Sonic series: Sonic Mania
This essay on Sonic Mania is a sequel of sorts to my analyses of Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic CD and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I recommend reading them first for a fuller understanding of my critique on Sonic Mania.
After the release of Sonic & Knuckles, it was clear that Sonic needed to move on from the Mega Drive — it was a 6 year old system at that point, and much more powerful hardware was available — the Sony Playstation released in the very same year! Since then, Sonic has chased the newer trends in video games and there was no real true successor to the Mega Drive Sonic games — not until SEGA gave a smaller, outside team the approval to do so.
Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley, responsible for the “better” versions of Sonic 1, 2 and CD on mobile phones, partnered with PagodaWest Games to have a go at making their own Sonic game based on the Mega Drive originals. The result is Sonic Mania.
Sonic Mania feels a bit more like a celebration of the old games than a true sequel, as 2/3rds of it is based on old levels from Sonic 1, 2, CD and 3 & Knuckles. The usage of old levels is a smart way to re-purpose work from Whitehead and Thomley’s remakes, plus having segments with the same layouts as the originals legitimizes Mania as truly like the classics by showing how it plays exactly the same. However, despite these returning levels being heavily re-arranged and iterated on, this was a big letdown as I expected the balance of returning and entirely new levels to be 50/50. When there are so many old levels, you can’t help but want to tell the game “I get it already.” They’re probably most effective to fans who haven’t played Sonic in more than a decade, but for someone like me who plays these games often, there’s no nostalgia at all.
CONTROLS
Sonic Mania controls largely the same as Sonic 3 & Knuckles, with Tails, Knuckles, the Elemental Shields, and everything else — just hyper-polished. Most, if not all small issues and bugs of the original games are gone. The main differences in Mania’s controls are the removal of the Rolling Jump mechanic and the replacement of Sonic’s Insta-Shield with the new Drop-Dash move. By pressing and holding the jump button in midair and not letting go, Sonic will do a low-power Spin-Dash the instant he lands. It works incredibly well in speedruns, as it is a nice solution to how, in other games, they often consist of constant stops to charge a Spin-Dash (Which is an annoying thing to do quickly, as I’ve explained in my Sonic 2 analysis). Still, I don’t know if I’m completely sold on it. Trying to use the Drop-Dash all the time really messes with the flow of the game and might make you shoot yourself into hazards you couldn’t see. I do find myself using it occasionally, being especially Drop Dash-happy on parts of levels that I already know by heart, but trying to use it too often and carelessly, especially on your first time through, can make the game feel off.
PRESENTATION
A big part of the appeal of the original games was presentation. Every new Sonic game on the Mega Drive attempted to push the technology further to generate more visual spectacle. How, then, can a game deliberately trying to mimic the restrictions of 20-year-old hardware replicate that “wow” feeling?
Sonic Mania does so by incredibly well-drawn pixel-art with an enormous amount of animation frames, unseen in pixel-art from most other modern “retro” games. It looks outstanding in motion, as the smooth animation banks on Mania’s consistent 60 frames per second performance. I strongly feel that Sonic Mania is the most successful modern replication of the appeal and aesthetics of a certain era and style of pixel-art, more so than Shovel Knight and Owlboy — games that were heavily praised for their retro graphics, but would occasionally falter in their faithfulness. Sonic Mania deliberately attempts to look like a 2D game reminiscent of the SEGA Saturn (with its elaborate sprites’ large amount of animation frames and colors) and the original Playstation (with its transparency effects and usage of low-poly 3D) in the vein of games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
Despite looking better than most modern pixel-art games, Sonic Mania still has some issues with its visuals. Sonic games have always been very graphically busy, and combined with how fast they play, they often got dangerously close to being hard to read. All the new Zones in Sonic Mania though cross that line into illegibility in some small way or other, as there are spots that are hard to tell what you can and cannot interact with, stand on, or get damaged by, despite the great technical competency of the pixel-art.
