You Are Reading IT Director Would Love Jessica Chastain To Play Beverly in the Sequel. Sonic Mania Sonikku Mania is a sidescrolling platformer video game in the Sonic the. The first Sonic game, titled Sonic the Hedgehog, was a platform game released in 1991 that featured protagonist Sonic running through the games levels in order to. Sonic Mania is the sequel weve waited 2. Eurogamer. net. This is it the game many of us have been waiting for since 1. Sonic the Hedgehog games, a sequel that strives to expand and improve upon everything that made the originals great. Sonic Before The Sequel Free Play' title='Sonic Before The Sequel Free Play' />Sonic Adventure Sonikkuadobench is a video game created by Sonic Team and. Sonic Before The Sequel Free Play' title='Sonic Before The Sequel Free Play' />But how did a group of fans that never lost hope in the series manage to create one of the best Sonic game ever made The origins of Sonic Mania begin more than a decade back when enthusiast Christian Whitehead began a journey to recreate the gameplay mechanics of Sonic 3 using fresh code, built up entirely from scratch with zero access to the original source. Sonic Free Riders, Sonikku Fur Raidzu is a motion controlled racing video game developed by Sonic Team and published by. This is it the game many of us have been waiting for since 1994 a proper followup to classic Sonic the Hedgehog games, a sequel that strives to expand a. This ultimately resulted in the release of Retro Sonic a demo of sorts built using this new codebase which was released on Windows and Dreamcast. It was incomplete and buggy, but it offered a glimpse of what was to come. Christian joined forces with others over time and continued to work on enhanced Sonic projects, such as Sonic XG, before eventually pouring efforts into recreating Sonic CD. This caught the eye of Sega, who tasked Christian and his colleagues in bringing classic Sonic titles to mobile and consoles. The quality of these ports is second to none by the way, and we highly recommend checking them out. This success no doubt contributed to the birth of this new project Sonic Mania. Christian joined forces with Pagoda West Games, Headcannon and composer Tee Lopes to build this brand new Sonic game. These guys know the classic gameplay inside out and have managed to perfectly capture what it is that makes the originals so good to play. For starters, the physics and controls are spot on and this is something that no other Sonic game beyond 1. This new title nails it, Sonic responding exactly as he is meant to. On paper this doesnt sound like a big deal, but getting the mechanics of the game right has proved elusive for 2. DF Retro meets vanilla Digital Foundry in this look at Sonic Mania and what makes it special. Oh, and a Mega Drive vs PS4 Pro comparison Why not. The visual design is also super authentic dare we say it, perfect. The game takes things further than your typical indie pixel art title by embracing techniques that were impossible on the original Mega Drive hardware, so in that sense, Sonic Mania truly feels like a lost Sega Saturn game. For one thing, it makes full use of object scaling and rotation. Bosses leap into the screen, Sonic smoothly rotates on slopes and rings go flying in every direction. Its a big step up from the Mega Drive originals. Simple polygonal graphics are also used the 3. D bonus stages are gorgeous and super smooth. These stages clearly take inspiration from Sonic CD but on the original hardware, these stages run at a very low frame rate. Sonic Mania pushes things up to a full 6. Switch version can lag behind with some visible stutter and drops into the 5. Incidentally, Sonic Manias use of 3. D also sees some polygonal objects placed within the environment and backgrounds, bringing extra depth to the scene. Visually, Sonic Mania retains the signature 2. Mega Drive hardware. Additional background planes are available, meaning that we have multiple layered planes intersecting for the first time its a level of background complexity weve never seen in the series proper. The new game also has access to a much broader colour palette, enabling smooth gradients and shading throughout. On top of this, sprite work is dramatically more complex with many frames of animation. Without hard limits on sprites per line, the game can also throw around a huge number of sprites without sacrificing performance. The visual design on display here really is fascinating it shares many elements with the original 1. Sega Saturn game and even beyond. This feels like the logical next step for 2. D Sonic. So, by all accounts, this is a gorgeous game but how does it stack up across platforms and which display options are available Well, to start with, the game includes four distinct visual modes a smooth mode that applies a blur to pixel edges, two excellent CRT shaders and a razor sharp mode. The CRT shaders look fantastic here and do a good job of approximating the look of a phosphor based display this isnt just a case of scanlines slapped on an image. But the pixel perfect mode is our favorite here and it also highlights the first console advantage amazingly, Sonic Mania supports PS4 Pro. It outputs at native 2. K TV. No blurring, no upscaling, no filtering. It looks great, and while all versions of Sonic Mania are superb, if you have a 4. K screen, the Pro version is the one to get. Those playing on PS4, Xbox One or Switch get a maximum resolution of 1. TV. The Xbox One S can at least upscale to 4. K, though it introduces a slight blur. Hopefully the game is updated to support Xbox One X later this year to allow for pixel perfect 4. K output on that console as well. Night and the City. Chris Donlan plays through L. A. Noire with his dad, who grew up in the city in the 1. Lastly, it would be remiss of us not to mention the soundtrack music is critical to a Sonic game and Tee Lopes has handed in an excellent score here. The audio signature here is simply perfect. For those of us who spent so many hours playing the original titles, Sonic Mania has a sound that is so captivating that brings a smile to your face. And thats the key takeaway here, the aspect that makes this the game unmissable. Just like the original games, Sonic Manic is simply joyous its the kind of game that can genuinely brighten your day. Whether you were a fan from back in the day or have only taken to platform games in recent years, Sonic Mania is a breath of fresh air, its arrival impacted only by reports of laggy or even unresponsive home and power buttons on the Switch version of the game. Citizens Bank Card Activation Number. Its an even weve tried and failed to replicate, though the video evidence out there is undisputable. Christian Whitehead is on the case though and a title update is expected. Its a small blemish on a beautiful release though, and we strongly recommend checking it out.