Video Game / Sonic Mania

aka: Sonic Mania Plus

The Ultimate Celebration of Past and Future!

"This is where it begins."

— Announcement trailer

Sonic Mania is a Retraux successor to the Genesis-era Sonic the Hedgehog titles, re-imagining classic elements and zones along with new, original ones. Rather than being developed by Sonic Team, it was spearheaded by a collaborative team comprising Christian "The Taxman" Whitehead,^note The man responsible for the 2011 re-release of Sonic CD and the 2013 mobile remasters of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Simon "Stealth" Thomley of Headcannon,^note The lead developer of the Sonic 1 Game Mod Sonic the Hedgehog Megamix; he also collaborated with Whitehead on the Sonic 1 and 2 remakes. and studio PagodaWest Games.^note Which includes former members of the Sonic 2 HD Fan Remake, including the game's composer Tee Lopes.

The game's story goes as follows: sometime after the events of Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Classic Sonic's adventure in Sonic Generations, Miles "Tails" Prower picks up a mysterious energy reading. Though different from the Chaos Emeralds, the reading is remarkably powerful, so he convinces Sonic the Hedgehog to take the Tornado and investigate. Leading the biplane to Angel Island, it is soon discovered that the nefarious Dr. Eggman is one step ahead of them, and has already sent a squad of Eggrobos to claim the source of the signal. It turns out to be a gemstone with strange space-time qualities — the Phantom Ruby — that suddenly distorts reality, transforming those ordinary Eggrobos into an elite squad called the Hard Boiled Heavies, and warping both the heroes and villains through the locales of their past adventures. Knuckles the Echidna, the guardian of the Master Emerald on Angel Island, is also caught in the Phantom Ruby's effect. As the Hard Boiled Heavies escape with the ruby in tow, it's up to our heroes to pursue the thieves' trail throughout various zones before it's used for world domination.

Sonic Mania is the first half of the franchise's 25th anniversary celebration; the other half is Sonic Forces. It was released on August 15, 2017 for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with the Japanese release being the next day. The Microsoft Windows version was delayed until August 29, 2017 due to optimization issues, so pre-orders included a copy of the original Sonic the Hedgehog to compensate.

On March 16, 2018, Sega announced a physical release of the game: Sonic Mania Plus adds a new gameplay mode dubbed "Encore Mode",^note A replay of the main campaign featuring some modified layouts, coloration, and object placements as well as a unique "party" system that replaces the lives system of the main game a 4-player competition mode and Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, both from SegaSonic the Hedgehog, as new playable characters (both in Encore and the core "Mania" mode). There have also been some minor changes to the main game as well (most noticeable in the boss for Stardust Speedway) to clean up lingering kinks from the original release of Mania. Plus was released on July 17, 2018 (as DLC for preexisting owners), including a reversible Genesis-themed cover and an art book.

Plus's announcement was followed up by that of Sonic Mania Adventures, a six-episode animated miniseries by Neko Produtions and directed by Tyson Hesse. The full miniseries can be viewed here.

