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Sonic Mania |OT| Dreams Come True

Just blazed through Mirage Saloon Act 2 in like two minutes without even trying to go that fast.

It was a great two minutes, but man I wish it had a bit more meat.
 
Alright, the Mirage Saloon Act 2 boss was rather neat. Think I'm gonna stop here for the ni...OH DAMN, they brought back THAT stage? Oh well, I'll pick up tomorrow where I left off.

OMG OMG OMG I UNLOCKED
DEBUG MODE
I CANNOT WAIT TO USE IT

Also cool is that you can unlock
"Mean Bean", i.e. puyo puyo can be played outside of the boss, even 2 player!

Final blue sphere count at the moment is 14 gold & 7 silver, leaving 11 left to beat.
 
I hope this sells like hotcakes so Sega can get off its ass and have the team behind this make a sequel.

And maybe set Sonic Team to do janitorial duties so the guys behind Mania can take over the series.

#MakeSonicGreatAgain
 
I'm fine with the final stage
Tyrannical Monarch, right?
, it's complex and a bit long, but conceptually and aesthetically I think it's great for a final level. But the fake (?) final boss feels a bit too complicated and drags on enough for me to screw up and just got a game over against it... Guess I'm done for today.

Dice// said:
Drew a thing!!


Inspired by the awesome smear frames in the opening
Click to expand...

This is wonderful, great job!

Combichristoffersen said:
I hope this sells like hotcakes so Sega can get off its ass and have the team behind this make a sequel.

And maybe set Sonic Team to do janitorial duties so the guys behind Mania can take over the series.

#MakeSonicGreatAgain
Click to expand...

I don't think I've ever wanted a Sonic game as much as I want another 2D one that's 100% original content made by this team. They're ridiculously talented, I REALLY hope Sega realizes the fantastic group of developers they gathered.
 
I took that survey that pops up on Sonic Mania's PS4 page on the console menu. Hopefully they listen to my suggestion for more classic style Sonic games. I also requested console ports of Sonic 1 and 2 that were on mobile.
 
Picked it up. Never really played Sega/Sonic games growing up but I'm happy to have this on Switch. I am on Zone 3 and I'm digging it. I'm not the best player so I am going at my
own...speed.
 
It took me an hour and a half to beat Mirage Saloon

Kill. Me.

If this is the best Sonic game in a while, maybe I'm just freaking terrible at Sonic games
 
Opa-Pa said:
I don't think I've ever wanted a Sonic game as much as I want another 2D one that's 100% original content made by this team. They're ridiculously talented, I REALLY hope Sega realizes the fantastic group of developers they gathered.
Click to expand...

The guys behind this are insanely talented indeed. Sure, I have some minor problems with the game, but it still stands as one of the best platform games I've ever played, alongside Sonic 1-3&K, the Crash 1-3 trilogy and SMB3. Even if it was rather expensive importing the CE from UK, it was worth it. I hope the sales of this game makes Sega greenlight a new game from the devs with only original content.
 
So I decided I wanted to start a new series for my youtube channel diving into my backlog and talking about all these games I had purchased and never played and with Mania out and I'm enjoying the hell out of it I decided to start this series with Sonic 4 Episode 1...

Holy hell this game is god awful. Maybe I wouldn't notice it in such an obvious way if I had not been playing Mania but yeah its just bad all around. Bad levels, bad controls, bad music, nothing about the game is actually good.

But because of that it makes Mania feel even more impressive to me, I've wanted to play a new Sonic game like this for years and so have many of us as well and its nice to finally have it even if Sega themselves didn't seem to be able to do it and fans had to do it instead...

Now for the love of god let me help design Shining Force Mania!
 
george_us said:
Titanic Monarch
is a terrible level. Almost ruins an otherwise stellar game.
Click to expand...

I like levels like Metropolis, Scrap Brain and Oil Ocean (Infact I even loved Eggmanland from Sonic Unleashed haha) but... I really didn't feel anything from this.

I guess it just felt like a dull finale? Felt more like the penultimate stage whilst Metallic Madness felt like the final level. It didn't help I only died once so it wasn't even hard, just sort of long I guess without any gimmicks I had to actual worry about.
 
Finished my 4th playthrough, loving it more each time. This game is so fucking good.

I haven't had this much fun with a Sonic game in forever.
 
george_us said:
Titanic Monarch
is a terrible level. Almost ruins an otherwise stellar game.
Click to expand...

I like it. It's a good challenge. However, the music is on the weaker side -- especially compared to what came before it -- and it seems linear upon two playthroughs. Its color palette is a bit too Egg Fleet for my liking too.

It,
MSZ1, and HCZ1
seem like the speedbump levels in what is otherwise the most consistent entry in the franchise. S&K is consistent too, but it's half as long.
 
