Sonic Mania and Forces on YouTube Live @ E3.

[YuTwo]

Out of all of the other members that have now been revealed I think it's amazing to see Falk from Before/After The Sequel be somewhat involved with this game.

Although it's stated by Tee Lopes that he isn't composing but rather sound mixing:

Falk has also made a statement on this game:

It would have been interesting to hear what kind of tracks Falk could have provided for this game.

Now I think the other person I recognized was Paul Veer. 

He is a pixel artist and in 2015 he was commissioned by SEGA and Cook & Becker (There currently doing the 25th Anniversary art book by the way) to do a Sonic art piece to go along with the rest of the other SEGA franchises.

Here's a Retro article talking about his piece: https://www.sonicretro.org/2015/09/ray-and-mighty-finally-found-on-new-official-sonic-art-print/

Here's the piece he made:

 

Here's a link for a better, bigger view of it: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/018/568/1a4.png

There's a video that shows the process of it:

I thought it looked pretty nice especially since it showed Bark, Bean, Fang, Tails Doll, Metal Knuckles, Mighty, and Ray.

Seeing Paul Veer's name again automatically reminded me of this piece so I just wanted to share it with others in case they haven't seen it yet.

[Dr. Detective]

No matter what my complaints about Forces is, after just getting back from seeing Wonder Woman, I'm ready for a goddamn war right about now.

I'm so pumped! I need to see Sonic punch something. Please be a good story.

[ChikaBoing]

23 hours ago, OcelotBot said:

If you are interested in knowing who else is involved with Mania's development:

Stealth over on Retro:

 

Gotta say that the way the game is built kinda reminds me of the original Sonic The Hedgehog.

Like Yuji Naka, Christian Whitehead was the lead engineer but then was also responsible on getting the big team together to built a proper game. And the Sega of America influence in sassy marketing with Aaron Webber also makes it kinda tie in with how it was back then.

YU2 and Taxman

[FriendBot]

It's kind of amusing to think back when ol' Brad was here and was talking about how great Mania is shaping up to be and people are telling him how is he so sure about it and it now turns out he's one of the level designers for Mania. 

That's funny as shit.

But yeah bless the Mania team, ALL OF THEM! Mania is gonna be such a treat of game to play!

[Alienrun]

On 6/14/2017 at 10:46 AM, OcelotBot said:

 

Something unusual is that after a while the player comes up to an unavoidable death-pit against the boss (3:58). The player does takes a long time trying to beat Eggman. I would have thought the level layout would keep repeating itself (looping after a while) until Eggman is defeated. To add an unavoidable death-pit which effectively is gives a time-limit to beat the first boss in the game seems harsh!

 

How is punishing the player for taking WAY too long on a boss harsh? Seems justifiable to me. :/

 

 

Also THANK GOODNESS Falk is just a sound mixer and NOT a composer!

I personally think that while he can sometimes make good music...most of it just doesn't fit with the style of Sonic...like at all!

His best compositions in BtS (besides Titanic Tower Act 3 of course) are his remixes of old songs, not his original stuff.

With that being said I'll be damned if Mania can give me something to top this masterpiece! (I'm not joking with this one...just listen.)

 

[Falk]

48 minutes ago, Alienrun said:

Also THANK GOODNESS Falk is just a sound mixer and NOT a composer!

Um, you sure you understand what a mix engineer does?

>I personally think that while he can sometimes make good music...most of it just doesn't fit with the style of Sonic...like at all!

>His best compositions in BtS (besides Titanic Tower Act 3 of course) are his remixes of old songs, not his original stuff.

Titanic Tower was by Funk Fiction

>With that being said I'll be damned if Mania can give me something to top this masterpiece! (I'm not joking with this one...just listen.)

For what it's worth Tee and I worked together closely on a lot of his music and we were constantly bouncing ideas and feedback back and forth; everything from music theory to instrument selection to precedent and the classic games and to video game music styles/eras in general so you can attribute everything you don't like to me while praising Tee for everything you like  

 

[Alienrun]

1 hour ago, Falk said:

Um, you sure you understand what a mix engineer does?

>I personally think that while he can sometimes make good music...most of it just doesn't fit with the style of Sonic...like at all!

>His best compositions in BtS (besides Titanic Tower Act 3 of course) are his remixes of old songs, not his original stuff.

Titanic Tower was by Funk Fiction

>With that being said I'll be damned if Mania can give me something to top this masterpiece! (I'm not joking with this one...just listen.)

For what it's worth Tee and I worked together closely on a lot of his music and we were constantly bouncing ideas and feedback back and forth; everything from music theory to instrument selection to precedent and the classic games and to video game music styles/eras in general so you can attribute everything you don't like to me while praising Tee for everything you like  

 

 

Best response I could have gotten, fair and honest. (I'll own up to what I said lol, nice to see you drop in!)

So like...back when BtS first came out (I'll keep it brief) I really didn't like the soundtrack at all, save a song or 2 (I still kind of feel that way lol)...wasn't until recently that it has more to do with me just not liking the structure of the game and that the soundtrack itself wasn't bad but just didn't fit the style at all...at least with BtS anyways.

