LET'S PLAY SONIC MANIA - We all go fast together, and we all go fast forever

• PRESS GARDEN IS ONE OF ROBOTNIK'S FACTORIES BUT I ALWAYS FORGET ABOUT THAT: Act 1 has a few resources taken or adapted from Launch Base Zone, the final level in Sonic 3 on its own. The rotating metal drums, zip booster, and switches that open up new areas when destroyed. It still feels unique amongs this theme, because the overall effect of the level is as much of a warehouse as hive of industry. Lots more brick than metal. Plus, Act 2 is, as you've probably already seen, a Japanese decorative garden, which is a theme more in line with Planet Freedom than it is a Sonic game.
• PRESS GARDEN HAS A PRETTY UNCONVENTIONAL COLOR PALETTE AMONGST SONIC LEVELS: Say what you will about Sonic stage colorations, you basically never see pink and teal used in them. This is very much a color choice nearly unique to Chaotix, though a couple Sonic CD levels share a resemblance to it as well. Honestly, Act 1 feels like it almost could have been a Chaotix level, with its long, curved (and endlessly looping vertically) hallways -- all that's missing is a combi ring to tie together our two Knuckleses.
• ONCE AGAIN THE MUSIC IS DELIGHTFUL: Check out that good, good tunage in act 2. Very obviously reminiscent of the music in Shinobi III, especially the second section, which makes (hardboiled?) heavy reference to the recurring leitmotif in most of that game's music. It could also be a subtle nod to some of the modding fanculture -- Sonic Megamix, the Sega CD hack that nobody knows might be in development still or not and had Stealth as a major technical director, loved to use music from and by the people who were involved in Shinobi III's soundtrack. Though he didn't actually work on the Shinobi music, Naofumi Hataya seems to get a few throwbacks in the way the song's intro plays out (compare it to some of his work on The Hybrid Front, Sonic CD, or Golden Axe III). Both of 'em had a bunch of tracks that got adapted for use in that game, taken from several of the games I just mentioned. All of 'em worth a listen on, say, Project 2612.
• NOW THAT WE HAVE THE EMERALDS THERE'S NOT A LOT OF ROOM FOR THINGS TO GO TERRIBLY WRONG FOR A BIT: We're still both deathless and keep it up through this video. Press Garden isn't a very difficult level overall, just a bit long and unwieldy. More of a showcase piece than a challenge stage -- like if the top half of Aquatic Ruin from Sonic 2 were a Chaotix level.
• I WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO POINT OUT HOW EVERY SUPPOSED GENTLEMAN'S GAME IS NAUGHT BUT A DEN OF SCOUNDRELS: Minnesota Fats might be technically real, but is certainly also the product of hype and showmanship, thus making him vaguely similar to a wrestling figure. Obviously skilled, but steeped in a modern mythology and fiction. But yes, the dude, Rudolf Wanderone, mentioned in the Wikipedia link above as the "real" Minnesota Fats, was in a bunch of cutscenes in a Saturn pool game by Data East.
• WE THEN DISCUSS EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE: Debating how real Minnesota Fats may be gets us talking about how Mavis Beacon, the famous typing tutor, is not a real person and is instead just a character developed out of some stock photos. It's still good typing software, though! It's published by Broderbund, who also published the Carmen Sandiego series. They're good at edutainment. Not like Sonic.
• THERE IS SOME FUCKING WEIRD-ASS SONIC EDUTAINMENT OUT THERE IN VARYING FORMS OF COMPLETENESS AND I ATTEMPT TO EXPLOIT THIS TO PRANK Y'ALL: Some of them have even come out in the last decade or so for platforms like the Leapster. I half-convince everyone that the rabbit enemy in the ink pads in act 1 is actually from an unreleased edutainment game for the Master System, where it would stamp out characters on the ground to spell out a word, and you'd have to match the word it spells out to a picture to test your reading skill. This is completely false but all the elements of it are true -- there is an unreleased edutainment Master System game, the Leapster Sonic games love to mash up old and new Sonic art in a manner similar to how this game does it. And the "read a word and match it to a picture" is straight up one of the modes of gameplay in Sonic's Schoolhouse. But the little printing press ink rabbit isn't a weird adaptation of ideas from Epic Mickey, it's taken from an unused sprite from Sonic 1. Go figure, huh?
• I DO A SHAMELESS PLUG AGAIN FOR MY OTHER WORK: Basically, "What if Mouth Sounds, but Mario?" Lots of dumb parody images ensued. It's basically impossible to do stuff like this with just MS Paint. Anyway that was good times and I spent a month's worth of my free time on doing just that. It's just barely been a year since its release. Is it a joke? Is it serious? It's that specific sort of Beefheart-adjacent experimental musique concrete that's a little bit of both at once! Did you know playing back all the music on the Voyager Golden Record at once sounds DOPE AS FUCK? Because I learned that when I made the recording. I also learned that Ronny James Dio is my favorite Gulf and Western artist.
• NEITHER PRESS GARDEN BOSS IS MUCH HARDER AS KNUCKLES. Honestly, once you're super, they're both a joke. Neither does anything that puts them much farther out of range, and both can be beaten pretty quickly if you know what you're doing. Heavy Shinobi mostly just seems to be there to punish you if you don't have all the emeralds yet, because his projectile spam makes him really hard to hit when he's vulnerable. I do adore the use of the Shinobi sound effects in his work.
• WE COMMENT ON HOW WEIRD SONIC CD IS: It's weird. I love it! Maybe not as much as Sonic 3 (&K) but it's a fun game to blast through in Time Attack. But I have a lot of sympathy for everyone who never got to see the original version of Stardust Speedway. I certainly couldn't back in 1996 when I had my PC version, because I could never beat the stage 2 boss, the damn Collision Chaos pinball monster. The pretty unsettling music didn't help either.
• THAT SAID, I DON'T THINK STARDUST SPEEDWAY 1 IS THAT SIMILAR TO ITS SOURCE MATERIAL: This is probably a good thing, because we have a Sonic CD port by these guys on PC already. Instead it's more like Marble Garden Zone with the serial numbers filed off. I don't know if I like it as much since I feel like it's rarely as fast as either, but I think most of that might just be that I don't know the routing for the level yet. While I did do a little practice as Knuckles before this run, I didn't do that much, and I wasn't poring over maps of the stages or anything!
• STARDUST SPEEDWAY 2 IS A LOT MORE SO, THOUGH: The area before the boss is about as fast, tube-filled, and as long as Zone 2 is in Sonic CD -- maybe a touch longer. In both cases the easiest route to do quickly is probably the bottom one, but you can get a better time on the top route if you really know what you're doing. Alas, the upper route is just different enough to confuse me and I take a path that could have been better, but 1 minute 12 isn't terrible. Taking the lower route, I've been able to do it in under a minute -- which is worth an achievement if you get it! But the zone is short for a reason, and that is...
• METAL SONIC IS THE BOSS AND HE IS A MOTHERFUCKER: Metal Sonic is mean! And nasty! And takes cheap shots! I get hit by one right before the second phase of the fight! It's awful! Then I get terrible luck with the silver sonics, which is a reference to the 8-bit Sonic 2 that nobody ever got to see because they all got game over from the first boss of that game if they played it on game gear. BEAT manages to catch up a lot during that period because he gets each one to start out with a spin dash, so they all immediately hit Metal Sonic. I, meanwhile, lost my last remaining ring during that segment and nearly died.
• DEEPEST OF CUTS FROM THAT SPIKE WALL: The spike wall that follows you during the last part of the Metal Sonic fight is based on nearly the same concept from Sonic Blast, a.k.a. G Sonic, the weird, pre-rendered adaptation of Sonic and Knuckles for Game Gear. If you've never played it, don't. Please don't. Save your soul. The level design is bad, the sprites are too big, the controls are too loose, and the music is infuriating. The only saving grace of Sonic Blast for Game Gear is that it is not Sonic Blast for Master System, the quasi-official bootleg version released by Tec Toy for the Brazilian market. Only a monster would suggest or make someone play that game. It is not so much a game as it is a punishment for those who would find themselves in Knuckles Jail.
• SPEAKING OF CUTS THE LAST PART OF THE STAGE GOT CUT FROM THE VIDEO FOR SOME REASON: Im sorry. Im trying to reupload it. Anyway, BEAT is just behind me at that point in the boss, and has thus got a time about 15 seconds better than me in this level. He is actually still behind, but by basically nothing.

me: [affecting a horrifyingly bad German accent] I VAS TAUGHT [how to type] BY ZE WERNER HERZOG MESSOD. [no accent] Err, wait, no, I think it was just the Herzog method, execuse me.
Fanboy: Werner Herzog would probably just tell you about the tragic futility of learning any keyboarding. Then he would tell you to burn your tapes.
[silence]
Fanboy: I just made a really tasteless Grizzly Man joke.