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This game provides examples of:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The Giant Rings that take you to the Special Stages are very obviously 3D. This is to convey that the Special Stages themselves also take place in full 3D.
• Abnormal Ammo: Heavy Shinobi uses Asterons^note the exploding starfish Badniks from Metropolis Zone as shurikens.
• Action-Hogging Opening: Just like Sonic CD, there's an animated opening movie. It's directed by Tyson Hesse, who also illustrated Sonic: Mega Drive.
• Advancing Boss of Doom:
  • The encounter with Dr. Eggman in Green Hill Zone involves the player being pursued by the Death Egg Robot. As the Robot walks, the ground is constantly deformed, and the player must take advantage of it to reach the Robot's weak point and damage it. You also have only 90 seconds to do so before you run out of land to stand on.
  • The third phase of the Metal Sonic fight was eventually changed to have Dr. Eggman using the Phantom Ruby to turn him into a gigantic form similar to the final boss of Knuckles Chaotix. Metal then starts chasing Sonic and co. like the Great Eggman Robo from Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
• Advancing Wall of Doom:
  • During the final part of the Metal Sonic fight, a spiked wall chased you. You could actually use this to your advantage thanks to the Mercy Invincibility; since the wall pushed the rings you lose along its path, you could easily pick them right back up when you're flashing. Plus changes this phase and removes this attribute of the battle.
  • There's a section like this in Hydrocity Zone, but it's much less terrifying than in the original, and more similar to the earthquake sections in Hill Top Zone and Marble Garden Zone.
• Aerith and Bob: As of Plus, the playable cast includes the likes of Sonic, Tails,^note "Tails" being a nickname; his real name is Miles Prower Knuckles, Mighty, and the not-as-extravagantly named Ray.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: Eggman's Flying Battery aircraft returns in this game.
• Airplane Arms: When Sonic is running at top speed, he throws his arms behind him, which is a nod to CD's Super Peel Out maneuver. This also occurs in the Special Stages when you hit Mach 3 speed.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The in-game digital manual explains some of the story reveals that wouldn't be obvious during gameplay, such as the magenta gemstone being known as the "Phantom Ruby" (which is later properly introduced in Sonic Forces) and the names of each Hard-Boiled Heavy.
  • Simon "Stealth" Thomley did a longplay livestream with several developer's notes.
  • The Plus manual implies that SegaSonic the Hedgehog fits into the Classic canon at some point.
• Amazing Technicolor World: The game uses an extremely stylized palette. This is taken up to eleven with the Special Stages, which are outright acid trips.
• Ambiguous Situation: Forces reveals that the Phantom Ruby's true power is to cast illusions, so how much of this game actually happened is up for debate. However, Sonic Mania Adventures and Encore Mode's intro cutscene shows Classic Sonic returning to this world, so it is more than likely that it all happened.
• Another Side, Another Story: Knuckles' story happens at the same time as the other two, but like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, he can access several unique paths, including an exclusive version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1, and a confrontation with Heavy King.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Most of the level layouts, enemies, and obstacles taken from previous games have been toned down in difficulty, starting with the platforming sequence from Green Hill Zone Act 2 that now has a bed of spikes instead of a bottomless pit. Mechanics that slowed the pace too much, such as the elevators from Flying Battery, have been left out as well.
  • The boss of Chemical Plant Zone removes the stage timer for the duration of the fight, mainly because of the Unexpected Gameplay Change into Doctor Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (Puyo Puyo) and the RNG involved therein. Furthermore, Eggman's AI for it is also pretty bad, so as to give the player a good chance to win, since it's an early game boss and players may not be familiar with the source material and its strategies within. Despite being based on original rules, the aforementioned boss includes Double Rotation,^note which lets you flip a Puyo set 180 degrees by pressing the Rotate button twice while trapped in a single column a function that was originally introduced in Tsu.
  • The Metal Sonic fight eventually had its length and puzzle elements toned down. A checkpoint was added to the second running phase, as well.
  • The Final Boss area is considered separate from the extremely long Marathon Level that precedes it, and thus resets the timer upon entering the area, as well as setting a checkpoint right before the boss.
  • Time Attack mode allows you to restart the level at the press of a button, sparing players the hassle of having to go into a pause menu and then wait for the stage to reload every time they mess up.
