"Discovery - Title Screen (Alternate Version) - Sonic Mania" is a high quality rip of the alternate version of "Discovery - Title Screen" from Sonic Mania.
Jokes[]
At 0:08, the rip transitions to a satirical negative review of Sonic Mania, set mostly to snippets of gameplay and with various songs from the game used as background music. The review features many factual errors, inconsistencies, and nonsensical arguments, not the least of which is referring to Tails using female pronouns which is similar to some of the Angry Video Game Nerd's reviews. The reviewer (we can assume one of the rippers trying to be like the Nerd) also admits to not having bothered playing the game in its entirety.
Music used[]
| Time stamp | Song |
|---|---|
| 0:00 | Discovery - Title Screen |
| 0:15 | Comfort Zone - Main Menu |
| 0:49 | Angel Island Zone |
| 0:53 | (record scratch) |
| 0:55 | Green Hill Zone Act 2 |
| 2:16 | Skyway Octane - Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 ST Mix |
| 3:14 | Metallic Madness Zone Act 2 |
| 3:58 | Dimension Heist - UFO Special Stage |
| 4:43 | same as above, but mashed up with "Luigi's Ballad" by Starbomb |
| 5:06 | Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (Mario Kart Wii) |
| 5:23 | Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 (SiIvaGunner rip) |
| 5:52 | This Horizon (& Knuckles Ending) |
Transcript[]
To open the dropdown, click "Expand".
|
|---|
| Sonic Mania. Wow... this game sucks.
If you don't know, last year Sega hired some Sonic fans to make a Sonic game, and this was the result. The product started out as a remake of the classic Sonic CD, but they couldn't get the rights to all the levels, so they decided to rework the project into... (pause) this piece of shit. What I'm wondering is why is Sega still outsourcing Sonic to other devs despite the massive trainwrecks that were Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island by XPlosiv, Sonic 4 by Dimps, and Sonic Boom by Naughty Dog? Now, enough backstory: let's get into the actual story. The game starts out like Sonic 3, but as it turns out, it was all just a funny joke and now you're in Green Hill. Yup, that's pretty much it. Then you go from level to level and beat Eggman, yada yada yada, it's the same old shit. The only real story element is at the end, when Sonic warps into Sonic Forces, but even this is just shoehorned in to sell more copies of Mania because it's supposedly a prequel to Forces. Every game nowadays has a proper story, and I'm not excusing this story for not having one just because it tries to be "retro". Shovel Knight has a story and it tries to be retro. Being retro is not an excuse for being lazy. Now I'll come back to this point later. Now let's talk about the gameplay. Through all the classic Sonic games, Sonic's move set has expanded. With the super dash attack introduced in Sonic 2 and insta-shield in Sonic 3, it's only natural for Sonic Mania to introduce a new mechanic and it did: Sonic's new move, the drop dash. This move makes you instantly go fast and it fucking sucks. Speed in Sonic is supposed to be a reward for knowing the level, studying its layout to find the best path, and avoiding all obstacles along the way. You actually have to charge the super dash attack to get speed, but the drop dash? You just press a button and boom, you're going fast. From a game design perspective, this is a horrible choice and it completely ruins the flow of the entire game. Not only that, but it also replaces the insta-shield. What was so wrong with the insta-shield that it had to be replaced by this piece of fuck? You can unlock the insta-shield after beating the game, but I'm only a casual gamer and I'm more than a little busy doing other things than beating your shitty game to unlock the good version, like for example, playing Mahjong. Doing my taxes. Picking up my girlfriend from work. Doing the dishes. Hanging out with my girlfriend. Making game reviews. Having a girlfriend in and of itself, it's pretty taxing. Despite trying so hard to imitate everything the original Sonic trilogy stands for, this game takes a huge dump on it. [text: SPIKE BUG??? REALLY SEGA??] Sure, Sonic came to a rocky start in Sonic 1, which was met with much negative press due to its aggressive marketing and dark themes, but Sega pushed on and Sonic 2 was a big hit. Sonic 3 & Knuckles improved on many of its flaws, but people didn't bother with the game as Tails wasn't in it. In Mania, Tails is back, but she doesn't even do anything. You can see her flying the plane, but Sonic can just do that himself. It's his own damn plane, for crying out loud. At least Knuckles has a unique level. Speaking of levels, this game has way too many. As I said earlier, this game started out as a Sonic CD remake, but they couldn't get the rights to all the levels. Some of the levels were simply reskinned, like Green Hill Zone, but other levels had to be replaced entirely. Desert Dazzle became Mirage Saloon, and Press Garden Zone? What the fuck is that? That's not even from something. Every zone has two acts, each with their own boss. They're also filled to the brim with those giant 3D rings that take you to the new special stages. Yep, no blue sphere this time; instead, you get this acid trip of a Super Mario Kart ripoff. All jokes aside, this actually plays pretty well. Your goal is to grab enough blue balls to speed up and catch the UFO. My only problem with those special stages is that all of them are piss easy. All except for one, which I'll get back to in a second. By clearing the special stages, you collect Chaos Emeralds, which allow you to turn into Super Sonic and blaze through levels and bosses alike. Speaking of bosses, if a boss isn't taken straight from a previous Sonic game, it's taken from some other Sega property. Look at this boss, for example, that just completely rips off Shinobi. The only cool boss is this one, where the egg robo rides this crazy moto bug. It's really goofy and over-the top, and something we haven't seen in previous games. If only the rest of the game were like this. Lastly, I need to talk about the presentation. A lot of work went into making sure this game looks, sounds, and feels like it was made as a real sequel to the classics and released on the Sega Saturn II. This causes a big problem: the game feels dated from the start, the visuals look like a pixelated mess. Compare this to Super Mario Odyssey, which came out the same year. Breathtaking, isn't it? They even used outdated game mechanics like the lives system and losing all of your rings when you get hit, something that was already changed back in 2006 with Sonic 2006. The same goes for the audio, too: all those sound effects sound like they came straight out of an old Mega Drive. The Mega Drive was released in 1991. 1991. This game sounds 27 years old. And don't even get me started on the music. They tried those modern things games like Undertale do called "leitmotifs", but [text: SPIKE BUG AGAIN REALLY] they did a horrible job at it and now every song is just the same melody. What kind of soundtrack has only one melody? That's like if all of Mozart's pieces had the same notes; nobody would want to listen to that. Overall, Sonic Mania was just a big disappointment across the board. At least Sega is releasing an update for the game. I hope they fix some of the things I talked about in this video, but they'll probably just ignore me again. I give Sonic Mania a 2 out of 10. Better luck next time? No way! |
Trivia[]
- The "Luigi's Ballad" mashup portion of the background music is included as a hidden track on SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume L [Side A].