Sonic Mania

Sonic has had his fair share of ups, downs, and loops in his career, but he's proven himself to be - and still is - one of the most beloved and enduring icons in video games. With Sonic Mania, Sega takes Sonic back to its successful roots, namely the world of side-scrolling 2D platformers, directly drawing inspiration from the 16-bit games that have propelled Sonic and his friends to the rank of superstars. Sonic Mania is proof that despite the years, effective gameplay remains so.

Sonic, Tails and Knuckles are back to face the forces of Dr. Robotnik in the best way possible: by running, jumping, spinning, flying and hovering to victory, through twelve zones. We find classic levels from Mega Drive episodes, like Chemical Plant, Stardust Speedway and Lava Reef, but also new ones like Studiopolis and Mirage Saloon. These new areas are particularly impressive: their level-design is colorful and creative, and I couldn't wait to run through and explore them, in search of all kinds of challenges (and easter-eggs). Take, for example, the neon buildings of Studiopolis, an area inspired by a big city TV studio. One of its routes will take you into the bowels of a popcorn machine - after it has propelled you through the beam of a satellite, while another will send you speeding through the tunnels of the city's metro.

But even the old areas are full of new things. They are bigger, more elaborate and filled with traps known as unseen which tickled my nostalgic fiber while managing to surprise me. The Chemical Plant Zone level in Sonic 2 has always been a fun circuit to play, with its many tunnels and ramps, but the addition of a slimy, chemical substance that makes you bounce all over the place - especially to let you Hanging on to the walls - makes the crossing even more fun and unique.

The different areas offered are not the only things to have undergone a little facelift. The levels look better than ever, carried by vibrant colors and intoxicating visuals, while the artistic flair of the new levels blends brilliantly with the pixelated 2D world of old Sonics. Everything, from the smallest piece of decor, is very detailed and delivers an unparalleled sense of movement. This also applies to enemies. Dr. Robotnik's new bosses aren't lacking in personality either, which makes these villains as interesting as they are unique, without even having a line of dialogue. The soundtrack is also at the top, rich in remixes of the original themes and new compositions.

Sonic Mania has all the elements of a successful Sonic game: elaborate levels, responsive controls, good movement physics, interesting and thoughtful traps, hidden rooms to uncover, and dangers that force you to stay alert. constantly and above all to react very quickly. I replayed certain levels several times, each time discovering new secrets that had passed under my nose in the previous parts.

And the game motivates to replay all these levels. There are indeed a number of special hidden levels that need to be completed to collect all of the Chaos Emeralds, useful gems to unlock the true ending of Sonic Mania. In these special levels, you chase a UFO through a 3D landscape, collecting blue spheres and rings that improve the speed of the hedgehog. It's a fun concept, even if it is sometimes difficult to see the barriers that block the road coming. And the collision with some objects is not perfect. To make matters worse, collecting bombs can set off a chain reaction and send you over other obstacles, turning your successful run into a laborious crossing.

The bonus levels of Sonic 3 are also back, the latter to be unlocked by activating all the checkpoints scattered in the various zones. These levels do not allow you to unlock emeralds but bonus options once a certain number has been completed, such as a sound test, a debug mode, and even mini-games. They are initially easy, then gradually gain in difficulty. Completing them all therefore takes a lot of time and practice.

That being said, not everything that comes from old Sonic games is necessarily a good thing to take. There's a good chance that elements from the old episodes could be found somewhere in Sonic Mania - even if that wasn't something very positive. For example, if it is nice to be able to replay in the Sky Chase Zone of Sonic 2, let's be honest, the auto scrolling and the more or less wobbly controls related to this zone were not very fun before, and they are. no more today. Not to mention the game mechanics of the Sandopolis Zone of Sonic 3, still so boring 23 years later.

Also, while most boss fights are cool, there are a few that tend to pull the rope a bit too much, like the mid-level boss from Studiopolis and the new version of the end boss from Sonic 1. I know that the old episodes didn't have a checkpoint system between the different bosses, but that clearly wouldn't have been too much in Sonic Mania. As for Sonic's new Drop Dash, the latter is a bit too weak and slow for our liking, besides being complicated to use - so I stuck with the Spin Dash (the most annoying being that you can unlock options for activate Sonic CD's speed booster and Sonic 3's Instant Shield, but only in a mode in which it is not possible to save progress).