(All I know about Grizzly Man is that it's about a dude who tried to live with bears, and there's a scene in the film where you see Werner Herzog react to footage shown off-screen of that guy getting eaten by a bear.)

Here's the bit that somehow got cut off from the previous render. It's the end of the Metal Sonic boss. BEAT is still behind, but by less than a second. Check out the nearly synchronized "AND HE'S DOWN" from us! Frankly, beating this boss is always a fact worth celebrating.

By the way, with the new update coming out for this game in a few months, it seems like this boss is going to change in some interesting ways, and that spike wall may not be sticking around. What will replace it? Well, I've seen it, and it's pretty interesting.

I have opinions on these new Sonic levels, and I'm not afraid to share them

• SYNCHRONIZED, WELL, NOT SWIMMING (ECHIDNA WILL SAIL AWAY ON A BUBBLE OF DREAMS TO HEAVEN): If you haven't been watching these videos I strongly urge to reconsider. If you don't have 20 minutes to spare at least watch the first couple minutes of this video for the most amazing thing that happened on this run. We both encounter our first deaths. By drowning. In the same area. BEAT is dead to missing an air bubble that reaches the ceiling before he can get to it. None of them managed to spawn for me. I could have probably played that bit a lot smarter. Gotten the bubble right below where I was -- like 3 of them had spawned. Tried going up a little higher (I still had the better part of 5 seconds and the ability to climb up) to break the water's surface.
• IT'S SO EASY FALLING: In Hydrocity Act 1, the third act in Sonic 3 overall, they had a lot of mercy on you and you could avoid all the water in it by taking the upper routes and rolling your way through the loops halfway on autopilot. In Sonic Mania, we're halfway through the game and we are nowhere near as merciful. Trying to take the upper route in a roll just dumps you right back down into the sewers. Fortunately I wasn't so foolish the second time and manage to get by a lot quicker by taking upper routes as much as possible.
• BOATY MCBOATFACE: There's an achievement for riding all the boats. In my HG101 playthrough as Sonic I actually show that route off. Here, I just go whereever, mostly taking that same route though. It is probably one of the faster routes through the level -- the raising and lowering of the water level makes it hard to chart out an obviously fastest route through the map, since the areas above and below water aren't a constant thing, but staying dry is the fastest option in almost all cases.
• WE DISCUSS MS. [STILL] NOT APPEARING IN THIS GAME: Amy Rose is interesting. She's a damsel-in-distress, certainly, but unlike Princess Peach is never portrayed as a character who has a serious romantic involvement with Sonic. In later games she even becomes playable! In fact, with this new update being planned, she's the only character of the era that has been playable that isn't -- and the only one of the bunch that's a girl. At least we'll always have the Advance series.
• ONCE AGAIN, SEPARATED IN SPEED BY A MIDBOSS: I'd done some practicing and managed to beat the guy a lot more quickly by succesfully getting the eggcraft's jets going right over Robotnik as soon as he lands. Alas, I am not quite so on the ball here. Did we mention we're both pretty drunk? I'm definitely really feeling the alcohol here.
• AFTER THE FIRST FEW SCREENS HYDROCITY 2 IS BASICALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM ITS SONIC 3 COUNTERPART: I get to let loose and go fast without having to worry about making any mistakes. I know this level like the back of my own hand. I do get a little overconfident, though, and screw up one of the tube ride skips about 3/4 of the way through the level, and try like 3 times before giving up and taking the normal route through it. Alas, even I am but a mere mortal.
• THIS BOSS IS MAYBE A BIT EASIER AS KNUCKLES AND MUCH EASIER IN A SUPER FORM: Did you know the super characters can completely ignore the bombing mechanic against Robotniks first phase? Just park yourself up on some of the spikes and they'll push you directly into his giant armor, allowing you to damage him extremely quickly. Then the second form is super easy as Knuckles as the wall-climb lets you get excellent purchase from which to hit him as he is near the wash basin's pole. BEAT doesn't do the first trick, and thus I get up maybe about 45 seconds ahead of him; I also get an extremely favorable spike pattern too. At last -- karma?
• WE DISCUSS A LOT OF AMERICAN "OUTSIDER" CULTURE HERE: I mean, we started this thing out with a slightly doofy wrestling gimmick, and wrestling culture started out as part of carnival culture / freak show stuff, so it was more a matter of when, not if. Some of the salient points: after the end of slavery, Black Americans found themselves without enough money to totally free themselves of their current living situations, and so many of them wound up living and working on the same plantations that they did before, for meager pay. This is not to say the benefits of ending slavery were illusory -- perhaps the most important one was that children of Black American families could no longer be sold off. Still, economic progress was slow (and still is!) and many of them turned to traveling shows to get by. Unfortunately, said shows wound up propagating cruel and racist notions of their lifestyles and behaviors -- and while it was true that over time said entertainers took their pay and also attempted to subvert the nature of the comedy in question, though the white audiences only heard what they wanted to hear. This is still true in more modern days in the nature of comedy routines such as the classic Chris Rock routine about, ah, let's say "Actual human beings vs. fictional constructs designed to create a division between racial castes in America and justify mistreatment of its citizens", a routine where white people did not (based on my experience with people who listened to Chris Rock during this time, though admittedly mostly-white mostly-suburban teenagers, who are not known as a group for their racial sensitivity or self-awareness) realize that they were in fact the butt of the joke. Nonetheless, though minstrel shows and freak shows have their roots in places where comfortable Americans can point and laugh at those they wish to subjugate, they represented subcultures of relative safety from violence and a stable, if not particularly generous, income. This is part of the reason why actual blaxploitation cinema is so important -- it was one of the first times an entire American culture had access to the means of this cultural production, and while the outsider perspective meant that the films they produced were outside of most audiences' expectations, by their very nature they implied themes of rebellion and liberation, in a sort of Marxist way. Before this moment Black people were not making films by and for Black audiences, but now they were. This is something that more modern attempts to parody this culture miss, and wind up coming across as more racist -- there are a few good starting points, but as fans of video games you might like to see what Austin Walker and Ian Williams wrote on the subject of Funk of Titans, which is basically about the way modern audiences misunderstand the culture surrounding blaxploitation. This is also related to the cartoons produced in the first half of the last century at Warner Bros., a number of which carried with them deeply racist imagery and notions. Even Michigan J. Frog from the famous Bugs Bunny cartoon, is known for a song that was published under deeply offensive cultural conditions even if the song itself is mostly free of obvious racist undertones to us in the modern era.