  • Though the Special Stages have a simulated low draw distance, the Chaos Emerald-carrying UFO always remains visible regardless of how far away it is, preventing the player from losing track of it. Additionally, the player can go back and reclaim all the Chaos Emeralds they missed after they beat a file and unlock level select, as every Giant Ring perpetually respawns, as they do in Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
  • The medals that you earn in the Blue Spheres bonus stages are carried over across all saves, meaning you don't have to beat them all in a single sitting.
  • Unlike in past entries, stage elements aren't used up by the AI-controlled Tails in a Sonic and Tails game, so Tails can't deprive Sonic of an oxygen bubble, platforms won't fall before Sonic stands on them, etc. Same goes for "& Knuckles Mode" with the AI-controlled Knuckles that follows the player around, as well as "Encore Mode" in Plus with the other character.
  • The boss of Press Garden Zone Act 1 has a brief "intro scene" where it breaks one of its saw blades on the brown boxes, hinting at the strategy needed to defeat it.
  • In Oil Ocean Zone Act 2, entering a submarine and then exiting it will reset the ring-stealing toxic fumes. Additionally, the fumes mechanic is removed completely for the boss fight.
  • The boss of Oil Ocean Zone Act 2, considered an overly difficult boss in the original release, was toned down in Plus. Dropped rings will now bounce on the oil's surface instead of falling through, standing on a platform that gets pulled down is no longer an instant death, and the turrets fire erratically so the player has more room to attack or avoid.
  • At the start of the True Final Boss fight that is only playable after getting all seven Chaos Emeralds, just before your character turns Super, they are silently given a permanent Lightning Shield to help collect the rings that fly across the stage.
  • Dying has been streamlined in Encore Mode. Instead of having a Fade to Black and a respawn at a checkpoint when your lead character dies, dying to an enemy, certain hazards with no Rings, or being crushed will simply rotate one of the characters on backup into the lead position without moving your character to a checkpoint, and dying to a bottomless pit or otherwise instantly-fatal hazard that isn't being crushed will immediately teleport the next character to the last checkpoint you touched without having to watch the death sequence. In addition, dying to the latter allows you to keep your Rings.
  • To slightly alleviate the fact that Continuing is Painful in Encore Mode, the new Bonus Stage allows you to earn Continues at a relatively fast pace. If you're good enough, it's possible to play the Bonus Stage indefinitely until you decide to drain the ball, which allows you to rack up as many Continues as desired.
  • The achievement/trophy for a no damage run of Titanic Monarch Zone Act 1 can also be acquired in the Time Attack mode, meaning the player doesn't have to also deal with a tense boss fight right after an excruciatingly long and difficult level. The tradeoff is that Super Sonic can't be used to help cheese the level in that mode.
  • Chaos Emeralds are shared between all characters on Encore Mode, and swapping characters while in super form simply transfers it to the character you’re playing as.
  • In Encore Mode, the Sonic CD drowning sound effect is used instead of the standard music cue due to the fact that two characters can be low on air at the same time.
  • In Encore Mode, you cannot switch characters unless both characters are standing on the ground and somewhere on-screen or at least close to it. This is to prevent you from accidentally switching to a character who is in the middle of dying. (That said, it's still possible to switch to a character who's about to be killed by crushing.) It also doubles as an anti-cheat method if you're attempting to save yourself from falling into a Bottomless Pit or other deadly hazard.
• Antepiece:
  • Green Hill Zone Act 2 starts with a section requiring you to use a zip-line to get past a spike pit, allowing you to learn about the momentum-based mechanics of the gimmick, before a spring blasts you up into the original zone's third act. As a bonus for attentive players, going left to the original act's spawn point nets you an extra life monitor.
  • The first thing you encounter in Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 is a blue goo injector and a green goo injector. The game has you hop onto the blue one first, then bounce off the now-gelatinous pool over to the green injector, so you can bounce up to the upper platform to continue the level. You'll be encountering more of these goo injectors throughout Act 2.
  • In Flying Battery Zone Act 1, there's a Lightning Shield monitor right below a constantly-active magnetic ceiling, and the following segment is a relatively-easy magnetic area to get players used to the magnetic mechanic.
  • The automated sequence from Act 1 of Oil Ocean Zone to Act 2 takes the heroes down below the mid-boss arena and has them latch onto a vent release, clearing the air of the smog that's been lingering since the mid-boss was defeated, before the level begins proper. This is to show the player the function of the vent release handles, as the duration of the level is spent venting the fumes again and again when they build up, which obscures vision and, at its densest, will drain rings.