That is, yes, Sega has published it, proving that it is not completely detached from the thirty-year-old band of its fans, but it is not a product of the Sonic Team (which is currently working on Sonic Forces). It's a project by Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley, very active figures in the retro scene of Sonic, responsible for the recent re-editions of Sonic 1, 2 and CD. People who love Sonic wholeheartedly and who associate him more with blue skies than with dystopian cities and adolescent fiction outside the time limit. I am perfectly aware that there is a parallel world, outside of my nerd bubble, in which thousands of young people with twenty years younger than me have enjoyed all the three-dimensional garbage that the Sonic Team has passed off in the last decade.

I know there are fans and communities who love everything that I despised, in the Middle Ages came after Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast, but for the Sega mascot I expected a more glorious future. I wanted that like Mario, his longtime rival, Sonic knew how to dance between different genres, straddling 2D and 3D, innovating and bringing his formula based on colors and speed into ever new territories. Instead, to get excited again for Sonic, in 2017, I touch Sonic Mania, whose main feature is that it is "just like the first Sonic". A 2D game, colorful, fast, with beautiful music. Do we have to go back to go forward? I'm a fan of retrogaming, not nostalgia, and I experience this Sonic Mania a bit like a Pyrrhic victory.

Having said that, Sonic Mania is beautiful, on all fronts, and I hope it will have such a success as to influence Sega's future choices. It is a perfect tribute, which celebrates the twenty-five years of the hedgehog with a "best of" of Sonic 1, 2, CD and Sonic & Knuckles levels (revised and corrected, also in light of the transition to 16: 9), combined with a selection of new areas made with so much philological love that they are virtually indistinguishable from the old ones. Everything is packed with exceptional graphics, with pixels that smell like Megadrive but move as if they were driven by a more powerful machine, with Super Nintendo's Mode7 and the computing power of a Saturn. I like to call it an "enhanced past": the graphics have the spirit and style that we remember, but it frees itself from some of the limitations of the time, to give us a more fluid, precise and modern result. Finding the right proportion between past and future is difficult, but Sonic Mania does it easily, demonstrating all the talent of Whitehead and Headcannon.

The gameplay is exactly the same as that of the first episodes, with the protagonist (selectable from Sonic, Tails and Knuckles) who runs at six hundred per hour for large levels full of enemies, pitfalls and detours. There are so many secrets to be discovered and a margin of improvement out of scale, because to learn how to play properly, marking times worthy of Sonic, you have to do much more than get to the end of the level and defeat the boss on duty. Level design, speed and skill are the three pillars on which the first episodes were based, and here we see them in great spolvero. The more careful fans will notice that, although the movement physics is practically the same as it used to be, there are many small touches, refined and invisible, which smooth the gameplay with an impeccable taste.

In addition to the main campaign there are also time trials with online rankings for all levels and a competitive mode with a brutal horizontal split-screen, just like in the days of the Megadrive. Considering that each character has a different special power, which radically changes the approach to the levels, Sonic Mania has all the contents that can be expected from an operation of this type. It took me about two days of relaxed play to finish it, but I still have many hours of fun in front of me to learn how to finish it properly (read: without having to use two credits per zone), to discover its secrets and to relive it from the point of view of the other two protagonists that I have not used.

Sonic Mania has taste, measure and class. I sincerely hope that Sega will entrust Whiteman and its partners with a budget worthy of the name for the development of another two-dimensional Sonic, like this one but all new, without the need for the excuse of the twenty-fifth anniversary. In the meantime, let's fasten our red shoes and enjoy this blue sky.

MODUS OPERANDI
I played Sonic Mania on PS4, with a code received directly from Sega (or, better, from Mattia Ravanelli, who has not been able to write this review and is still crying). I finished the game with Sonic and Tails, as in Sonic 2, but I regretted the choice after two levels. Get off your feet, Tails! For the first run, I wholeheartedly recommend the good Sonic. To get to the end it took two days of relaxed play, studded with many game over and sporadic moments of intense hatred for a boss. The more trained fans, especially those who have recently replayed the originals, will certainly take less, but the journey will be very pleasant and satisfying. Also, to finish the game "well", there is much more work to be done. I would have liked to try the local competitive mode in depth, but the fact of being alone in Milan on the weekend of August has prevented me.

