Sonic Mania
Sonic’s looking to recapture the old magic with a dash from his Mega Drive past, but is Mania more a ’90s nostalgia trip than a whole new adventure?
Sonic the Hedgehog was a superstar in the ’90s, even giving Mario a run for his money. But once that decade was over? The blue hedgehog crashed harder than Macaulay Culkin.
That’s not down to any lack of effort on Sega’s part, though. We’ve seen Sonic undergo more reboots than Batman and James Bond combined. But now it seems Sega (with the help of developers Handcannon and Padogawest Games) has finally figured out the best way to get its mascot running at full speed again: return him to his Mega Drive origins.
After years of being plagued with painful gimmicks, Mania strips Sonic down to basics. The controls are identical to the games of old: move with the analogue stick and press almost any button to jump or dash. Even the 16-bit graphics have been retained, although they gain a 60fps shine.
As successful as Sonic Mania is at inducing nostalgia, its dedication to the past is also its biggest downfall, simply because it rarely adds anything new to the old formula. For instance, most of the 12 zones have already appeared in previous Sonic games. Levels like Green Hill Zone have been ‘remixed’ with new map layouts, but they still feel overly familiar.
Later levels do at least offer more innovation. The underwater sections of Hydrocity are tense, while the plane ride of Mirage Saloon offers a welcome change of pace. These aren’t new ideas, but there are enough tweaks to keep them feeling fresh.
All in all it’s hard to view Mania as an entirely new entry, but rather an accumulation of the greatest moments of past 2D Sonic titles. Think of it as a ‘best of’ album.
And while it’s tough to spot any real improvements over a series made two decades ago, this could yet be the best 2D side-scroller of the year– which only proves the quality of those original games. What’s important is that Sonic is finally heading in the right direction, even if he’s moving at a gentle pace rather than his famous genre-defining speed of old.