Was Sonic Mania The BEST In The Series?

The Sonic Boom Era left fans feeling pretty empty, hoping for the next proper Sonic games to come out and bring us back to the days of Colors and Generations. At the 25th anniversary party, we finally got word on the next games: Sonic Mania and Project Sonic 2017, later known as Sonic Forces. The former of which (the subject of today's video) was a proper retro Sonic revival done by the team of fans who had worked on the remasters of Sonic 1, 2 and CD. To this day, Sonic Mania is the most well received Sonic games in a long time. Now that's been five years since it's release, how do I feel about this one? Well, let's find out.
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Chapters:
00:00 The 25th Anniversary
03:29 How Well Made Mania Is
07:56 Neo Classic Sonic
09:16 The Characters
15:06 The Levels
21:41 I Really Enjoy Sonic Mania...
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#sonic #sonicmania #sonicthehedgehog

[mechajay]

Sonic Mania did a lot to get fans to appreciate the franchise again. It's such a perfect game and after 5 years, it still holds up.

[charmyzard]

Loved how J's said both "Hydrocity" and "Hydro-City" just making us go insane.

[-bitsarda]

I love the fact that in the final boss fight, the timer is going completely bonkers

[DeputyDavid]

I owe alot to this game, it's the game that got me back into being a Sonic fan, The first game I ever pre-ordered because my faith was that high. (I still remember agonizingly waiting in school all day to get home to finally play it.) Although I do have some negative things I could say about Mania today I can never take this game for granted and how much fun of a series it launched me back into

[noctarin]

About the classic Sonic "redesign" you seemed to have complained about, it seems more to me that it was inspired in style by the Junio Sonic iteration of him from the Sonic CD cutscenes, where he has that "Cutesy" style, and the light blue shade. This is especially visible when you compare the cutscenes of both Sonic CD and Sonic Mania.

[totempoleman]

Six years later and I still have to ask: How is it that there isn't official sequel for this game?

EDIT: Well look at that, Sonic Superstars is coming out in this year so it might as well be the anwser to my question right now. The question is if whenever Arzest is able to pull it of without screwing it up completely. At least Zones are somewhat new and physics seem to be on point so much so that they are even approved by Christian Whitehead himself in social media.

[DoritoGOD]

If they make a Mania 2 and are forced to reuse old stages, then I hope they use stages from the 3d games. I think it would be cool to see modern stages reimagined in a retro 2d style.

[HordikaNate]

Personally speaking I remember playing this game first at my Cousins house for Thanksgiving, I had this nice odd warm feeling of comfort similar to playing Sonic 1 and 2 on my parents old Mac with the lights out as a kid back in 2012. Even past that, it was just a fun game, I'd add things to it(new levels), but it's still solid



Edit: sorry if I made you feel old while reading this, but if it helps I made myself feel younger than I was already.

[kingdisasterdracula]

I totally agree with the Lava Reef section. But I still gotta give props to the team for Knuckle’s campaign where he takes a different path and ends up at the Master Emerald alter, and has a goofy flashback to Eggman stealing it.

[gengargamer]

I hate the face that people say there hasn't been a good game since Generations even though this gem exists

[Cheesehead]

This is my favorite 2d Sonic game. It has the most rewarding exploration, best level design, and best mechanics in any of them. It's also the one I've replayed the most, it's just really easy to pick up and play through over and over.

[nottoofast]

It's insane how well this whole series has played out. It's been so long but now there's only one game left, and right before the next one's going to release.

It's really cool.

[ElectrikStatik]

I agree that there should've been more original levels than throwback ones. Seeing the same stuff over and over throughout multiple games can get really stale after a while.

[shonenbois]

Tee Lopes went so hard on Sonic Mania’s soundtrack🔥

[soraingaegis]

As someone who's honestly not big on the Genesis Trilogy, Sonic Mania is easily on of the best designed Sonic games I've ever played. Everything just works so well - even if there are some zones that go on for far longer than they really should.

Flying Battery. Titanic Monarch. Lookin' at you.

[CanalDoRyu]

Yeah, I agree most of the game consisting of remade levels from previous games hurt it more than anything else, it makes Mania feel more like a Greatest Hits compilation instead of a new 2D Sonic game, even though it technically is new. Seriously, Sega, stop this nostalgia shit and let people make a fully new 2D Sonic game, or even 3D, since Frontiers also has Green Hill, Chemical Plant and Sky Sanctuary... again.

[bumpy_gaming]

While Sonic Mania may still be a truly great game after all these years, it unfortunately lead to SEGA using Classic Sonic as a "crutch" of sorts, which then gave us:

Classic Sonic being shoehorned into Forces, the Mania Adventures cartoons where every other frame would become a meme, Classic Sonic and Tails being guest characters in Monkey Ball as opposed to their modern counterparts, etc etc.

[dmtrsgrksrphl]

TBH I love this game. In my honest opinion this finally trumped the genesis Games and got the highest review scores. I enjoy every minute of this game and my favourite character btw is Mighty. He is pretty much unkillable from spikes and other stuff. All the extras add so much too. Why have we not been given a sequel to this? Sega loves to sit on money sometimes.

[JasLamArr]

I just wished that 80% of this game wasn’t rehashed levels of the 4 classic games.

[deaglehawkings]

I could only imagine an alternate universe where Sonic Mania never existed, in my opinion it could even trump 06's poor reception and could even drive away more fans from the community, but thankfully Mania has given me as well as millions of other hope that Sonic is still the badass blue blur we all knew and loved from our childhood's.