole
hedge
hog with the idea that Sonic Mania is what a Saturn Sonic would've been like. Prettay, prettay good.
 

Guess Who

Banned
Great—except I'd only want it on those 3D special stages. And I'd rather they just increased the resolution, or downsampled from a higher resolution to reduce aliasing, or something.

Like it or not, the aliasing and draw distance are a very deliberate stylistic choice to make it look like a Saturn game. Be thankful they didn't go the last mile and make it run at 20fps.
 
I'm so glad the special stages apparently loop so you can keep going until you run out of rings like Knuckles Chaotix.

How long before someone takes those special stage tracks and remakes them into a Super Mario Kart hack?
 
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