Sonic Mania (August 15th 2017, Christian Whitehead, PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch) - The New Classic

[Meta77]

Very disappointment in the game being delayed honestly, This game better be huge if they are delaying it to summer now. I'm talking more than 7 stages. Also I kind of wish they would add more to the collectors edition. Besides the statue its meh I guess? I'm still getting it but Id love an edition that includes the soundtrack.

[andrew2]

30 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

Very disappointment in the game being delayed honestly, This game better be huge if they are delaying it to summer now. I'm talking more than 7 stages. Also I kind of wish they would add more to the collectors edition. Besides the statue its meh I guess? I'm still getting it but Id love an edition that includes the soundtrack.

Umm. You do realize we already know 7 stages. Green Hill, Sonic 2 stage, Sonic 3 stage, Flying Battery, Sonic CD stage, Studiopolis, Mirage Saloon.

Plus, there are at least 2 more new zones we don't know about (since the plural was used when they spoke about the new zones we don't know about yet).

So that takes us to 9 as a bare minimum. I'm personally expecting 15 give or take a couple in light of Christian Whitehead's 'big game' comments.

Also, that green badnik in the dumpster looks like it's from Mirage Saloon. If the badniks in the dumpster are all from zones in Sonic Mania, then that would mean Labyrinth Zone confirmed? I will concede, the bat from Marble Zone did show up in Green Hill, so you never know where that drill guy from Labyrinth might show up, but at this point I'd say it's more likely than not that Labyrinth will show up... I wanted Star Light...  

[Meta77]

17 minutes ago, andrew2 said:

Umm. You do realize we already know 7 stages. Green Hill, Sonic 2 stage, Sonic 3 stage, Flying Battery, Sonic CD stage, Studiopolis, Mirage Saloon.

Plus, there are at least 2 more new zones we don't know about (since the plural was used when they spoke about the new zones we don't know about yet).

So that takes us to 9 as a bare minimum. I'm personally expecting 15 give or take a couple in light of Christian Whitehead's 'big game' comments.

Also, that green badnik in the dumpster looks like it's from Mirage Saloon. If the badniks in the dumpster are all from zones in Sonic Mania, then that would mean Labyrinth Zone confirmed? I will concede, the bat from Marble Zone did show up in Green Hill, so you never know where that drill guy from Labyrinth might show up, but at this point I'd say it's more likely than not that Labyrinth will show up... I wanted Star Light...  

One can hope I want the game to last me several days. But usually 2d sonic games last a few hours

[Chris Knopps]

2 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

One can hope I want the game to last me several days. But usually 2d sonic games last a few hours

Depends if the game has "modes" like missions and collectibles.

[CleverSonicUsername]

It will probably have some bonus mode I'm sure. Either blue spheres is that or it's a bonus stage entered through star posts. I wouldn't expect more than 9 levels though. Likely we'll get one from each game, then four new.

[Zippo]

The one concern I do have is I really hope we don't have to wait months upon months for new info again. The months of silence we've had is agonising. I'm hyped as fuck about Flying Battery, but 20 seconds of new footage isn't quite enough. 

[Irish David]

Honestly, the delay doesn't bother me at all, it's only a quarter delay. Having worked in coding, this will more than likely be last round of testing and final cleaning up to make sure everything looks good, so I'm OK with that. The new art work is beautiful, the new boss group looks cool and a vinyl record...yes please and Flying Battery.....FLYING FREAKING BATTERY!!! Loved this zone from Sonic and Knuckles so gets a big thumbs up from me. Looking good Sonic Mania ?

[Zippo]

I think a lot of people seemed to have missed this second piece of art in the madness.

[Psychicmoose103]

2 hours ago, Zippo said:

The one concern I do have is I really hope we don't have to wait months upon months for new info again. The months of silence we've had is agonising. I'm hyped as fuck about Flying Battery, but 20 seconds of new footage isn't quite enough. 

I agree. I hope we can get some gameplay of Flying Battery act 1.

 

Also, about the post about seeing how many levels there are based of the heavies, I think there are around 6. If there is 7 new zones, with a hard boiled heavy in 6, and the last one being eggmans new base, would you all be okay with that? If there are 7 new zones, that means probably 9 old zones, for a total of 16 zones. I can see this as possible, as it is a big game, and probably bigger than 3&K. There would probably be 2 from 4 of the games ( defintally Sonic 2, 3, &K) and one stage in either Sonic CD or Sonic 1. If I would have to guess, I would say Sonic 1 would also get Starlight zone, giving it a total of 2, and then only 1 from Sonic CD? This is just my predictions. What do you guys think?

[Meta77]

So is this game cannon or just a shout out to days of old

[Salamander]

Flying Battery is an interesting choice; as a relatively early level in S3&K, and one which doesn't look like it's been made significantly harder, I wonder if this says anything about returning zones showing up out of their original order (i.e. could this zone show up before a Sonic 3 one or a Sonic 2 one?).  I'd also suggest that this makes it considerably less likely - but not impossible - that we're getting that "ruined Death Egg" finale we've been talking about; I don't think they would take more than one flying mechanical Eggman zone from Sonic & Knuckles.