• OH YEAH. THE LEVEL. MIRAGE SALOON IS A COMPLETELY UNIQUE LEVEL TO KNUCKLES: Knuckles joins up on that biplane after Hydrocity and immediately gets knocked off. There's a fun unique funk tune that plays under this level that's completely great. And I forget the stage's name because my first exposure to online Sonic culture was in discovering the Sonic 2 beta mockups and game data that included reference to "Dust Hill Zone", which was referenced by Brenda Ross as the Western, desert-inspired level that never got too far into production, sadly. It will always be "Dust Hill" to me. It actually was planned as a possible bonus level for their port of Sonic CD, but it got removed. I think that's just as well, because if it had gotten this far its concepts were all similar enough to existing Sonic CD levels that it would have stepped on their toes a bit too much. Notice the flippers adapted from Collision Chaos and the twirling barstools adapted from the spinning platters in Palmtree Panic. Anyway, Knuckles has to do a lot of climbing and gliding to get around; this level would probably not have been a
• WE SEE ONE OF THE UNIQUE KNUCKLES BOSSES: It's actually just a bigger version of one of the bosses from Sonic Chaos (known as Sonic & Tails in Japan) for Sega's 8-bit platforms, the second level Gigalopolis. This boss is a caterkiller that throws out its segments at you to try to damage it. It's a lot bigger here, and a bit tricky for Knuckles to hit at first.
• P.S.: DAVID CAGE SUCKS: We give him a shoutout for sucking, but we still go easy on him overall. Since recording this let's play / race, he's actually back in the news again! He's suing the press for reporting on his studio, Quantic Dream's, shitty workplace conditions. Sexual harassment and the like. Now they're trying to hide behind hiring folks like Ellen Page as a sign that, no, they're actually a progressive studio. As if! They certainly didn't give a damn when they plunked a nude render of her into Beyond: Two Souls, which itself nearly wound up leading to litigation. Likeness rights are a big deal!
• BEAT KEEPS THINKING HE SOFTLOCKS ANY TIME HE GOES OFF THE SCREEN AT ACT END: In Studiopolis 1, Hydrocity 1, Knuckles' Mirage Saloon 1, and Metallic Madness 1, you get a Sonic 1 style signpost. And by that I mean Sonic 1 Master System, because it goes up in the air if you hit it fast enough (and can do the Sonic 3 thing where you knock it around to get points and maybe power-ups). But you can also just breeze right past it and off the screen to where the next act starts. But then on act 2 the screen scrolls you just show up right where you were standing. I couldn't see BEAT's screen at the time so I had no idea what was going on until I saw this footage, where it all started to make sense to me. By the way, check out the eyes on the Heavy King statue at the end of act 1. Unsettling, huh?
• ACT 2 AND ITS BOSS ARE ABOUT THE SAME AS WITH SONIC: I'll spare you the discussion, outside of pointing out that I reach the boss at the same time that BEAT starts act 2. If I was feeling sneaky, I could probably have exploited bonus Knuckles onto the animal capsule and skipped the boss entirely. But I was already ahead, so playing dirty would have just been cruel, and I didn't do it. Besides, we get to see the Sonic the Fighters trio again this way. Some deep cuts in here -- and not a single female character to speak of, go figure?
• GOGGLEBOB SHARES A STORY ABOUT ONE OF HIS GRAND-UNCLES, A PROFESSIONAL CLOWN, AS I BEGIN OIL OCEAN: It sounded for a second like "grand-knuckle" to me for a second which is a sign of just how deep into our skulls this game has started grinding itself. Anyway it's a cool story that you might enjoy listening to.
• I WOULD TALK MORE ABOUT OIL OCEAN HERE, BUT IT'S NOT A LEVEL I'M PARTICULARLY GOOD AT: Oil Ocean is the Sonic 2 level where I always start to screw up, and I've never done a no-hit run of Sonic 2 because that level exists and is just full of stuff that wants to take your rings from you or kill you right on the spot. It is usually the point in a full-game run where I question my judgement and consider whether or not I want to be doing literally anything else with my time.
• YOU CAN STRAIGHT-UP AVOID TRIGGERING THE RING DRAIN MECHANIC IN OIL OCEAN 2: If you stand a little bit to the right of where it shows up, you fall straight down and don't grab onto the first vent chain-switch. If you don't activate it, the ring-loss mechanic that occurs in act 2 never starts, even though the screen gets smoggy. I thought at first that hitting another chain would still cause it to start back up -- and about a third of the way through the level I freak out over this fact. But if you check my ring counter, you'll see I had nothing to worry about, as it never starts flashing; the only ring drain is from Super Knuckles. (Fun fact: You could skip the ghosts as Sonic/Tails in Sandopolis 2, the mechanic this is based on, but it was a lot harder to do there.)
• SHAMELESS PLUG OF MY ANATOMY OF SONIC SERIES: I will work on Labyrinth Act 3, I swear! But I want to do a deep dive (heh) into the workings of the Genesis video hardware. I mention the use of the water effect driven by scanline interrupts, but I also want to discuss how that feeds into the bug produced at the end of Labyrinth Act 2, and to a lesser degree I want to get into the question, no, really, what the heck are 16-bit graphics anyway? (HINT: It's only slightly less meaningless than the Genesis saying its graphics are "high definition".)
• MOAR BOATS: I'm pretty sure the first sub I enter gets you an achievement. I don't know. It's been a while. One of them does. If you've played Chaotix, you'll remember their visual style from the water level that wasn't, Marina Madness. Another unusual deep cut, and this time from one of the adapted levels rather than a wholly unique one.
• MY SCORE IS HIGHER: Only gogglebob cares. A bunch of these extra points probably come from my screwups in the special stages. Special stages: even if you don't win, you can get points from them. But it doesn't matter. Nobody cared about points until Sonic Adventure 2, where it was used to criticize your failings in trying to beat a level quickly without getting all the rings and defeating all the enemies in it, you bad person who doesn't know how to play a game designed for children, NO GHZ FOR YOU! Failing special stages is the only way I know of to grind for continues, though -- you have to be at level 3 and make the sphere gauge wrap back around to get a continue, but only in no-save mode. Otherwise, it's a 50K point bonus (like a perfect bonus in Sonic 3's special stages) which is worth an extra life, but then continues don't have much use in the savegame mode anyway. By the way, Sonic Mania's update coming in July will let you keep track of continues in save modes! Yay? Anyway, the differences in scores is much smaller than you'd think given my special stage screwups.
• MORE REALLY EASY SUPER KNUCKLES BOSSES: The mechanic dude's only real threat is pushing you into the ceiling spikes from the pressure platforms. The Robotnik-piloted giant octopus robot is basically nothing to any super character. More formalities than anything, and both acts have more than enough rings that it doesn't really matter very much.
• WE CLOSE THIS EPISODE ABOUT TO FIND OUT ABOUT A FUN BAD TEACHER STORY FROM BEAT'S COLLEGE YEARS: Also I'm ahead by maybe half the level at this point, the first time we've ended a level with a clear distinction of who is in the lead. Anyway, if you want to hear BEAT's story, you'll have to pay attention next round, where we play through Lava Reef.