Some environments in Sonic Mania don’t make a lot of sense. In Green Hill, you go underground, where rays of light can be seen from the cave’s ceiling (a nod to a prototype background in Sonic 1). But… isn’t this cave under a huge lake? If the ceiling has holes, then that’ll just flood the whole place. In the second Act of Flying Battery, when you go from outside the ship to inside and back again, the backgrounds would indicate you’re going from somewhere in the center of the ship to, impossibly, a far extremity of the ship. These bits of thoughtlessness in the environments stick out a lot when so much of the game’s presentation consists of great attention to detail.
MUSIC
The music in Sonic Mania is entirely done by Tee Lopes, a Portuguese musician who became notorious on YouTube for his re-arrangements of Sonic music. I’ve followed him for many years and I love his interpretations of old Sonic tunes, but I had my concerns. Being great at re-arranging tracks isn’t necessarily the same as being a great composer, plus one-composer game soundtracks often reveal a musician’s vices and weaknesses very starkly. The first original tracks revealed were Studiopolis 1 and Mirage Saloon 2, and while really good, they sounded really similar in tempo, structure and progression, which seemed to me like a worrying revelation of Lopes’ vices.
Thankfully, Sonic Mania’s soundtrack is actually really, really good. According to Lopes, he was given directions to make it sound Sonic CD-esque, and there’s definitely a lot of Naofumi Hataya on Studiopolis 1’s music and on the track Danger on the Dancefloor — but as a whole this is really Tee Lopes’ soundtrack. This becomes explicitly clear on the re-arrangements of Sonic CD tracks, as he gives them his own very distinct spin. Tee Lopes’ soundtrack is cheerful, loud and energetic. It simultaneously establishes its own flavor of Sonic music while remaining true to all the old soundtracks it re-arranges.
STORY
Sonic Mania features a plot that revolves around a mysterious ruby that transforms a small group of Eggman’s robots into the Hard-Boiled Heavies, a fun group of robot henchmen with their own personalities and themes. I really love them, they’re like Sonic’s own version of the Koopalings from the Super Mario series. It’d be easy to give Sonic Mania the same minimal plot as Sonic 1 and 2, and nobody would have complained, but these new characters give Mania have a strong identity of its own despite the game’s large focus on being a throwback.
Sonic Mania tells its plot with small cutscenes between levels, much like Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I feel that Sonic 3 & Knuckles’ story presentation was weak and even unnecessary in many spots, like Knuckles constantly appearing in levels only to press a switch. Plus, levels in S3&K have such different themes that their transition from one to another can feel like silly excuses. It’s especially embarrassing when you realize that Rocket Knight Adventures was released a year prior to S3&K, featuring a really good silent narrative and a level progression that made sense and was constantly increasing the stakes of your adventure.
Sonic Mania, without the harsh restrictions of the Mega Drive, has an opportunity to go all-out with its super smooth animations and convey the game’s story in a cute, engaging way — without obstructing the action.
…But it doesn’t. Yes, there are some (thankfully very unobtrusive) cutscenes, especially in the first half of the game. However, in the latter half, where the game would most benefit from them, there are next to none. Chemical Plant’s introduction features a totally unnecessary, but really cute and elaborate animation of Sonic shaking off goo that falls on him. Meanwhile, Titanic Monarch, the final level, isn’t set up anywhere in the game, which made me unsure whether it really was the final stage up until I fought its boss. Even a small, cliché cutscene of looking up dramatically to Titanic Monarch at a distance, would have been enough to properly frame it. As it stands, not only did I not know that it was the final level, but I also had no idea what it was — a base? A castle? A building that doubles as a giant statue? A giant mech? I’m still not entirely sure.
If the progression of levels of Sonic 3 & Knuckles didn’t make much sense, this is doubly so in Mania, especially since it uses completely different locations from previous games. Titanic Monarch (again, the final level, so reaching it is must be the protagonists’ goal) is implied to be in Little Planet, the setting for Sonic CD. So why does Sonic go from Stardust Speedway (which is in Little Planet) to Hydrocity Zone (which isn’t), only to go back to Little Planet at the end of the game? Even the self-contained narratives within the levels don’t make any sense. In Mirage Saloon 1, Sonic and Tails are aboard their airplane, chasing a train conducted by Eggman. Once they get close to it, Sonic hops off the plane onto the train… Only to launch himself off of the train back onto the plane Tails is piloting. Why is the train there? What is it for? Why did Sonic raid it but not do anything aboard it? This lack of sense or continuity to its levels makes Mania feel decidedly game-y and artificial.
