Sonic Mania (2017)

Finished my Sonic Marathon 2020 with Sonic Mania but with the following Modern Sonic Mods [Dec 11, 2020]

• Modern Sonic Boost Mod
• Modern Sonic Moveset (Homing Attack + Light Dash)
• Unleashed Voice Mod
• Modern Music Mod

It's pretty amazing how much the game changes when you fundamentally change Sonic's moveset. Now you can just speed through stages by air dashing and boosting into everything, even though the stages aren't built for that so you occasionally air dash into your death. Still, it was a unique way to revisit and make it feel a bit more like Sonic Rush too.

... And that officially marks the end of my Sonic Marathon 2020! What was originally just an idea to make me to play all my backlogged 2D Sonic games turned out, in the end, to be looking at nearly the entire franchise as a whole! I enjoyed seeing all the fascinating highs (and the disastrous lows) this franchise has been in. Here's hoping we see more great things from Sonic in the future.

Finished Egg Reverie Zone & Reached Credits [Nov 1, 2020]

FInal thoughts: Easily objectively the best 2D sonic game I've played. This game excels in everything from aesthetics to level design. My only minor nitpicks with this game are is how frustrating the Oil Ocean Act 2 Boss is, and at this point I feel it's a bit punishing how Game Over's send you back to Act 1.

I have to say it was quite a ride marathoning most of the 2D Sonic games all the way from the Genesis games. Onwards to the 3D games next.

For a Sonic title, it's a very strong game and a great return to form. Callbacks to old levels, new levels, a good amount of variety. Having on the Switch was great, in that I could play some on the TV, and then take it on the go and play it some more, without any loss in gameplay.

I do have a few bones to pick on this title:

1. Like most Sonic games, this title has a lot of "cheapness" to it. You will fall from places without knowing if you can land safely. Enemies will be placed in such a way that you will hit them and lose rings no matter what you do. You will go fast when suddenly a little enemy or a spike will stop you in your tracks. That happens way too frequently.

2. The levels are way too long. This started becoming an issue around Sonic 3. No level should take more than 5 minutes. Mario games always got this pacing right on the nose. This particularly becomes a problem when you lose all your lives and have no continues, so you start at Act 1 again. At my older age, I don't have the patience to go through this all over again.

3. Speaking of continues, the fact that a game, where you can save your progress, still relies on an archaic system where you have to find continues, is insane. I got to the last zone and the last boss and died without continues. What happened? Yep, had to start at Act 1 once again. I did eventually beat the game, but I was quite sick of it by the end.

Again, one of the better Sonic games around, but still has many of the same flaws that have hindered other Sonic titles in the past.

If they had made another title in Sonic's "golden era," Sonic Mania may have been that game. But only if it was made with the help of time travelers, because modern influences can be noticed through improved animation, frame rates, and the like. While Green Hill Zone looks and feels almost exactly as it did back on the Genesis (even though it objectively looks and plays better), stages like Studiopolis could most likely not exist on the hardware. These stages are handled in such a delicate fashion, however, that they never feel out of place. They are beautiful, and recapture some of the excitement of exploring classic Sonic stages for the first time.

Each riff on the classic stages -- which appear as their Act 2 now-- knows when to stop as well, and feel as though they are the realizations of the designers asking what would happen if something interacted with something on the stage to change it. One of the best things are just how many branches there are through the stages. After completing my first playthrough, I watched someone else play through the first two acts only to realize they were showing me an area I had no idea even existed. The stages work on different levels of elevation, looping and curling in on themselves and crossing over like the Hot Wheels track you always wished you could build. The only real gripe I had is the enemy and hazard placements can feel cheap. Trying to keep your momentum going when Mania trips you up with a sudden enemy can sometimes just feel like bullying.

The 3D blue sphere bonus stages from the later classic Sonic games returns, now available at every checkpoint if you have 25 rings (and there are more checkpoints to account for the longer levels). There's a new UFO Catcher game, except instead of being a UFO who catches, you catch UFOs. The new bonus stage is actually fairly simple and enjoyable, but I only managed to find a few bonus rings in my first play through. The music in Mania is solid throughout, following the Act 2 stages' examples and adding a new, enjoyable flare to the classics. The new songs fit right in thanks to the uniform remastering of the entire soundtrack.

Sonic 2 was the first game I ever actually owned, so this game brought back a lot of good memories, and I enjoyed all of the new additions. All of this glowing praise being doled out, I'm afraid that Sonic Mania isn't going to be a title that forged many new memories I'll be looking back on more than 20 years from now. Don't get me wrong, for what it is, I love it. I am very happy that it exists. And, perhaps as I play through the game more I'll find it actually does form a comfortable little home in my memory banks. But for now, it's just a really good (classic) Sonic game. And for a lot of people, most people, that is going to be more than enough.