![]() Taxman and Stealth have a long history reverse-engineering the Genesis games, Tee Lopes has a portfolio full of Sonic arrangements, and PagodaWest Games features a duo from the cancelled Sonic 2 HD. That team is a first for SEGA, ditching Sonic 4 developer Dimps for a crack team of devoted fans. They feel instantly timeless, tantalizing tastes of the Mania team’s unrestrained potential. Composer Tee Lopes does his best work here, going wild with punchy brass and stylish solos that feel like a modern Sonic CD, and the gorgeous pixel work is on full display, with colorful flourishes and smooth animation everywhere you look. Old mechanics appear in some surprising places, like Marble Garden's pulleys in Stardust Speedwayĭespite that, the handful of all-new stages are definitely Mania’s high points. The amount of new stuff in the retro remixes is almost overwhelming, not the least of which is two new bosses for every zone. Mania spends a lot of time in familiar-looking places, but never feels like a retread-the original stages are rendered almost unrecognizable at times, their original layouts buried by countless alternate paths and new mechanics, plus a beautiful fresh coat of paint. (This is the kind of thing you fix with a Day 1 patch, guys. I’d be spending hours in Time Attack, searching for the perfect line, but leaderboards have been broken on PS4 1 since release. The new Drop Dash is a perfectly-tuned addition, letting you chain together quick jumps without ever breaking stride, and the widescreen aspect ratio gives you plenty of time to see what’s ahead. Mania hits all the high points of the Genesis originals here, with smart level design that demands precision if you want to keep moving. On the other hand, carving out a clean path to the end has never felt better. On my most recent playthrough, I did just that, exploring until my time ran out, and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface-some routes can only be accessed with Tails' flight or Knuckles' wallclimb, and a single fork in the road can lead to two completely different levels. It’s easy to get lost in the flow and wander off looking for goodies. Picking up where Sonic 3 and Knuckles left off, Mania’s stages are lush, sprawling networks of branching paths, packed to bursting with secrets and challenges. Mania's art is low-res, but hardly lo-fi, with gorgeous backgrounds and smooth animation throughout SEGA’s latest is a delicious sampler plate of classic 2D Sonic, new ideas and familiar locations refined to near perfection, and it sports the best presentation the franchise has ever seen. It’s made with the zealous passion that only true fans can provide, but gleams with the polish of a full-fledged release. ![]() Sonic Mania manages an elusive balancing act.
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