LEVEL DESIGN
The level design and general structure of Sonic Mania is based on Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The main difference in Mania is the increase in alternate paths. Alternate paths no longer quickly converge to a main path— in a lot of levels, you can take entirely different paths that only meet at the very end, like some Sonic 1, 2 and CD levels. Now I understand why S3&K downplayed alternate paths so much: The more closed-off level design makes it so alternate paths diverge more from one another and don’t meaningfully interact as much. Also, in this kind of level design, it can be really hard to tell where any one point of the level is located in comparison to another: levels are much longer, they consist of a lot of leftwards and vertical movement rather than just rightwards, and formerly recognizable landmarks like level gimmicks and setpieces aren’t restricted to one part of the level and may constantly re-occur.
Compare this to Sonic 1 and Sonic CD levels like Spring Yard, Collision Chaos and Quartz Quadrant: they all feature superstructures that encompass all the paths through these levels, thus acting as overarching indicators of where you are. Or compare to Marble Zone — its levels all start from the outside, then go underground, and end with the player climbing their way back up and out. This simple narrative makes it easy to understand Marble Zone’s levels’ overall structure, memorize them, and pinpoint where you are relative to the whole. Mania’s levels features none of these things.
It’s true that you don’t need to know where you are relative to the whole level in most action games, you just need to know that you’re progressing. But Sonic Mania’s levels could have been served with easier to remember structures and better indicators of your surroundings, as it would lead players more naturally into speedrunning.
That being said, Mania’s levels are really fun. With some exceptions, the old Zones’ first Act are structured so that the first Act is the old level as it was in its original game, with the second Act featuring a big spin on it with some new(ish) elements. Mania uses and mixes level elements from the old games in new, creative ways that were probably not really possible in their original incarnation. It sometimes feels like playing a clever Mario Maker level and thinking “Oh they did this with that?” Also new and welcome here are environmental reactions to the Flame and Lightning Shields (Bubble Shield got the short end of the stick), which can allow you to do things like burn bridges or travel by magnetism. This makes the Shields feel more useful and interesting than before, especially for Tails and Knuckles, who can’t use their mid-air abilities.
Sonic Mania also brings back disappointing old levels, like Oil Ocean, Lava Reef, Flying Battery and Metallic Madness. I know I’m a minority regarding fan-favorite Flying Battery, and it was an OK apology for Sonic 2’s Metropolis and Wing Fortress Zones… but I dislike its magnetic gimmick and its unintuitive “wait for small bombs to break the floor” bits, and they’re both in Mania — Though they’re actually better here. All of these returning levels are improved with varying degrees of success, with the new Metallic Madness being one of my favorite levels in the whole game, while Oil Ocean and Lava Reef still featuring most of the issues of their original incarnations. (And new ones! Sandopolis stuff? Really?)
Another problem with re-using old zones is that some of their iconic elements can be big difficulty spikes for newcomers, like the infamous underwater vertical platforming bit from Chemical Plant — which can easily crush or drown you. This is too harsh a punishment for a second level, especially considering the vast majority of the game’s tight platforming either does regular damage or just wastes time if the player does a mistake. This criticism is also true of Sonic 2, since Mania just rips that section straight from it, but Mania bringing so many newcomers to the fold made me realize how jarring of a difficult spike that is for new players.
Remakes are nice, but the new levels really steal the show. Mirage Saloon is so fun, it’s so unfair that its first Act is Knuckles-only (another surprise from Mania: Knuckles levels that are actually really, really good) while Sonic and Tails are stuck with a spin on Sonic 2’s Sky Chase instead with sudden, jerky auto-scrolling direction changes. Press Garden 2 features ice cubes and freezing gas inspired by Sonic 3’s Ice Cap but it does so in a completely new and much more interesting way. Titanic Monarch creatively uses elements from Sonic 3 & Knuckles’ Bonus Stages for some great platforming.