(Also can't be bothered to see what songs you did/didn't write for BtS, some of them sound really different from one another so that was distracting as well.)

But yeah, its been years since that happened, I'm sure the collaboration between you all helps smooth out better songs anyways like with most collabs (Freedom Planet and SiIvagunner come to mind), so I'm not worried about that or anything...though I'll be upfront and say the songs released so far are really good, nothing has personally been mind blowing just yet, its just good...but to each there own I suppose, I imagine its hard work regardless.

Final thing you said...

"so you can attribute everything you don't like to me while praising Tee for everything you like"

What does this mean? That if I like the Mania soundtrack I can attribute that solely to Tee and not you? Did you mean to say "can't" in that sentence? This is the only part I didn't understand so a clarification would be much appreciated!

[Falk]

It was a tongue-in-cheek response.

edit: Not that I particularly feel the pressing need to elaborate pertaining to the current discussion, but since it's a little bit of a museum piece, BTS and ATS soundtracks were very much our collective demo reels as they were a fan-game soundtrack. There was a very deliberate decision to basically have a variety chocolate box of genres represented, and ATS had a brief discussion about going completely YM2612-compliant, or period-specific approach, similarly discarded in favor of presenting the same variety box.

Half the reason it worked is that Sonic's music has been all over the place (while being consistently good in general) - from 'cinematic YM2612, to the funk-loaded S3&K tunes, to the pop/disco stylings of SCDJP (which I list after 3&K purely for technological reasons, not chronological) to the butt rock of the Dreamcast games, to the more open/understated tunes of the modern era when it's not going full-blown orchestral.

Considering those of us most involved in those soundtracks have gone on from that springboard to careers involving Final Fantasy, Harmonix, DJing across the United States, international orchestral tours, and composition for numerous JRPG-inspired titles, and after a long meandering road, myself working on a Sonic title based on these subsequent credentials, I think none of us particularly regret it

Tangentially, In some ways, the variety box approach also became something of an identifying factor of LakeFeperd's work, such that when we reconvened for Spark the Electric Jester, the fundamental approach again right at the start was to make sure a bunch of genres were represented, even if that product started off solidly in the digi-rock/chiptune realm for its first few stages.

 

Anyway, that's a long digression. Tee has put together something really special for Mania and I really, really cannot wait for people to hear more of it.

[Sean]

Not that I want to turn this into a Q&A but I really gotta know - any idea if an official soundtrack release is in the plans (digital or otherwise)? It's probably like the one Sonic game whose CD soundtrack I would attempt to import

[Falk]

I don't think I can answer any questions w.r.t Mania itself, but try tweeting Sonic social media about it.

[Alienrun]

45 minutes ago, Falk said:

It was a tongue-in-cheek response.

edit: Not that I particularly feel the pressing need to elaborate pertaining to the current discussion, but since it's a little bit of a museum piece, BTS and ATS soundtracks were very much our collective demo reels as they were a fan-game soundtrack. There was a very deliberate decision to basically have a variety chocolate box of genres represented, and ATS had a brief discussion about going completely YM2612-compliant, or period-specific approach, similarly discarded in favor of presenting the same variety box.

Half the reason it worked is that Sonic's music has been all over the place (while being consistently good in general) - from 'cinematic YM2612, to the funk-loaded S3&K tunes, to the pop/disco stylings of SCDJP (which I list after 3&K purely for technological reasons, not chronological) to the butt rock of the Dreamcast games, to the more open/understated tunes of the modern era when it's not going full-blown orchestral.

Considering those of us most involved in those soundtracks have gone on from that springboard to careers involving Final Fantasy, Harmonix, DJing across the United States, international orchestral tours, and composition for numerous JRPG-inspired titles, and after a long meandering road, myself working on a Sonic title based on these subsequent credentials, I think none of us particularly regret it

Tangentially, In some ways, the variety box approach also became something of an identifying factor of LakeFeperd's work, such that when we reconvened for Spark the Electric Jester, the fundamental approach again right at the start was to make sure a bunch of genres were represented, even if that product started off solidly in the digi-rock/chiptune realm for its first few stages.

 

Anyway, that's a long digression. Tee has put together something really special for Mania and I really, really cannot wait for people to hear more of it.

That...that explains A LOT! Something about those soundtracks always didn't sit right with me besides just not sounding very good, and I think that makes a lot more sense.

It honestly feels like BtS is more of an album than a game soundtrack...like as an album I can see it working, but for a soundtrack its too unfocused to get my attention, even in some of the cutscenes, it would usually start out serious then get silly for no reason or vice versa, I often felt like the soundtrack didn't know what it wanted to be!

Now however since I've gone back to said work (a little bit anyways) I feel the songs work much better when listened to as songs independant of anything else...and a lot of it is good stuff if you have the ear for it haha! (from what I bothered to re hear again anyways)

I don't really blame anyone there for making that desision looking back though...a big sonic fan game like that must have been a good opprotunity to get your name out there so you decided to give people as much variety as possible to compensate for it, I respect that a lot lol.