Sonic Mania Review: The Tao of Sonic

Sonic Mania strives to bring back the classic Sonic of the 16-bit era, but it’s been tried before. Does this attempt succeed at revitalizing the franchise?

Developers: Headcannon, PagodaWest Games
Publisher: Sega
Platform: PlayStation 4 (version reviewed), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC
Release Date: August 15th (consoles), August 29th (PC), 2017

While I certainly had the NES as a kid, I was a Sega fanboy from pretty much the moment I got my hands on a Sega Genesis. And a huge part of that fanboyism was definitely the slick marketing of one Sonic The Hedgehog. As an alternative to Nintendo’s middle-aged family friendly plumber, Sonic couldn’t have seemed cooler with his speed and attitude.

All that pretty much peaked with the move to 3D. You can argue Sonic Adventure was great at the time on the Sega Dreamcast, and there have been some passable efforts here and there, but the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise hasn’t really had a standout title in nearly 20 years, and most efforts have been absolutely abysmal. It’s sort of a miracle the franchise is still around, but I think it survives more due to cartoons and comics than the actual games.

There have been some efforts to go back to what brought Sonic The Hedgehog to prominence in the first place. Examples include Sonic The Hedgehog 4, which was an attempt to go back fully to the 2D roots and was aborted after 2 short episodes, and Sonic Generations, which tried to blend the present and the past with limited success. Given these efforts, Sonic fans might have wondered (I certainly have): was Sonic The Hedgehog ever even actually good, or are we are still hanging on with some mistaken sense of nostalgia?

So here we come with Sonic Mania, a game unabashedly returning to the supposed greatness of Sonic’s heyday in the 90s: No 3D levels, no extra friends aside from his primary pals Tails and Knuckles, and a look and style that harkens back to those fond memories on the Genesis. Especially as an old school Sonic fan who long ago gave up on the franchise, I approached Sonic Mania with a fear that this would be the final nail in the coffin for any lingering feelings I had for the speedy hedgehog I spent so many hours with in my youth.

Luckily, Sonic Mania doesn’t do that. What you’ve got here is a proper return to classic Sonic. Sonic Mania is exactly what the old games were like, and while that turns out to not be a bad thing, there are definitely areas where I felt more modern ideas could have improved the game greatly.

So let’s talk a bit about 2D level design in Sonic Mania and the Sonic franchise as a whole. Sonic is about an incredible feeling of speed, with just a hint of exploration for goodies, such as shields. When it works, it feels great. But there are also times when you will suddenly lose a life because you couldn’t possibly see what hit you. It’s not to the point where it’s game-breaking, but it is a lot more frustrating than it needs to be, especially since, like many 90s platformers, merely touching an enemy damages/kills you. It can feel ridiculously unfair.

This is alleviated a bit by the fact that the game has an autosave feature, but you are only given a few lives, and if you have to continue, it’s back to the start of the stage. Yes, that’s how the games were back in the day, though back then you couldn’t even save, so you had to beat the game in one sitting.

Sonic Mania is a proper return to the “glory days” of Sonic, warts and all.

The bosses in Sonic Mania could’ve been more creative as well. I actually got excited when, at the end of the second level, I had to face Doctor Robotnik in a round of Puyo Puyo. That’s super creative and really played with my expectations. Sadly, that seemed to be the highlight, as many were bosses that could be swapped out of any old Sonic game, and many were super cheap to the point of frustration.

But the absolute worst parts of Sonic Mania are the “bonus” stages. These are stages you come across by hitting a mid-stage marker or finding a giant gold ring hidden in the levels. They come in two flavors: collecting blue orbs while avoiding red ones, or chasing after a UFO, gaining speed as you collect blue orbs and gathering rings to give you more time. These are both poorly designed and control horribly, but are also necessary to get those oh-so-precious Chaos Emeralds. It’s reminiscent of some bonus stages in the older games, but there are much better ones that inspiration could’ve been taken from.

While you can play as Sonic, Tails or Knuckles in Sonic Mania, the game is simply not designed around this fact. Levels are built well for playing Sonic. There aren’t different levels for Tails or Knuckles, and using their unique abilities (flying for Tails, climbing and gliding for Knuckles) just feels super awkward. Also, it seems a little ridiculous that I can only play as one character for a whole game; if I want to switch to Knuckles or Tails for a particular level, I should be able to.

As far as extras go, the most noteworthy things are a Time Attack mode and a two-player competitive head-to-head mode. The competitive mode could theoretically add a lot of replay value if it was online, but it’s local only.

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Ultimately, Sonic Mania is a proper return to the “glory days” of Sonic, warts and all. It’s got some fun in there, but also suffers from frustrating design that could’ve been easily updated while still maintaining that spirit everyone was looking for. If you have regularly played the older Sonic titles in recent years and enjoyed them, I recommend Sonic Mania. Otherwise, you might be better off looking at more modern 2D platformers that were inspired by games like Sonic The Hedgehog than a game that aims to ape exactly what 2D platformers were like 25 years ago.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.