BEAT: Alright, muteKi, I'm going to have to -- I'm asking you to like, a personal favor, as a friend --
me: Yeah?
BEAT: I NEED YOU TO DIE!
Fanboy: In real life or in Sonic Mania?
BEAT: Not in real life! ...Ah shit, I just went backwards!

Yo, you linked the cut off metal sonic fight again.

*slaps forehead* spent all that time on the writeup and couldn't get the damn link right. go me! anyway it's fixed now

So I see you this and raise you an even longer update, plus a retroactive edit to the part 1 episode

• FROM THE ANNALS OF MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE: BEAT regales us with the time an instructor refused to grade one of his papers because he sent it to the professor's other email address. After sending numerous complaints to the dean, or an office meant to handle student complaints of teachers -- all of which were required to be addressed by the teacher whether or not they were actually valid -- he did. And sent out a really snotty email about maturity. Sometimes it's the small victories in life, like knowing you got your paper graded by a person you disliked while pissing them off deeply in the process.
• THOUGH BEAT LIKENS THIS LEVEL, UNDERSTANDABLY, TO ENDLESS MINE, I THINK A LOT OF THE FIRST LEVEL OF SONIC 2 GAME GEAR, UNDERGROUND ZONE: The way that the springs interact with the wooden bridges definitely feels like a reference. The mountains in the background do too. The lava bubbles jumping up and down in more lakes might not be (since Marble Zone had them too), but overall it definitely has a very Sonic 2 Game Gear vibe to it. This is wild: someone just bought a copy of that game new at retail. Dare I ask this person -- why? Like we said in the last full update, it's not good!
• MY ROUTE THROUGH THE STAGE DOESN'T SHOW OFF MUCH OF THE NEW STUFF: I took a fast route because I was playing to win. It just so happens that said route is mostly identical to the upper routes in the original incarnation of the stage. BEAT's route is similar. The lower routes get you an achivement, as I recall, and they also show off new areas unique to this game, so you may want to try those if you've been playing this game yourself.
• WE DISCUSS HOW WEIRD ECHIDNAS ARE: They're like, really weird, you guys. They used to be aquatic mammals, then they migrated to land and adapted. Anyway, that's funny since our only deaths up until this point are from drowning.
• I FORGET BRIEFLY HOW TO FIGHT THE MINIBOSS: You have to lead it onto the rocky surface twice to open him up to hits; otherwise you can keep jumping into it and it won't take damage, and I keep having it land in the same place every time. He's no harder to fight as Knuckles than anyone else, despite having attack patterns based on a boss (Marble Garden 1's miniboss) that actually was significantly harder as Knuckles. Once again, I beat the boss right before BEAT reaches it; we continue to be sepearated by the length of one miniboss, effectively.
• THE MUSIC FOR BOTH THESE STAGES IS AMAZING AND PRETTY DANG 90s: Sing, a song the late Bernie Worell made with David Byrne feels like it actually had a pretty strong influence on some songs in Sonic CD (US), in particular Quartz Quadrant. It also seems to have influenced this track, like with the added horn line. The game had some direction to be "Sonic, but later into the 90s" and this is a song that is very consistent with that. The reverb and smooth, slow guitar lines in act 2 are also very consistent with that direction, and I would say perfectly capture what disc-based games sounded like in the 90s. It is Lava Reef by way of, say, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
• WE DISCUSS THE BUILD ENGINE: The engine of choice for all your favorite B-tier FPS games with sexism and racism! Duke Nukem 3D! Shadow Warrior! Blood! Also, I really want to play the mod of Wolfenstein that's just a dog-petting simulator that Morning Songs mentions
• I SHOW OFF A COUPLE MORE KNUCKLES-EXCLUSIVE ROUTES IN ACT 2: As with the previous Sonic 3 levels (Flying Battery, Hydrocity), both acts still mostly take a lot of their ideas from the respective source act, though again Act 2 mixes things up a bit more than Act 1 does. Act 2 was one of the areas in S&K that had a mandatory unique route for Knuckles. Here the only mandatory re-routing is at the end of the stage, but there are a few paths only Knuckles can access. In general, the middle of the stage hews pretty close to the S&K layout, and the Knuckles areas aren't that different from his route either, but there are a few branching paths up to the top of the level that are quite different. Still, if you've played the original you can usually guess whereabouts in the level you are from reference. Main changes are the Quartz Quadrant inspired conveyor belts, and stuff like the Marble Zone rock rides and -- weirdly enough -- a deep cut (from a lower route) of a power up riding along a conveyor a la 8-bit Scrap Brain 1.
• DID I MENTION WE WERE BOTH PRETTY DRUNK? YEAH WE ARE: At this point all the beer I have had is too much for me and so I pause partway through the level for a very necessary bathroom break. Unlike with BEAT's moment in Studiopolis I have no illusion against the fact that this is anything but a time loss, and in fact keep the game paused during the length of my break. I would assume it is roughly on the order of BEAT's hiatus, and should be taken to signify that, in fact, I do not owe my lead to having capitalized on BEAT's previous mistake but am just that much faster.
• THERE IS ONE STARPOST THAT IS AN ABSOLUTE MOTHERFUCKER: We both land in special stages for a hot minute before getting onto the nearest red sphere. I do believe it is the same star post, as it is positioned right next to one of the wall-retraction buttons necessary to hit to progress through the stage.
• KNUCKLES BOSS IS COMPLETELY UNIQUE: Near the end of the level, there is a breakable wall Knuckles needs to take (which BEAT initially overlooks!) which leads to a lower area near a bottomless pit & mining area (check out the cool mining rig in the background). Then you go into an area that is almost literally a copy-paste of S&K's Hidden Palace (which BEAT initially calls this level -- he's not wrong, really, since it's right there). And then trying to harness the power of the Master Emerald is...Heavy King! That's right, Knuckles doesn't face Heavy Rider at all here. The Heavy King fight is fun, because there's a very cute callback to S&K that should be seen firsthand, as no description I could give it would do it justice. Anyway, his attack is to fire energy out of his scepter and basically electrify the ground for a second. Stay on the emeralds and jump at him and he goes down pretty fast. Oddly, this encounter doesn't use the Hard-Boiled Heavies theme, but the second Robotnik act 2 boss encounter music (as heard in Metallic Madness).
• I AM STILL AHEAD BY ONE BOSS ENCOUNTER AT THE END OF LAVA REEF: Beat reaches Heavy King as I am finished with him. He has a lot more time on the clock, though, because of my pause break. In-game time puts him a minute and a half behind me relative to my completion of Lava Reef 2.
• METALLIC MADNESS IS PROBABLY MY LEAST FAVORITE STAGE: There are just too many Robotnik Fortress stages, and since the devs' engine port of Sonic CD is available on most platforms, it feels the most redundant. It is, however, also the one that is most changed of the original levels from its source material. Frankly, though, I still don't like it very much; Metallic Madness was my least favorite Sonic CD stage by far, and now it's more of that except for the fact that I no longer am as certain of where I'm going. Fortunately the upper routes are reasonably close to the original game's, and the going-into-the-background mechanic is fun.
• BEAT DISCUSSES HIS AND HIS WIFE'S BREAKUP SONGS AS TO BE PERFORMED IN THE CONTEXT OF, SAY, DISCOVERING ONE WAS CHEATING ON THE OTHER: Eve's You Had Me You Lost Me is an inspired choice, a hip-hop sound with a decidedly mocking tone. BEAT's choice is pure BEAT -- ASOB's All I Do Is Deal With Assholes. Note the similarity in the structure of the portion he excerpts with his short little promo video from before this competition. This leads into a digression on Jeff Rosenstock and how 3/5ths of us commenting (me, FBM, BEAT) find the sad white boy stuff relatable.
• WE ALSO DISCUSS HOW 3DS AND VIRTUAL BOY GAMES USE THIS MECHANIC AND JUMP OFF TO HOW COOL THE VIRTUAL BOY IS: Every game you want, as long as it's Knuckles red. Mark my words, this is the year we get Virtual Boy Wario Land (Wario Land: Treasures of the Awazon) on 3DS. This is the year, my friends.
• DID I MENTION DRUNK? YEAH. PRETTY DRUNK: I actually die twice to the miniboss. I am actually tied, if not slightly behind BEAT for a hot second there.
• I STILL MANAGE TO BEAT THE BOSS BEFORE BEAT BEATS IT: The trick to this boss is twofold. The first form looks identical to the Sonic 1 boss it is based on, but there is always a gap (and thus safe zone) between the two pistons that raise or lower. Admittedly, Knuckles does have a harder time on this boss because the upper pistons go out of jumping range sooner. I won't say "not too challenging" because video evidence of two deaths exist, though! The second part is actually much easier -- every fourth piston contains Robotnik. It doesn't seem like BEAT realizes this based on the footage, which is likely part of why I'm able to beat the boss sooner despite lacking Super Knuckles power.
• WE DISCUSS THE GIFTING OF GIFTS: Did you know BEAT was my festivus victim? No? Well, that's because he never posted about receiving the gifts I sent him! But he got them! Finally we have documented evidence of this fact! Why didn't he ever post? Because in the middle of April, he still hadn't sent out his gifts! Boy, I sure do hope BEAT sent out his festivus presents when he said he would!
• TINY KNUCKLES / AND MY BEERS / MAKE ME FEEL HAPPY / GIVE ME SUCH CHEER: Not just one but two tiny Knuckles! Four if you count both videos! This is what makes act 2 worth playing. All those tiny Knuckles.
• THE MOMENT. THE MOMENT. Sure, at 19:30 into the video, I'm already at the boss while BEAT is a bit past halfway through. But this is where tragedy occurs. Note the checkpoint, and then see what happens next. You'll possibly have noticed in Lava Reef (and a few other times in other levels) that I have tried to climb onto the edge of platforms otherwise taken up by objects such as springs, spikes, and those damn Lava Reef 'splodey rocks. BEAT tries to climb up a ledge occupied by a spring while under threat of crushing just as I am about to finish the level. What happens next is basically the clinching point for this run.
• THIS BOSS IS PRETTY DANG CUTE THOUGH: Tiny Knuckles goes up against tiny Eggman bosses from Sonic 1 and 2! The drill mobile from Emerald Hill in Sonic 2 and the flame craft from Marble Zone in Sonic 1. There's an achievement for spawning all of them before destroying any of them, but I don't go for it. By the way, the boss craft is not remotely subtly taken from the design for the boss used in Knuckles Chaotix's Botanic Base.

