Sonic is the goat and pride is for brokies be a top g and become a sonic lover or ♥♥♥

Better than Sonic Superstars and Sonic 4: Episodes 1,2, and Metal.

sux :(

Mid game no cap

good

The first 3 hours of the game may have been spent getting gold medals in all blue spheres stages, was it worth it? Absolutely!

Soundtrack is amazing, and I love the special stages from CD.

s p e e d m o u s e

I really love this game. My mom bought me this plus a switch on my 7th or 8th birthday, and i played for hours. Ive soon lost the card to Sonic Mania, But now i get to play it on PC. Yet again i play countless hours on this. This game was part of my childhood.

Sonic Mania is Sonic Mania. It's a great game, and that's been self-evident since the moment it came out. It has DLC that adds a great deal of value in its new modes and new characters, and the total package is remarkably affordable considering the quality of this game. It feels to me like Sega is still, to this day, trying to figure out how to recover from the impact of letting Christian Whitehead make this game and permanently wreck the expectations of Sonic fans.

None of that is hyperbole - Mania stands right next to the Genesis games that are put on impossibly high pedestals by the fandom, living up to the reputation of those games in a way that I'm sure no one ever imagined could happen. Mania does a fantastic job of playing to what people remember about the Genesis games, providing tons of momentum throughout its massive stages, endless nooks and crannies to explore when you decide to put on the brakes for a minute, inventive, engaging bosses that succeed design-wise in almost every single level, and a unified set of aesthetics that create a truly gorgeous game. Every single thing about Mania feels deeply considered, and the love and care put into literally every single corner of this game is evident from the moment you boot it up.

On the subject of the DLC, I feel like it's been long enough that it should be folded into the main game, because the additions from the DLC are so substantial, and yet so naturally integrated, that it's a completely essential purchase. (I understand that this is precisely why it works so well as DLC for Sega.) Adding two deep cut characters with incredibly fun play styles, and an entirely new mode alongside them that fundamentally changes how you approach the game, is amazing in a vacuum, but it's a particular triumph here, managing to build an even better game on an already-spectacular foundation. The base game provides a healthy, engaging challenge as it is, but the DLC's Encore Mode tickles your brain in an entirely different way, and I love that.

Mania may be as close to the perfect 2D Sonic game as you may ever get - when I think about it, the only real criticisms I can think of are that the stages can occasionally feel a little too wide-open, a little cavernous, and the re-use of stage themes - even though the levels themselves are mostly original, or inventive mishmashes of layouts, by the time Mania came out, I was already tired of Green Hill, and it's no exception here. I also think that the special stage format just kind of sucks - the controls feel bad, depth perception is a struggle, and it can often feel like one mistake completely sinks you, no matter when it happens. Those are minor quibbles, though - Mania is and will always be one of the greatest Sonic games ever made, and it will be worth it forever.

its sonic mania