Professional interest aside,
I really, REALLY digged Titanic Monarch zone as a whole. It was oppressive, there's a shit ton of things that can hurt you, Tee's music sounds like a JRPG final dungeon with a Saturn platformer-esque quality to it, and it combines with the aesthetic to convey that this is it, this is the seat of power and there's something terrible waiting for you at the center of the web, platforming vs speed had a pretty good balance, loved the branching paths in Act 2. If anything my one critique is a little too much focus on the gravity balls, but I don't particularly feel the zone overstayed its welcome. Getting a few timeouts there and restarting the zone is a far more pleasant experience than getting knocked out in Scrap Brain or Metropolis and then needing to do the entire game over again. If you've been speeding through the game, it forces you to start paying attention to lives (and rings, to gain lives)

In fact I'd rank it aesthetically, mechanically and difficulty-wise the best Sonic final zone ever, 2D or 3D.
 
Just finished the main game, with 3 chaos emeralds. Goddamn this is some good level design. Easily my fav 2D sonic out of the ones I've played. Everything was pretty much great. Will play more and get the rest of the chaos emeralds later.
 
I usually play my PS4 via remote play and even with a PS4 Pro (1080p60 remote play) the encoder just craps itself on the action in Sonic Mania.
 
Sir Abacus said:
I usually play my PS4 via remote play and even with a PS4 Pro (1080p60 remote play) the encoder just craps itself on the action in Sonic Mania.
Click to expand...

When I streamed and recorded my blind run on my base PS4 I actually busted out my Elgato because 1) 60fps 2) I didn’t trust the PS4 encoder to not make it look like total shit.
 
Falk said:
Professional interest aside,
I really, REALLY digged Titanic Monarch zone as a whole. It was oppressive, there's a shit ton of things that can hurt you, Tee's music sounds like a JRPG final dungeon with a Saturn platformer-esque quality to it, and it combines with the aesthetic to convey that this is it, this is the seat of power and there's something terrible waiting for you at the center of the web, platforming vs speed had a pretty good balance, loved the branching paths in Act 2. If anything my one critique is a little too much focus on the gravity balls, but I don't particularly feel the zone overstayed its welcome. Getting a few timeouts there and restarting the zone is a far more pleasant experience than getting knocked out in Scrap Brain or Metropolis and then needing to do the entire game over again. If you've been speeding through the game, it forces you to start paying attention to lives (and rings, to gain lives)

In fact I'd rank it aesthetically, mechanically and difficulty-wise the best Sonic final zone ever, 2D or 3D.
Click to expand...

Agreed, definitely the best final zone for Sonic. Scrap Brain and Metropolis feel more annoying than enjoyable, and Death Egg is just kinda there with some unmemorable gimmicks and alrightish music. TMZ goes very hard into the gravity balls, but at least they're memorable and fun to interact with. Not sure if they handle any differently than in the S&K bonus stages, but flinging Sonic around feels so right.

Titanic Monarch has pretty weird music for a Sonic level, but you guys executed it very well. There's a unique sense of scale and foreboding to it (especially Act 2), though the steady beat keeps the pace up. It feels epic without being generic. The level design doesn't feel as "final level" as Metallic Madness with its crushing traps and more trollish enemies, but the music and atmosphere in TMZ absolutely signal the end of the game. The stained glass in the background of act 2's warp room in particular made me think "what the hell am I looking at?". Just very off the wall and perhaps a bit unnerving. I really like the stage, overall - it would be in my top 5 for Mania.
 
Combichristoffersen said:
There's the first running section,
then you need to spindash the Silver Sonics when they are spindashing
, then another sorta running section. Overall he's really not that hard.
Click to expand...

lol i did that fight totally wrong. I did
every once in a while he would jump in the air after spin dashing and i kept trying to hit him in the air. It took awhile but i eventually got it.
 
Falk said:
Professional interest aside,
I really, REALLY digged Titanic Monarch zone as a whole. It was oppressive, there's a shit ton of things that can hurt you, Tee's music sounds like a JRPG final dungeon with a Saturn platformer-esque quality to it, and it combines with the aesthetic to convey that this is it, this is the seat of power and there's something terrible waiting for you at the center of the web, platforming vs speed had a pretty good balance, loved the branching paths in Act 2. If anything my one critique is a little too much focus on the gravity balls, but I don't particularly feel the zone overstayed its welcome. Getting a few timeouts there and restarting the zone is a far more pleasant experience than getting knocked out in Scrap Brain or Metropolis and then needing to do the entire game over again. If you've been speeding through the game, it forces you to start paying attention to lives (and rings, to gain lives)

In fact I'd rank it aesthetically, mechanically and difficulty-wise the best Sonic final zone ever, 2D or 3D.
Click to expand...

What you want out of a final zone and what I want out of a final zone are very different things.
 
george_us said:
That is definitely true. I still think Sonic CD is my favorite though. That one I instantly replayed through a couple of times. I'm not sure if I have any desire to return to Mania at the moment.
Click to expand...

I never liked CD, but I'll give it that it had great special stages (that ran in single FPS digits on my old 486). But Mania is deffo the best Sonic game since S3&K.
 
The only part I died in
Titanic Monarch
was when a platform raised with spikes and crushed me as Super Sonic. It's just a long level rather than a hard level, at least for me.

Dice// said:
Drew a thing!!


Inspired by the awesome smear frames in the opening
Click to expand...

Great work on this, definitely love how well the colours compliment each other, good stuff!
 
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