Old meets new

The Green Hill Zone is almost identical to its counterpart from Sonic The Hedgehog. Even the background music is practically the same, but no longer sounds as gritty as from Sega's sound chip in 1991. The zones (read: level) are divided into two "acts" as before, with half in Mania being twice as big as before on the megadrive. After the first act, there is also a miniboss waiting to be promoted to digital nirvana before moving on to the second half of the zone.

And that's where the innovations really stand out: in the second part of the Green Hill Zone, the level design is completely different and also offers a few new gimmicks. For example, there are elementary shields from Sonic 3 (& Knuckles). If, for example, we are surrounded by a flame shield, we flare the spiky wooden posts that lead over chasms in the level completely when touched. If the music in Act 1 still sounded like the original, Act 2 plays a modern remix. And at the end of the second part, we fight Dr. Robotnik, which makes life difficult for us in one of its huge machines.

Best of Sonic

As Sonic, Tails, Knuckles or a combo of Sonic and Tails, we make some of the best and most popular levels of the classics unsafe (Chemical Plant Zone, Flying Battery Zone, Hydrocity Zone etc.) and play with level building in the first half of the zone and the music from the originals and then with a new level design and groovy remix music in the second half. On top of that, there are also a couple of completely new zones, such as a wild west saloon or a television studio, which is somewhat reminiscent of the old casino levels.

Hidden bonus levels are also part of the game again - so we collect blue spheres as in Sonic 3 to unlock additional extras, or chase after race tracks on Chaos Emeralds as in Sonic CD. This is rounded off with many small gags and Easter eggs for fans, from allusions to Segas Game Gear to Super Shinobi to Sonic the Fighters. Progress is saved on request so that we can always continue playing in the zone in which we last stopped or failed. It doesn't get much more comfortable - let's exhale our last virtual life at the end boss of Act 2 of a zone, let's start again at the beginning of Act 1 of the same zone. There are no save states like on the Virtual Console or with an emulator.

Slightly prettied up

Sonic and his colleagues have also added some animation frames from Sega, so that they move much more naturally and fluidly than they did on the Megadrive back then. Some backgrounds are a bit more detailed and less pixelated than in the classics. The embellishments are subtle, but the part on the original hardware would not have looked that chic back then - despite blast processing. There are more cutscenes between the zones than before, in which we Robotnik and his new helpers, the Hard Boiled Heavies, watch as they steal the Chaos Emeralds and other nasty bosses.

Thankfully, all the actors keep their cheeks. There's no talking in Sonic Mania. The completely new zones look great and fit nicely into the game. The additional boss fights range from very nice to great. This is how the fight with Dr. Robotnik in his television studio has a weather report in the background, the forecast of which influences the fight. If sun is reported, we have to be careful not to be grilled by the studio headlights. If the report announces a thunderstorm, lightning strikes that we have to avoid. Cool idea! Elsewhere, the Obermotz controls a nasty giant spider that we have to bend in spines on the edge of the level. In our test version, however, the monster liked to get stuck somewhere in the ground or was completely unimpressed by hits. The idea is quite nice, but showed a few quirks in the implementation.

Age spots

Sonic (& Knuckles) is still fun in 2D today. However, the gameplay is not perfectly aged. Occasionally, Sonic runs face-to-face in a spring at top speed and is thrown back a perceived kilometer. Then he stands still for a while, has to start again and ideally jumps over the spring on the next attempt, otherwise the fun will repeat itself again. Elsewhere, the hedgehog is catapulted across so many ramps, through tubes and tunnels that the level practically plays itself for a while. And while Tails can swim and fly and Knuckles glides and climbs, Sonic has a much harder time reaching certain parts of the game.

The 3D bonus levels from Sonic CD just don't look good these days. In addition, there is no real co-op mode . As before, a second player can take control of Tails and help Sonic. In this mode, the camera only follows Sonic and there is no split screen here. So Tails is practically never in the picture and therefore not really playable. At least in boss fights, a human colleague in the role of Tails is worth gold. There is also a competition mode in which two players compete against each other in the twelve zones for best times - with split screen!

Alternatively, we improve our lap times through the zones solo in Time Attack mode. Those who have never touched the classics or only play with Quicksaves otherwise should plan a good ten hours here. Especially for a complete playthrough with all Chaos Emeralds. Veterans board through faster.