Oh god, a pull quote. So fucking many good ones, but let's go with this:
GoggleBob: muteKi's having some problems here!
MorningSongs: Yeah, we have a second death on muteKi's side
me: Actually, third now
Fanboy: Oh wow
BEAT: OH FUCK YES, YES. THIS IS GOOD FOR BITCOIN. THIS IS GOOD FOR BEATCOIN!
Fanboy: Beatcoin?! No!!
Everyone: NO!
MorningSongs: Look, of all the things we indulge you in...please don't make a cryptocurrency, BEAT.

This last post went up a little earlier than I intended. I am updating here to say that it has been properly finished now. So if you were wondering why the bold tag wasn't closed, wonder no more, for it is.

Double update because I missed a day!

• WE GO INTO THIS LEVEL WITH ME ONE FULL STAGE AHEAD OF BEAT: He died to a crushing death. And then, about a minute in, dies again. In the exact. same. spot. For the exact same reason! Damn, BEAT!
• "HAVE YOU READ MY SONIC CLASSIC HEROES LP? THAT'S BASICALLY A BOOK!": I'll leave you all to make your own judgement on the past page or so worth of tweets.
• TITANIC MONARCH IS REALLY LONG. LIKE, REALLY LONG. THIS UPDATE IS JUST THAT LEVEL AND YET IT STILL IS THE LENGTH OF SOME OF THESE OTHER UPDATES: It's long. Death Egg Zone in Sonic 3 was longer than all the other levels in that game by a pretty wide margin, but here I go from level times on the order of maybe 3-4 minutes to beat, this one takes me over 5 minutes just in act 1, and act 2 is even longer. Also, you know how we've been talking about how part of what makes the Death Egg cool is how it shows up in multiple places over the course of the game, giving context to the climatic battles that take place over the last few remaining zones in that one? Well, in the next update to the game, coming in July, there will be more of that.
• SHOUT-OUT TO ZOLANI STEWART / FENGXII: Here's his Medium page. I'm not 100% certain that the article we are discussing about 5 minutes into the video, but you can probably find it from his Medium page. He's a cool dude! We recorded a podcast about Sonic Heroes together at one point, but I'm not sure it ever got edited and released. Either way, you should check out what he has there. Lots of great stuff. If the article we were talking about wasn't by him, it might have been the article by Amr Al-Aaser that he has a couple passages highlighted from. All good stuff!
• THE MID-BOSS IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE AS KNUCKLES: This boss is obviously based on the boss from act 1 of Death Egg Zone to the point where the first phase is nearly identical. This boss was actually straight-up unbeatable as Knuckles because the eye part was too high on screen to be reached. Oddly, Sonic 3 Complete fixed this by expanding the boss arena so that Knuckles could glide onto a wall on the far side of the stage to hit the boss. Something of a pointless inclusion, but amusing. Here, a ceiling helps bring the height of the boss down slightly, making it reachable as Knuckles...in the first phase. The second phase is absolutely awful as Knuckles. When the elevator is going down, it's not so bad, because the gravity change means Knuckles can hit the boss more easily, and then it affixes itself to the ground opening itself to hits, but when (as it seems to prefer to do) the elevator is going up, it's basically impossible to hit, and just wasting time. Annoying! Not really an increase in challenge! Just a waste of time! Boy am I glad that bosses aren't a component in time attack, because stuff like this guy just grinds my gears.
• WE TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH WE APPRECIATE SONIC'S EARNESTNESS: When you're 8, the awesome power of teamwork and going fast while you listen to favorite rock song is wildly awesome. When you're 17, you're probably a bit too jaded. By the time you're reaching your thirties, it wraps back around, and that sort of sweet earnestness and desire to be FRIENDLY and MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE feels like what you need. Especially in trying times like this (look forward to the Sonic Forces LP, coming...someday). I adore Sonic Forces, for example, because for as much as it's a bit overwrought, it's still really fun and charming and dumb-fun in the way that only things like comic book stories can be. Dr. McNinja meets Swat Kats. I specifically mention Thor Ragnarok as the analog to this idea, a story with genuine stakes that's also a buddy stoner road-trip movie and a movie where people talk about their feelings, and fucking Norse Samus is a major character and if you haven't seen Thor Ragnarok, you should, as it's the one Thor movie that's really good if you want a reason besides Hemsworth's pecs. Related to that, my fiancee says I need to try to find a way to take her to Cerro Pelon Ranch (where the NM city in Thor was filmed).
• ACT 2 IS REALLY, REALLY LONG: Yes, it's nonlinear. But boy howdy is it long! It's really long! Each route doesn't really branch, so while you can encounter each one in whatever order you want, you basically have to go through the entire map. And it's big. I would say the functional parts of the stage are even bigger than the entire length of Death Egg 2, and that level was quite long but still had a couple divergent paths to it. It takes another 5 minutes to get to the boss, and several more minutes after that to beat it! The main saving grace is that the timer actually resets when you encounter the boss, making a time over much less likely -- it's just as well, because this stage has no result screen to give you points from.
• GOGGLEBOB WAS WAY TOO QUIET ON THIS STREAM AND THAT'S OUR FAULT: I don't think I turned his mic up high enough in the volume settings, and BEAT and I basically shouted every single dang thing we said. As a result there's a lot of stuff he's said that we wound up accidentally cutting out just due to being too loud. We wonder if he's still with us halfway through the video. But he is! He is just not yelling like we are.
• WE ADMIT THAT BONUS KNUCKLES REALLY ISN'T ALL THAT USEFUL ACTUALLY: Tails has two main benefits as Sonic's partner. First, he's got a pretty decent normal jump height so he can do a lot to hit things that Sonic might take damage from touching, since he's effectively invincible. Second, he can actually use his flying powers to carry Sonic up to skip areas, or to fly into the bottom of bosses, which makes the Studiopolis Act 2 boss pretty straightforward. Bonus Knuckles has the jumping drawbacks of regular Knuckles, and basically none of the benefits. Sonic wouldn't be able to ride his legs while he climbs up a wall, for example. It might be possible to use bonus Knuckles to break some of the walls, but I've never tried and I'm not sure that it can be done. Even then, you need to glide over a pit in, say, the end of Lava Reef 2 so it wouldn't be particularly useful.
• SOMEDAY WE'LL FIND IT / THE BUTTROCK CONNECTION / THE LIVERS, THE LEARNERS, AND ME: We spend the last third or so of the video just discussing the music of the Sonic Adventure games, which includes an impromptu rendition of Escape from the City. There is a lot of buttrock in those two games, and a lot of lyrical themes. It's weird how many songs in SA2 have vocals over them; almost feels like a Sonic R holdover despite the fact that it came after SA1 (naturally). On the other hand, how many people start up SA2 just to sing along with City Escape's music anyway? Fanboy knew of at least 2 from a Toys 'R' Us (RIP) encounter, but I suspect there are fewer these days now that a better version of the stage is in Sonic Generations.
• THE SECOND BOSS TAKES A LONG TIME BUT ISN'T PARTICULARLY HARDER AS KNUCKLES: This is such a weird final boss. It's really weird! It's small, it's not particularly deadly (most of the time touching it just causes you to bounce off it), and it takes a really long time to fight against. It's not like the giant fuckoff Robotnik robots of Sonic 2 or 3(K) -- it's small, like the boss in Sonic CD. And despite using scrapped ideas (like Mirage Saloon) from their Sonic CD port, they didn't go with the idea of having a final boss that's actually big and requires maybe a unique mechanic to damage anywhere in it. That's right, they had a giant robot stage planned as the final boss for Sonic CD. And they still didn't bother with it. This is a really anticlimactic boss as a result, though the re-appearance of the 4 heavies (including Heavy Rider) is notable. Mostly, though, to me it feels old. Note that this boss takes so long that I lose my Super Knuckles power and play so safe I encounter Heavy Gunner's form (which at least has rings) before going back to fight the main boss form. It's possible to damage Gunner by, again, knocking those bombs back, but it doesn't seem to matter. At least for now, the hands only seem to show up if you don't get enough hits in, so it's possible to beat the level without encountering them. But since I took damage on the last cycle of the boss, losing my shield and having no rings, I was OK with getting the hands; it sure beat dying on that part like a chump.

