The zone now has new divergent paths that climb into the sky or go deep underground, and the entire stage is bigger, longer and more complicated. The first half of the level looks like a dead ringer for mascot's first adventure, but as you play on, it becomes obvious that it's different. Take the game's first level - after a brief story sequence seemingly throws Sonic back in time, Sonic Mania starts out just like the franchise's very first game: in Green Hill Zone. Even the game's levels adhere to this philosophy: Most of Sonic Mania's stages are throwbacks to older games, but all of them are more than what they seem. Here's the gameplay you loved in the '90s but with new abilities and gimmicks to keep it fresh. Here's a familiar-looking hero but with smooth, nuanced animation that lends his character more charm than you expected. On a visceral level, it looks and feels like a classic Sonic the Hedgehog game, but it delivers an experience that's just beyond your nostalgic expectations. That's the crux of the Sonic Mania experience - a careful merging of the old and the new. It's still nostalgically pixelated, but the game uses a much broader palette of color, lending the game's characters, backgrounds and power-ups subtly detailed highlights. Mania overlays that excellent base gameplay with gorgeous sprite work that outstretches the limitations of its 16-bit inspiration. Sonic Mania feels right in a way that a mainline Sonic game hasn't since 1994.Īgain, that's no surprise, considering it was created by a team that made a name for itself in modernizing Sonic's original adventures - but this faithful re-creation of the original game's physics serves as a foundation for an experience that both celebrates and adds to the history of the franchise's classic games. In Mania, Sonic, Knuckles and Tails jump, run, dash and move exactly as they did in Sega's classic platformers. Sonic Mania works for the same reason Whitehead's updated Sonic the Hedgehog ports work: It understands and accurately re-creates the delicate balance of speed, acceleration and momentum that defined the series' early games. Whitehead's modernized remakes, however, are rare exceptions - and Sonic Mania builds on everything that makes those ports great. There's a stigma attached to Sonic the Hedgehog games a pattern of expectation and disappointment that's become so ingrained in the series' community that it's known as the "Sonic Cycle." The cycle is mostly an old joke, but there's a grain of truth to it: Sonic games are typically announced with a lot of fanfare but often fall flat after launchh. That might sound a bit overzealous, but it's written with honesty.
This week, the fruits of that partnership reached a new high point in Sonic Mania, an all-new 16-bit Sonic the Hedgehog platformer that sees the mascot return to his glory days. In 2009, he created an unofficial proof of concept iPhone port of Sonic CD using a custom-built game engine - a project that eventually led to Sega hiring him to officially port Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 to modern platforms. If you've played Sonic the Hedgehog on your phone, Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 in the last half-dozen years, you have Christian Whitehead to thank.
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