Sega has only gone and announced two brand new Sonic the Hedgehog games, although I’m sorry to report that neither of them is Sonic Adventure 3.
The new games were announced at San Diego Comic-Con’s 25th anniversary bash for the blue blur – one is a straight up classic 2D Sonic adventure, while the other looks to be more of a sequel to Sonic Generations.
The first title is called Sonic Mania, and it’s clearly one for the retro fans. Mania is a 2D platformer with visuals taken straight from the first three Sonic games.
It seems to be more of a remixed greatest hits package than a new game, with a number of revamped levels from classic games, as well a few new ones. Mania will also be keeping things nice and simple from a character standpoint, letting us play as simply Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles, rather than smother us with a smorgasbord of irritating talking animals.
Check out a trailer for Sonic Mania – developed by Sega of America in collaboration with PagodaWest Games – below. Let the nostalgia flow through you and empty your wallet.
Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka said:
Sonic Mania was born out of our fans’ love of the classic Sonic 2D platform games. This type of collaboration is a first for Sega and we hope everyone will be both surprised and delighted by this title. Sonic Mania has been a passion project for the entire team and we look forward to sharing more details about it later this year. Having the game actually playable at the event itself tonight was testament to the dedication of the team behind it.
Sonic Mania will be coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in Spring 2017.
The second announcement was of a new core game from Sonic Team, and it looks set to feature both classic and modern versions of the hedgehog in a cinematic adventure, much like 2011’s Sonic Generations.
Not much is known about ‘Project Sonic 2017’ title yet, but we do know that it’s coming Holiday 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and the Nintendo NX. Check out the brief first trailer below, which asks us to ‘join the resistance’.
With Sonic Mania covering the 2D side of things, I’d imagine the other title will be a full 3D effort in the vein of Sonic Adventure – it looks like Sega are really going all out to try and bring people back to the Sonic fold.
To be honest, anything after the rancid Sonic Boom can only be an improvement.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.