Sonic Mania’s levels really allow you to play with their geometries and layout in smart ways, rewarding players and inviting them to use Sonic’s movement skillfully. Though the rewards can sometimes feel inconsistent. Is this hard-to-reach place leading me to power-ups, some rings, an alternate path, or a…
SPECIAL STAGE
The way to access Special Stages here is the same as it was in Sonic 3 & Knuckles — warps scattered throughout the levels. The improvement here is that a lot of them aren’t actually inside fake walls (whereas all S3&K’s warps are inside fake walls), and most of the remaining fake walls I’ve encountered are either clearly indicated, or the level just naturally flings you at them. In other words, most of Mania’s Special Stage warps are found by either doing good platforming or the level itself just presents it to you. I discovered warps a lot more when I didn’t try to meticulously explore every inch of the level as I had to in S3&K.
An issue here, though, is that finding these warps can often feel like chance because of the many alternate paths. Your route through a level may simply not contain any warps. For instance, taking the high path of Green Hill 1 skips over a Special Stage warp, one which is presented on a silver platter when going through the lower paths.
Sonic Mania’s Special Stages are my favorite out of all the Sonic games I’ve reviewed here. This isn’t exactly super high praise, and I don’t think they keep being as engaging in repetitive playthroughs, but those first few times through each are very thrilling and fun. Unlike most other Special Stages, they’re not entirely disconnected from the main game, as it’s also about trying to balance being fast and careful.
Your objective is to chase and catch a UFO on a racetrack, collecting blue spheres to increase a meter. Once that meter is maxed, you increase speed so it’s easier to reach the UFO (There are three tiers of speed, Mach 1, 2 and 3. The UFO also increases its speed as you go faster, but not as much as you do). However, higher speeds also mean trickier controls as Sonic becomes more slippery. Rings act as time extensions, as once your timer runs out (or you fall off-course), the Special Stage is over.
My two criticisms of Mania’s Special Stages are that walls aren’t marked very clearly, and that they become much less thrilling the better you are at cutting corners, as you’re able to catch the UFO at Mach 2 speeds, or even Mach 1 — when keeping yourself from falling off-course or hitting obstacles isn’t difficult (The last Special Stage, for instance, is a breeze if you avoid Mach 3).
It seems that the Sonic Mania developers don’t agree with my assertion that these are the best Special Stages in the series, as they also included the Blue Spheres Special Stages from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and gave them an absurd amount of focus.
BLUE SPHERES
Sonic Mania replaces the Bonus Stages of Sonic 3 & Knuckles… With the Special Stages of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Bringing 25 Rings to a Checkpoint grants access to them. Not only are the 14 original Special Stages back, but they also have 18 new ones. Beating them unlocks game extras, like Sound Test, Debug Mode, and Puyo Puyo.
Constantly interrupting the action of the game with these really long mini-games was Sonic Mania’s biggest flaw to me. I cannot overstate how much it bogged down the experience to do them only out of a sense of obligation to unlock the extras. I only started to really enjoy playing Sonic Mania once I unlocked everything and never had to play Blue Spheres again.
I would have had no issues with it if Blue Spheres was a separate mode from the main game altogether and didn’t govern the unlock of any extras. In fact, the last unlock is a separate Blue Spheres mode. In it, you play through procedurally generated levels, some of which feature brand-new green spheres (which need to be cleared twice) and pink spheres (which warp you to another pink sphere in the level).
The new level bits that are procedurally pasted together to create these levels are interesting but few, making these stages feel same-y after not many playthroughs. Despite that, this mode highlights how much better it feels to have them separate. They no longer break the flow of action and can be enjoyed in quick succesion. I found myself actually enjoying Blue Spheres as a small distraction this way.
However, Blue Spheres’ constant interruption of the action isn’t Mania’s only big flaw…
BOSSES
Much like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, there are bosses at the end of every Act. Sonic Mania sees bosses as a way to add some spectacle, and while I had a big silly smile on my face when I had to unexpectedly play a match of Puyo Puyo, or when I saw the return of Nack, Bean and Bark, these moments don’t necessarily translate into bosses that are fun to fight or are meaningfully connected to the rest of the game.