So that's it. You'd think this is the end of the video, with me as winner? Well, not quite! The game isn't actually over yet. BEAT's only half a level out. What will happen next? You'll find out soon enough!

Keep in mind as you read this quote that at this point BEAT and I are both really fuckin' hammered:

me: Losing against me doesn't make you a bad person, it just makes you human!
Fanboy: Wow.
BEAT: Oh what does that make you then per se?
me: I WROTE THE BOOK ON SONIC THE HEDGEHOG! Or at least I would have if I finished it already!
Fanboy: You would have if someone would publish it.
BEAT: You know, I'm surprised you managed to diss yourself in that statement
GoggleBob: I'm not surprised.
Fanboy: Let's be honest here, saying "I wrote a book about Sonic the Hedgehog" is already dissing yourself.

Oh hey there's another one of these!

I think that in Sonic Advance's two-player mode you could ride on Knuckles' head while he was climbing.

I would believe it -- I've not tried to do the 2-player stuff really due to the fact that by the time I got a GBA and a copy of the game, the DS was already getting long in the tooth and GBA multiplayer is even more of a hassle to set up.

I would not be strictly opposed to future Sonic Advance Shenanigans.

How good is GBA Emulation netplay these days?

Also I don't think I linked to the Wolf3D dog-petting mod. Here it is: https://barsk.itch.io/woof3d

So I think I'm going to do the last two updates tomorrow night. Not really feeling up to it right now, honestly.

No worries man, take your time.

You can probably guess the fate of the game from the thumbnails, so I'm putting both of the last two updates here at once.

• KNUCKLES FACES THE SUPER EXTRA SPECIAL FINAL BOSS TOO: This is unique to Knuckles & Knuckles mode, but grabbing all the emeralds gives Knuckles access to the final level (Egg Reverie). While I do have affection for the ending gotten without all the emeralds, where the two Knuckles escape on a jet booster along with a third Knuckles out of Titanic Monarch, more game is more game!
• FISTBUMP: OK, the bit where Robotnik's machine and Phantom Ruby-powered Heavy King do a docking thing is kind of like a fistbump, but what I mean is that the final boss music excerpts heavily from the chorus of Sonic Forces' main theme, Fistbump. The lick is also there near the start of the song, but that's more me being a jazz nerd rather than celebrating a leimotif that helps tie the ending of this game into Sonic Forces. One of these days I'll put my video of that.
• RARE FOOTAGE OF EGGMAN'S ATTACK: While it's easy to see Heavy King's 'rotating energy sphere shield that LOOKS LIKE A HOMING SHOT' attack several times, usually Robotnik goes down fast enough that you don't see his real attack if you can't get past his robot fists -- he sweeps across the stage. I'd actually not seen that attack before now, which is as clear a sign as any of how intoxicated we both were at this point.
• BEAT ALSO SHOWS OFF SOME RARE FOOTAGE OF THE HEAVY MAGICIAN AND HEAVY RIDER ATTACK PHASES IN THE TITANIC MONARCH BOSS: It's easy to wind up going up against Heavy Gunner's barrage of bombs, and most runs will probably include an unfortunate encounter with the mercurial Heavy Shinobi and his spiky pinwheel of doom. Heavy Magician's shell game attack is rarer, and the ride against Heavy Rider is even more rare. That said, after dying to the boss it's hard to get good leverage over it due to how few rings you have and how rarely the boss actually makes itself vulnerable, so eventually you probably will see those extra phases if you can't get him the first time (it's happened to me, certainly). This is the only time Knuckles encounters Heavy Rider, actually.
• IT WAS ALL JUST A STORY THE WHOLE TIME: Turns out Knuckles was reading from his book, Sonic Mania & Knuckles, when he explained the wild adventures he had in Knuckles & Knuckles mode! Note the music, a remix of Take a Nap from Knuckles Chaotix, the music used in the first 10 seconds of story-mode gameplay (itself based on the game's title screen music). It's goofy, and it's very much in character with most of Tyson Hesse's ridiculous-yet-sublime Knuckles humor.
• YEAH, I FINISH FIRST, AND THEN TRY TO SHOW OFF A LITTLE OF THE MANIA MODE SPECIAL STAGES: This extra feature is like the Sonic & Knuckles "NO WAY!" mode, but without any sort of progress save or ability to select levels -- it generates stages from a set of pre-form tiles, with you having to clear out all the spheres (and rings) to get full completion. The "original" mode actually uses stages generated from the exact same method as S&K's stages, but "Mania" mode's changes are a bit odd: there are blue spheres that turn into green spheres after touching them once (green spheres must be turned blue -- surrounding green spheres with red spheres does NOT turn them all into rings, unlike with red surrounding blue), and pink spheres that serve as teleports. It's a bit interesting, and the mode was taken from some dev experiments done during early stages of a scrapped Sonic 3/S&K port to this engine, though it's clearly underbaked as it stands here, and I'm not sure how much I like the specifics of how the green spheres work. Plus, again, no way to save progress or replay the same stages (though you'll notice the smaller set of stage components in Mania mode fairly quickly).
• DON'T GIVE UP, SKELETON! Even if BEAT didn't win, he still plays to the end. This was a lot of fun, and for a really long time it could have gone either way. I'm glad we could get a chance to do something like this and I certainly look forward to doing more of this kind of thing in the future (which is almost a guarantee what with Sonic Mania Plus on the horizon).
• WE WELCOME ON A GUY BY THE NAME OF SOYSUS15 TO THE STREAM CREW NEAR THE END: He's cool. He showed up in BEAT's stream comments, as I recall. You'll all be hearing more from him in the future.

Fun other things we discuss during these episodes: US Presidents in Fiction, Mr. Bean, Dril tweets inc. those about Mr. Bean, Bad Rats and how bad it is, and the odd Sega PC ports back in the day (Sonic & Knuckles Colllection FM Synth soundtrack being played on an actual OPL3 is a transcendant experience).

Sonic 3D Blast isn't bad, just boring. Although that ice zone music....

Oh, not 3D Blast.

BLAST.

Otherwise known as G Sonic

but specifically the Master System version bootleg quasi-official TecToy release

Have a blast = Have a good time
Have a Sonic Blast = Screw you

Besides, BEAT already played Sonic 3D Blast! That's not a punishment! That's just reality!

EPILOGUE BONUS POST!
ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏғ ᴛᴡᴏ ɪғ ᴍᴜᴛᴇᴋɪ ғᴇᴇʟs ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ ɪɴ ʜᴇʀᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʜɪs ᴏᴡɴ ᴇᴘɪʟᴏɢᴜᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ'ʟʟ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴍɪɴᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴄʀᴀᴘ.
ᴘᴀʀᴛ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏғ ᴏɴᴇ ɪғ ʜᴇ ᴅᴏᴇsɴ'ᴛ ғᴇᴇʟ ʟɪᴋᴇ ɪᴛ. ɪᴛ's ʜɪs ᴄᴀʟʟ ᴍᴀɴ, ɪ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʜɪᴍ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ.
IS SONIC MANIA GOOD?

Well if we take into account all ports of the game we can create an average of their goodness which can be compared against the median goodness of all games released in the last 20 years after adjusting for the lack of FOV slide- YES.

YES, SONIC MANIA IS GOOD.

SONIC MANIA IS FUCKING GREAT.

IS SONIC MANIA THE BEST SONIC GAME?

Listen to me very closely, you idiot.

YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT WHICH SONIC GAME IS MOST BEST. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE TO FIND THE ABSOLUTE LIMITS OF BEST AND WORST.

