Sega celebrated the blue hedgehog’s 25th birthday at San Diego Comic-Con last night by announcing a couple of new Sonic games for fans to feel apprehensive about.
While you’ve got your rose-tinted glasses on, let’s have a quick look back at these PC gaming classics.
Sonic Mania, a throwback to Sonic’s 2D platforming roots with appropriate pixel graphics and a remastering of levels from many of the original Genesis and Saturn games, will be out in Spring 2017.
While the ‘hog with ‘tude hasn’t had much success since a third dimension was added to video games, this side-scrolling return should placate nostalgic fans with zones from the original game, Sonic 2, Sonic CD, Sonic 3 and, of course, Sonic & Knuckles getting another runaround.
Walking pun Miles “Tails” Prower and Sonic’s much cooler acquaintance Knuckles, who everyone knows is the cool one, will also be playable characters.
Despite returning to the formula that made Sonic such a success, there will also be innovations such as new zones and new moves, like a “drop dash” that allows Sonic to spin dash his way through breakable walls.
Sega of America has taken joint control of the development with Pagoda Games, as well as Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley, who were the guys porting original Sonics to mobile devices.
A second game was announced at the celebration as well, from the team behind the closest thing Sonic’s had to a successful 3D outing Sonic Generations, but there’s no PC release confirmed yet. The game, referred to as Project Sonic 2017, has new and old versions of Sonic working together to stop giant rampaging Eggman bots in some sort of alternate universe where the scientist won and blue hedgehogs form a resistance movement against him.
In case we end up getting that one too, here’s the trailer, but given the history of 3D games maybe just be happy with your Sonic Mania.