#SONIC MANIA GAME ENGINE PS4#

However, they can only be used on a ‘no save’ mode, though Switch players will benefit from being to pick up and play anytime by just leaving the game on sleep mode.

Some of these extras include changing alternating Sonic’s additional abilities from other games, such as the insta-shield from Sonic 3 or his ‘super peel out’ from Sonic CD or the debug mode which is a great way to farm tons of easy enemies to earn you infinite lives. While these are optional and you can just run past them or purposely get hit by an enemy or spike so you don’t have the rings to activate it at a checkpoint, I’m a compulsive type of player, not to mention completing these is the only way to unlock the cool extras included in the game. These were never bad per se, but there’s also a lot of them, and to be honest, I feel like in my first run of Mania, I was spending as much if not more time on these than I was playing the actual game. These take you to Sonic 3‘s blue sphere bonus stages, where you need to collect all the blue spheres while avoiding the red ones. It’s this design that’s also something of a double-edged sword in Sonic, or sometimes just downright wilful like when a spring compels you to dash forward right onto a bed of spikes or how despite being able to run fast you can still find yourself failing to gather the momentum to run or roll up a certain slope and just have to stop and spin-dash your way out.īut what’s perhaps a real momentum killer is if you choose to jump into a bonus stage whenever you hit a checkpoint with at least 25 rings on you. Rather counter-intuitively, some of the best moments of Sonic is when you just let go of control and let yourself curl up into a ball to get whooshed through pipes and pinged back and forth on springs like going through an elaborate linear pinball machine. Sonic also has a new ability in Mania, a drop dash that you can perform when jumping in the air then keeping the button held down, though it’s a bit fiddly to pull of at times, but otherwise, the controls are just as you remembered them, without the woeful physics of modern Sonic games. Chances are there are some areas Sonic’s own jumps and dashes simply can’t reach, which is why you also have the option to play as long-suffering sidekick Tails or occasional rival Knuckles who can fly or climb up walls respectively, or if you’re playing with a friend, Tails can carry Sonic to certain heights like in Sonic 3. Right from the end of Green Hill Act 1, you’ll find a mini-boss that didn’t exist, while Act 2, following Sonic 3‘s structure, the music gets remixed as whole new gimmicks get introduced, from the old rotating wooden spikes that can be burned away with a fire shield to reveal a route below to the Chemical Plant (and its still iconic music) adding more interesting chemicals that change how you traverse and bounce around the intricately designed levels that are even bigger than before.Īs it is with classic Sonic, you can speed through each level in a matter of minutes, but you’ll never see everything there is to offer except by repeated playthroughs, with always multiple and secret paths, some also leading you to the giant rings that transport you to a pseudo-3D special stage modelled after the special stages in Sonic CD in order to find all 7 chaos emeralds. That’s not to say it’s all just a retread. Of course, speeding through Green Hill Zone is a glorious nostalgic rush, but fans hungry for the new may be disappointed that only a third of the available zones are completely brand new. Mania is a beloved mixtape of Sonic’s history, spanning 12 zones, consisting of remixes of levels from the original trilogy (and Knuckles!) and Sonic CD, as well as brand new zones like Studiopolis with gorgeous art style that makes it sit alongside the older levels perfectly, though current-gen consoles offers far more colour and depth than the Mega Drive or even Mega CD would have been able to handle. Not from Sonic Team but a dedicated group of indie hackers and modders led by Christian Whitehead, Sonic Mania wipes away nearly two decades of awful mis-steps in the blue hedgehog’s career and restores him back to his pure side-scrolling 16-bit self, running on Whitehead’s own custom ‘Retro Engine’, which had also powered his acclaimed mobile ports of Sonic 1, 2 and CD. Who would’ve thought that it wasn’t just a clever slogan but a statement on how long the world would have to wait for a truly good Sonic game to grace our screens once more?

#SONIC MANIA GAME ENGINE PS4#

Platform: PS4 / XB1 / Switch / PC (Switch version tested) Developer: Christian Whitehead / Headcannon / Pagoda West

Sonic mania game engine