You have to be really clever to come up with a genuinely dangerous thought. I am disheartened that people can be clever enough to do that and not clever enough to do the obvious thing and KEEP THEIR IDIOT MOUTHS SHUT about it, because it is much more important to sound intelligent when talking about the blue fast varmint.

This question was STUPID.

OKAY FINE, HOW'S IT STACK UP AGAINST THE 5 (OR 4) 16-BIT GAMES IT'S BASED ON?

That's a much less less existentially terrifying question! I'm not sure! Let's find out TOGETHER!

I think it's pretty inarguable that Mania rates higher than Sonic 1. Don't get me wrong, The little guy's big debut is an absolutely incredible game, full of amazing ideas that changed the medium forever. But like anything's first steps, it's a little shaky and uncertain. The series needed just a little more time to grow so it could learn to stop tripping over itself.

I have to give it an edge over Sonic 2 as well. It's a mindblowingly ambitious sequel that does an incredible job capitalizing on Sonic 1's potential, but it lacks the new ideas that came later, and is just a little too long to be played without a save function.

Then there's that weird outlier of the 16 bit series Sonic CD, which is an interesting game, but never really one of my favori- Wait. Why isn't that bold text linked to a let's play thread? Have I seriously never done an LP of that one?! I've done LPs for 3D Blast and Dreams Collection for fuck's sake! Whatever. Mania's better.

Well hey, that's three for three! Gotta say, Mania's doing pretty good in this little contest! Now all the lil guy has to do to take home the crown is win this last round against *checks notes* Sonic 3 & Knuckles!

Oh.

Ohhhhhhh.

Well SHIT. Sorry Mania, you did your best. And hey, second place isn't that bad when you're matched against that kind of heavyweight, right? I mean, you don't see people giving Creed shit for losing to Conlan.

WHAT'S S3&K GOT THAT MANIA DOESN'T?

I could probably come up with a few reasons if you got on my case about it, but the one that springs immediately to my mind is the story. But BEAT, I can hear you thinking with my terrifying, previously undisclosed mind-reading abilities. The stories of early video games in general and 16-bit platformers in particular are disposable excuse plots, written to give-bare bones justification for the video game guy to do video game stuff! What could the story of a 16-bit sonic game possibly add to the experience beyond a few bonus points for presentation? Well, a whole lot of things, but the ones I want to focus on are buildup and payoff.

S3&K's plot is openly silly, but it does a great job on establishing Robotnik's appropriately silly ultimate weapon as a BIG IMPORTANT DEAL by keeping it front and center. You abort it's first attempted launch! You see its destructive power firsthand while deep underground! You see Robotnik be a little too mean to that Gullible red fellow in the service of getting that destructive thing airborne! You watch it rise above the clouds fully operational! So when you finally set foot on it for real you're like "OH SHIT IT'S ON!" The game builds up this awesome threat, and then rewards your anticipation with a dope-ass battle in deep space. It adds emotional weight and catharsis so effortlessly, elevating a kick-ass game to a kick-ass experience.

Unfortunately, Mania sort of dropped the ball on that whole aspect. I mean you get a few cutscenes that all indicate that the weird EggRobos are acting up, and remind us that the pink rock is important, sure. But we never get a sense of looming threat to psych us up, or any hints as to what exactly he's trying to accomplish to make us get excited about stopping him. We just sort of arrive at the secret base at the end.

I think this is at least partially because Mania (like Generations before it) was explicitly designed as a celebration of the franchise's past. That's not a diss, because it fucking kills as a celebration title! It's an AMAZING celebration title! But being a celebration title means you gotta keep falling back on old areas with old threats. Instead of going "Oh wow where's Robotnick going with this?!" we're going "Oh man Hydrocity Zone looks awesome now!" It prevents the game from establishing it's stakes, and giving itself it's own identity that goes beyond references to older games.

IT'S STILL A FUCKING GREAT GAME THO, RIGHT?

Shit yeah man it's sick as hell.

CREDITS
HATED ENEMY, WHO'S VICTORY IS ILLEGITIMATE AND UNEARNED.
MuteKi: I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME I SWEAR!

DISCORD BROS
FanboyMaster: "Knock Knock it's Sonic & Fuckles!"
Gogglebob: "You know they've got like 30 people constantly cranking out Eva papercraft."
Muteki: "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh video world."
MorningSong: "I have to wonder if this is some sort of a religious festival, because I'm seeing a lot of fasting!"

OTHER PEOPLE WHO TOTALLY RULE
Madhair60: For letting me use his awesome Oil Ocean Comic
SoySus15: For all the props in the text chat.
Everybody who showed up for the race: You guys rule.

AND FINALLY...
YOU: I really enjoyed doing my part of this crazy two-man LP, and it gives me a big old goofy smile whenever you guys let me know you enjoyed watching/reading it. It's still true that I mostly just do these things for me, but there's at least a little part of me that does it for you. Thank you all so much!


??

EPILOGUE BONUS POST PART 2
(C'mon, did you really think I'd turn down the chance to write too many words about Sonic?)

When I first played this game, sure, I liked it. It was more Sonic, and it takes a lot for me to outright dislike a Sonic game. But did it grab me the way Sonic 2 or 3 did when I first played them? Did I come to find myself slowly growing enraptured by this game as I learned more about it the way I did Sonic CD? Heck, did it introduce a major novel change that, even if it didn't work quite right, still felt like something interesting that ought to get revisited by someone in the future like Knuckles' Chaotix did?

Well, no. In fact, I quickly found myself burnt out by this game after a while, and there was a long period of time from around November to like March where the idea of even playing the game at all felt like a chore more than a joy. And why is that? Well, I've hinted at this in some of my writeups, but there's a key issue with the game here -- I've played most of it so, so many times already that such interest in coming back to it seemed very hard to do. Why not just, after all, play Sonic 3 (K) again?

Now, I don't want to come down to hard on this game! It's got a lot of stuff that I'll always be very glad to praise. For one thing, the sprite work in this game is pristine, some of the absolute best of all games of all time. This is a game whose spritework is competitive with some of the best of the best: Symphony of the Night, Capcom and SNK fighting games, Mega Man 8, and all manner of shmups from the latter half of the 90s and onward. It's easy to see how they managed this, since what most of these games have in common is an iterative process that allows them to retain the work from previous games, and spending the time that might be spent building an initial set of sprites for a character with tuning and tweening. It is telling that a great bulk of Symphony's spritework is either directly taken from or loosely adapted from PC Engine CD game Rondo of Blood; rather than re-spriting hundreds of enemies, time was spent tuning up things like Alucard's fluid walk cycle.

Similarly, the music is stunning. Designed to mimic musical styling common to the time, it absolutely nails the feel of games of the era. The reverb-heavy guitar of Lava Reef 2 calls to mind some action and role-playing games on Sega CD and PS1. Titanic Monarch owes a lot to Metal Shark Player's stage tune from Mega Man X6. Studioplis has a clear influence from house and new jack swing stylings that were less influential by the mid-90s but were by no means dead genres. It definitely sounds right for the era the game is supposed to be built for, as if a "lost" Saturn Sonic game.

I wish I could find a link handy for you, but I seem to recall reading that this project was originally meant to be just a 4-level side game meant to be part of a repackaging of the mobile ports of Sonic 1 and 2 (along with possibly 3) in a collection for PC and consoles. The four levels in question would be the ones we saw here -- Studiopolis, Press Garden, Mirage Saloon, and Titanic Monarch. I believe part of the issue comes down to the fact that Sonic 3 has odd licensing rights issues related to its music; Sega seems even more reluctant to acknowledge its existence lately, though you can still freely purchase it from Steam. Anyway, when this collection was unable to materialize, this new package, consisting of those four levels, whatever Sonic 3 levels they could get the OK to remake, and a few stages from other games came out instead. It's still a tie-in game of sorts, but now it's a promotional lead-in for Sonic Forces, which was...OK; like many of these retro promotional games (the Mighty Gunvolt games coming in mind in particular), it's easy to call it stronger than the game it's meant to be an ad for.