I hope that we'll get a clear shot of that Hard-Boiled Heavies tease sometime.  Here are shots of it from a couple of different streams, both without and with Heavy Gunner:

Spoiler

Once you throw in Heavy Gunner, it looks like there are probably between three and five more Hard-Boiled Heavies.  At my most optimistic, there's a one-legged one on the left with a spike-ball arm; a hovering one with a kind of stepped upper body; a squarish one with normal feet and at least one normal hand; a roundish one just next to Heavy Gunner; and one in the back with a whip and some kind of round object (and as an aside, since it has a whip I'm saying that'll be the Mirage Saloon HBH).  Assuming this includes the crown-motif HBH from the Mirage Saloon portrait, we're looking at between four and six HBHs, and therefore probably between four and six new zones, if HBHs correspond only and exclusively to new zones.  Say one to two more classic zones than new zones, that makes five to eight classic zones.

Conclusion: Assuming no unpredictable pattern-defying events like short zones, final boss zones, new zones which don't have an HBH, old zones which do have an HBH, uneven spread of HBHs in general, not all HBHs being in the picture, etc., I'd imagine we're looking at between nine and fourteen zones.

[FReaK]

6 minutes ago, FFWF said:

Conclusion: Assuming no unpredictable pattern-defying events like short zones, final boss zones, new zones which don't have an HBH, old zones which do have an HBH, uneven spread of HBHs in general, not all HBHs being in the picture, etc., I'd imagine we're looking at between nine and fourteen zones.

since taxman said the game is longer then generations, and considering that generations had 9 Zones...I think it's pretty safe to say that we will get at LEAST 10 zones total. my bet is 5 to 6 original zones and 8 to 10 returning zones, maybe a little bit less.

[Marcello]

To me, it looks like there's 4 Hardboiled Heavies. So, if they appear in all new Zones, we're only getting 4 actually new Zones. :-/

[JezMM]

I'm a few pages late but regarding people who are surprised Flying Battery looks the same/doesn't have a dilapidated/rebuilt aesthetic... bear in mind the original Flying Battery never actually got destroyed.  It got a little beat up but Sonic exits it quite nonchalantly.

 

Looks nice anyway, and it seems like the obvious choice - I always considered Flying Battery the most memorable S&K stage due to it kind of having that same "cool second stage" factor as Chemical Plant - yeah it's not necessarily the objectively coolest level but everyone remembers it best because every player probably reached it even if they didn't finish the game.

I love the more detailed cloudcover backdrop (like seriously look at that, it's gorgeous and has a great sense of distance and place, the original game just had a generic blue sky with passing clouds if I recall correctly) and the 3D effect on the interior backdrop is a neato touch.  I hope if Death Egg returns we get that effect on an even grander scale - the fact that the backdrop of Death Egg never moved in S&K was good to give it a MASSIVE sense of scale but after staring at it for a while it began to look a bit TOO much like just a flat "background" rather than an actual location.

[FReaK]

on another topic, they have teased another new zone yesterday.

to me that brown thing in the front looks a little bit like an echidna statue, maybe some sort of new knux related level? the background looks like clouds, but could be icebergs either.

[Marcello]

1 minute ago, FReaK said:

on another topic, they have teased another new zone yesterday.

to me that brown thing in the front looks a little bit like an echidna statue, maybe some sort of new knux related level? the background looks like clouds, but could be icebergs either.

Looks like a gear to me. Maybe a watermill.

[Forte-Metallix]

28 minutes ago, FFWF said:

 

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That one on the far left seems to be holding a star-shaped object. Perhaps a shuriken? Are we looking at a ninja HBH?

[Indigo Rush]

We're looking at 5, maybe 6 Hard Boiled Heavies

[Marcello]

6 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

We're looking at 5, maybe 6 Hard Boiled Heavies

I'm thinking green is something purple is carrying on its back and red is blue's weapon.

[Chris Knopps]

Use this time to fix the animation for running through corkscrews and change the animation when releasing zip-lines.

[Indigo Rush]

26 minutes ago, Marcello said:

I'm thinking green is something purple is carrying on its back and red is blue's weapon.

A ninja carrying a heavy bag of things with a top hat and cane attached to it doesn't make much sense to me but a'ight.

[Zippo]

47 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

We're looking at 5, maybe 6 Hard Boiled Heavies

And if that's true, coupled with the speculation that the HBH will the bosses of the new stages, then we're looking at 5-6 new zones, not including a final new zone with Eggman as the boss, of course. That also means at least 7 or 8 returning zones, meaning we probably haven't even seen a quarter of the total zones yet. Crazy.

[Tracker_TD]

IT'S BEAUTIFUL

AGAIN

[Wraith]

Just now, Tracker_TD said:

 

Now watch as I kill your arousal

 

[Marcello]

Something about Knuckles looks off.

1 minute ago, Josh said:

Now watch as I kill your arousal

Woah.