How do you deal with nostalgia when reviewing a game that is a conscious throwback to some of the defining gaming moments of your youth?
Quite easily, in fact, when the game in question is Sonic Mania. The reason is that whatever rose-coloured lenses nostalgia might have provided have long since been battered into tiny pieces by two decades of abysmal entries in the Sonic franchise.
Sonic may have been the defining icon for many a gamer who grew up in the first half of the 90s, but the years to follow would not prove to be kind to fans of the blue hedgehog.
Failed innovation
Not long after Sonic first took over the gaming charts the entire gaming industry saw a sea-change of epic proportions as hardware manufacturers and developers started focusing on 3D games. The console wars pitted Sega against Nintendo, with their respective mascots leading the charge. Mario made the successful transition to 3D in 1996’s seminal Super Mario 64, just a few months before the release of Tomb Raider, which did more than perhaps any other game to herald in the age of 3D on consoles. The world was changing, and Sega felt it had to keep up with the times.
And so followed more than 20 years’ worth of regular releases that attempted to “update” Sonic’s gameplay, graphics and style to be more with the times.
They were all, in one way or another, spectacular failures, at least when judged against the undeniable greatness of the first three games in the series.
Return to form
Now, at long last, Sonic fans have a reason to rejoice again. It seems almost too good to be true: a new Sonic game has been released, and it is actually good — no, not just good, but great. How? By giving up trying to “update” Sonic and returning the 2D, side-scrolling, sprite-based days of the early 90s.
Sonic Mania jettisons all the extraneous baggage that the franchise has accumulated over the years and lets Sonic do what he does best: run really fast around intricately and beautifully designed levels. New levels are joined by remastered and reimagined versions of classic stages from earlier games, and while the visuals benefit from the power of today’s hardware in terms of such things as frame rate and a wider colour palette, it looks just like a game that would be at home on the Megadrive.
Sonic Mania allows you to apply visual filters that mimic the look of the old CRT screens that we all used to have in our living rooms before the rise of LCD and plasma technology. The game looks great no matter what filter is chosen, though.
But even more important than getting the visuals right is getting the gameplay right. Much has been written about the physics of Mario and the “feel” of controlling the character, and how important it has been to the success of the franchise; control-wise, Sonic never reached quite the same pinnacle, but the original games had a distinctive feel as well, one that has never been improved upon or properly recaptured. Sonic Mania perfectly recreates the physics and feel of the first three games, which will make veterans feel right at home and will make newcomers understand what the former have been raving about all these years.
It’s a reminder once again that gameplay is more important than how envelope-pushing your graphics are.
Twenty-one years is a long time to wait to get things right, but better late than never. Welcome back, Sonic — you’ve been missed.
Score: 9/10
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