Even then, it's definitely clear that this is a full game, and compared to the previous "greatest hits" collection that was Sonic Generations, it's got an overall better balance to stages to play through (it is thankfully not all variations on Green Hill and Casino Night). Even if it's a compiled game, it's a compiled game that was definitely done with thought for balance, structure, and pacing. Heck, there are a lot of little touches obviously inspired by deeper cuts from the 2D series -- rarely do any games give thought to art or level structure of Chaotix, and almost never will you see anything that could even be construed as a reference to one of the Master System/Game Gear games.

That's not to say there aren't some parts of it I take issue with. I liked the bonus stages in Sonic 3 and Chaotix, which allowed you to collect rings and powerups in a secondary stage that you could take with you to aid you in the rest of the level; here, they are just a clone of the Sonic 3 special stages (one of the few bits from the port of Sonic 3 that was in a full completed state before their remake project was axed) and reward unlockable game modes and achievements on completion. In the event that you've perfected all the stages, they don't have any use at all other than to kill time or possibly cancel out of a super form. Remade levels have typically doubled or tripled (possibly even quadrupled!) in size from their original forms, but the frustrating 10 minute time over still exists, despite the fact that it was optional as soon as the game came to GBA and stealthily excised since then. I still think some of the more elaborate bosses don't really explain how they work (i.e., how you're supposed to defeat them) very well. Sonic CD's more elaborate bosses, which most of this game's bosses seem to take their cues from, weren't always fun to play, and they also weren't right at the end of a long 10 minute level, instead placed in their own separate stages that had pretty short lead-in sections instead.

But overall, it's hard to shake the feeling I haven't seen all this before. Indeed, they've done a retro-styled companion promotional game to (re-)introduce people to the series before -- Sonic Pocket Adventure for the Neo Geo Pocket. While not as faithful to the original Genesis games' feel (indeed, it feels somewhere between Genesis Sonic 1 and some of the Game Gear games) as this, it still does a lot of what this game does. There's a Green Hill level (which has more structural similarity to Emerald Hill from Sonic 2) followed by a Chemical Plant level followed by a city/casino level (in this case based on Casino Night -- most of the levels take most of their cues from Sonic 2, really). The team that made this game would then go on to also make the Sonic Advance series, the first game of which takes a lot of the original ideas from Sonic Pocket Adventure and remixes them into more original levels while also having physics that feel even more like the Genesis games (and including playable Tails and Knuckles!). They're both really great games that tend to get overlooked by folks who stopped paying attention to the series by the Saturn era or later, and definitely feel like holdouts to a style that Sega eventually wanted to move away from.

I can't entirely blame them. While this game was (like Symphony and MM8 as mentioned above) built around the question of what a Sonic game could have been like if developed for the Saturn (with a handful of small enhancements over what would have probably been possible, like cleanly looping CD-quality audio), I wonder if as it stands it would have done well. On the one side there's the future NGPC and GBA games I mentioned, and on the other there's Sonic Jam, which is an even more direct remake of all 4 Genesis games (1, 2, 3, &K; Sonic CD not included) with a few minor detractions party based around having to be rebuilt for the Saturn (such a streamed audio that due to compression doesn't sound as nice as a clean rip from a Genesis) and a few enhancements common to the S1&2 mobile remakes (time attack mode in particular). I think if the rest of the series chronology had been about the same but this game came out in, say, 1996, then by the time the GBA games started coming out we'd probably get the same kinds of complaints of sameness that plague the 2D Mario series since the DS (though maybe Sonic Jam wouldn't have happened).

I've since turned around on this game a fair bit. I rarely sit down and think that I'd really like to play this game -- mainly because of the bosses -- though I do need to sit down and mess around with the (boss-free) time attack mode more than I have.

Part of my frustration is that the changes to the levels here are just minor enough to be annoying most of the time, if you try to work based on your previous understanding of the levels they're based on. Sometimes the source levels don't change much -- Green Hill 1's middle routes are almost exact copies of acts 1 and 2 from Sonic 1, while Green Hill 2 starts out equally similar to act 3 from Sonic 1; Chemical Plant 1 is only slightly compressed from act 1 and 2 of Sonic 2. Flying Battery 1 has changed very little from the source material, though act 2 is so sprawling it's hard to navigate through it based on reference from the original act. Lava Reef 1 and 2 have main routes very close to the original game's, and while Hydrocity 2 is again, quickly the same level after a brief remix in the introduction, act 1's biggest change is finding ways to put you under the water far more often than the original level did (which is appropriate enough, since it's now no longer the second level in the game). Compared to most of the game, the visuals in Chemical Plant 1 have changed the least from the original game, despite there being some obvious places to add a hint of parallax or two; Oil Ocean and Flying Battery had pretty monochromatic backgrounds that could have used a little more punching up than what we ended up getting in the end (though they do fair a bit better compared to Chemical Plant in this regard).

Ultimately, I just don't think the gameplay changes are eough to make the original source games obsolete. It's certainly nice to go and play these new and remixed levels, but the sort of maximalist design makes it overwhelming, possibly even a little exhausting, to play all the way through. And it's also a bit frustrating that in this mix of old, revived, lost, and remixed content that a finally playable version of Sonic 2's lost Hidden Palace stage is still locked to a mobile platform without an actual d-pad or buttons and didn't also make its way over here -- I'd have rather seen that over Oil Ocean or Metallic Madness, frankly!

It also doesn't help that there isn't as satisfying a plot arc. BEAT's described a bunch of that in his posts (inc. the one above), as did Deptford in the companion game discussion thread -- nobody gets developed like Knuckles was in Sonic 3; the game doesn't introduce and tease ever-more elaborate encounters with a specific mechanical instrument of doom the way the Death Egg was either. even the Hard-Boiled Heavies feel a bit perfunctory. Heavy Gunner has a nice and elaborate boss encounter near the start of the game (plus a cameo in the intro animation), and Heavy Magician teases throughout act 1 of Mirage Saloon before her encounter as a boss in act 2, but Heavy Shinobi and Heavy Rider are just...there. Heavy King barely even gets that much, only showing up as Knuckles' Lava Reef boss encounter and as part of the final boss for Super Sonic. Aside from knowing they take their power from the phantom ruby, like mischief, and also want to stop Sonic, we don't ever really get a sense of motivation from them, and the ruby itself gets more characterization in Forces!

But all of this is a bit beside the point for why I recommend this game.

Since Sonic Adventure 2, the series has had the same sort of changes seen in, well, Shmup, Fighting, Puzzle, and Beat-Em-Up games: audiences have played these games for quite a while, understand them very well, and want a new challenge. Hence you get, say, Cave's score-focused games full of screen-filling bullet patterns, the initially inscrutable combo systems of Street Fighter Alpha 3 and the parries in Street Fighter 3, the Tetris Grand Master series, and the rank-focused stylish character action of Devil May Cry. You'll note that of all of these, Sonic's the only one not built out of a tradition rooted in arcades, but it's still very much built by a game company inspired by (and at the time frequently defining) arcade-focused design. Hence Sonic Adventure 2 had its ranking system, and why future games try so hard to go fast and reward ever-more-elaborate memorization and going faster. From Sonic Advance 2, 2D focused Sonic's never really handled well at low speed. The games are meant to be pushed to their fastest, while Sonic getting heavier and harder to decelerate requires committing harder to movement decisions. Going slow tends to feel wrong, and precision is regarded as a thing you have to work for rather than a guaranteed component of the controls. And I like this because it takes a game formula I enjoy and gives me fresh, new challenges that demand a lot of focus and attention to get through with!

But Sonic Mania is built off an engine meant to replicate (and even slightly improve on) the original games' controls. It is meant to be slower. It is meant to default to precise controls, with speed coming more from, say, rolling or using the super power. It is accessible in a way that most games over the past decade and a half in the series have explicitly, usually intentionally not been. And it provides a quick summary of the old games where both nostalgic folks who checked out as the games became more challenging and newcomers who aren't familiar with the series can find things to appreciate. And frankly, I've always thought the old series was some of the best games to control of all time, and it's very nice to see that sublime control in a new game, whether or not it's wholly original. Sonic Mania is the only game in the series since Advance 1 that really feels good even when it's slow. Finally, a Sonic game that doesn't force you to go faster than you can think!

Yes, you should definitely play Mania!