Sonic Mania: SEGA’s best decision of the decade.
Sonic Mania, the beautiful new side-scrolling Sonic the Hedgehog game, was released today, and the very fact that this game even exists has potentially huge significance to the gaming industry.
The game itself plays like a dream, and wow, is the engine phenomenal. The charmingly expressive sprites… the lively, fluid animations… the buttery-smooth, yet perfectly-tight physics… everything just added to the sheer delight and joy of the experience. I had little doubt that it would be this good, however, due to the outstanding track record of Christian Whitehead (aka “The Taxman”), an independent game developer who gained the attention of the communities on Sonic forums with his fangame Retro Sonic, and eventually caught SEGA’s eye as well.
Now, I’ll be the first to point out SEGA’s rather iffy decisions over the years. Like most companies, they’ve made plenty of mistakes, each of which...