Before laying out the harsh criticism, I must admit there are some legitimately very fun bosses. Green Hill 1’s boss is a great iteration on the original Green Hill Zone’s boss. Green Hill 2’s boss has a lot of different ways to approach, and rewards smart, skillful usage of Green Hill’s iconic serpentine hills. Flying Battery 1’s boss is a much smarter and more engaging twist on Sonic & Knuckles’ Flying Battery 2 self-damaging time-wasting sub-boss. Other bosses that I have no complaints with are those for Press Garden 2, Stardust Speedway 1 and Metallic Madness 1 and 2.
With all that being said, a lot of bosses have some annoying issues. Bosses will have invulnerable periods that aren’t indicated at all (Metal Sonic, Titanic Monarch 2, Mirage Saloon 2), be unclear when or how you’re supposed to hit them (Metal Sonic, Flying Battery 2, Mirage Saloon 1, Lava Reef 1) and have playfields that you can’t recover lost Rings from (Studiopolis 1, both Hydrocity bosses, Mirage Saloon 1, Oil Ocean 2). There’s also the re-usage of bosses from Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Chemical Plant 1, Hydrocity 2 and Titanic Monarch 1) that were intended to be defeated quickly and safely by using the now-absent Insta-Shield, resulting in fights that are too boring and difficult to beat without taking damage.
Some of these bosses can be pretty hard and tricky too, and the lack of Continues (only present in No Save mode) means players that lose all of their lives in Act 2’s boss will have to re-do its entire Zone, since the save system here works exactly as it did in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. While re-doing Zones can give players an appreciation of Mania’s multiple paths, and grant more opportunities to collect extra lives and Chaos Emeralds, it makes no sense to have to re-do them just to fight a boss when most bosses aren’t connected to the mechanics of their Zones at all, meaning re-doing levels isn’t going to help with them. The levels being so long also makes it a really inconvenient setback.
Sending players back to the Act they were in within the Zone would be more fitting, especially as each Act of a Zone can be so wildly different than the other in Sonic Mania (Press Garden 1 and 2 are completely different levels with the only commonality being one minor enemy). Mania could have also been better served with a structure more akin to modern platformers, in which you can revisit any stage you’ve already cleared, allowing newcomers to take breaks from levels they’re having trouble with. As it stands, you either clear the level you’re stuck on or you start the game over.
CONCLUSION
While Sonic Mania is a game with some disappointments, a lot of it also exceeds reasonable expectations. In fact, many elements of Sonic Mania are among the series’ best, from the high quality art and animation, the music and the great new and remixed levels. Nearly everything in Mania exceeds what you’d expect from a small group of fans.
That’s really the beauty of Sonic Mania, it truly is a game made by fans, in every single corner of it — Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley were prominent members of the Sonic hacking and fan-gaming community, Tee Lopes became popular on YouTube from his Sonic re-arrangements, PagodaWest Games was formed from people who were working on a Sonic 2 HD fan project, and Sonic Mania’s opening animation is done by Tyson Hesse, who started his career with the official Sonic comics by drawing silly fan-art. Even a minor character from the game, Jimmy, the Motobug that Heavy Rider rides on, is a tribute to a hack of Sonic 1 and its creator, Polygon Jim, who passed away a few years back.
Sonic Mania is a game “by the fans, for the fans”, but needlessly misdirects newcomers in the process. Sonic Mania doesn’t take a lot of care to make itself easy to parse, especially for the uninitiated, neither in graphics, nor in its levels and bosses. This is mitigated by spending more time with it, much like the other Mega Drive games it builds on, but I wish I didn’t have to say that again.
Sonic Mania stands on the shoulders of giants, and that’s both its strength and weakness. It mashes together many of the best elements of the series and elevates them to new heights, but it also gives a lot of emphasis to a few mediocre ones. Its novelties are, more often than not, extremely welcome, but they’re few and downplayed when compared to the older stuff. Sonic Mania sometimes feels insecure, as if it doesn’t really know whether its focus is on being a recap and celebration of the old games, or an iteration and sequel to them. I can only hope that the team is forced to shake off that insecurity for its inevitable sequel and appropriate Sonic as truly theirs; coming up with new, fun ideas, all while looking at their own work in Sonic Mania with a critical eye.