  • After clearing Angel Island Zone Act 1 in Encore Mode, the game forces you to give chase to Heavy Magician. The area immediately past the capsule cannot be traversed by Sonic, which means you need to use your new partner's special ability to proceed. This serves to teach the player how to use one of the two new characters before the game actually starts.
• Arrange Mode: Plus has the Encore Mode, which allows you to play as all five playable characters; Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Mighty, and Ray, and switch between them when you find special power-ups, which also replaces Mania Mode's life system. Angel Island Zone is added so that Sonic can rescue Mighty and Ray at the beginning of the mode, and the Sonic 3 & Knuckles-esque Blue Sphere bonus stages are also replaced with a pinball-like bonus stage, which is also added in Mania Mode. The Giant Rings also have new locations, and the Special Stages are also different and more difficult than in Mania Mode. Completing Encore Mode with all seven Chaos Emeralds grants you the Golden Ending, where Sonic and his friends hang out in the ice cream parlor at Mirage Saloon Zone, where Heavy King is now their ice cream vendor.
• Arc Welding: Originally pitched as a standalone sequel to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the plot of this game revolves around the Phantom Ruby that plays a major plot role in Sonic Forces; the true ending of Mania Mode ties this game's events into Classic Sonic's appearance in said game.
• Art Evolution:
  • While the game's 2D graphics are clearly inspired by the Genesis games and CD, it uses a color palette similar to that of Knuckles Chaotix.
  • The 2D animations are more fluid, using significantly more frames of animation than before. Even the ring spinning animation got such a facelift!
  • The 3D graphics used in the Special Stages are clearly inspired by Sonic's Sega Saturn outings, such as Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R, but with more extravagantly abstract backgrounds and a saturated palette similar to the 2D sections. The models used also have a considerably higher polygon count than any Saturn game.
• Artificial Stupidity: For the player's sake, Eggman is fairly bad at Puyo Puyo during the Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 boss battle. He appears to ignore Nuisance Puyo and prefers to play around them instead of actively trying to get rid of them, and constantly allows his stack to grow more often than he actually makes matches. When he does make a match, he can't make any match greater than a 2-Chain.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Mania is the first time Knuckles has been playable in a main Sonic game since Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), and the first time he's had a non-supporting playable role since Sonic Heroes.
  • To a lesser extent, Tails, at least as far as being a playable character as opposed to the supporting character he was in Sonic Unleashed^note unless you count the Tornado QTE minigames as "Being a playable character", Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, and Sonic Lost World. While he was playable in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II, he could only be directly controlled by a second player in Co-Op Mode.
  • The Eggrobos go from being cannon fodder to genuine main villains, via the Hard-Boiled Heavies.
• Ascended Glitch:
  • Quirks in previous games (such as Sonic 2 and Lost World) and a deliberate implementation in the Super Smash Bros. series let Sonic charge up a Spin Dash in mid-air and release it upon landing; the Drop Dash introduced in this game is an official and canon version of this.
  • "& Knuckles" mode counts. According to an IGN interview with Christian Whitehead, this started as a bug that had three Knuckleses at once in the final cutscene. Instead of patching it out, they liked the idea so much that they made it an unlockable mode.
  • A well-known glitch in Sonic 2 causes Sonic to become immune against the second boss if he is crouching. In Mania, Mighty has the ability to block several kinds of projectiles while crouching.
• Ascended Meme: One of the unlockables in the game is "& Knuckles" mode. And it does exactly what you'd expect: it adds an AI-controlled Knuckles for the player, similar to how Tails is paired with Sonic. The kicker: it does this even if you play as Knuckles himself. In fact, doing so not only nets you a special ending, but collecting all the Chaos Emeralds in this mode lets you fight the ultimate final boss, which is normally only accessible to Sonic.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • If you're playing as Sonic or Tails in Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1, you have to fight a giga-sized Caterkiller as the boss. Knuckles also has to fight a giant Caterkiller, but it's set on the ground and far smaller than the one you fight as Sonic or Tails. It's also a reference to the boss in Gigapolis Zone in Sonic Chaos. In Encore Mode, the ground-based Caterkiller is fought by everybody.
  • Plus changes the final phase of the Metal Sonic boss fight so instead of running away from a moving spike wall and dodging Metal Sonic's energy orbs, now Metal Sonic absorbs the power of the Phantom Ruby and becomes a blue version of the final boss from Knuckles Chaotix with lasers and bombs.
• Awesome, but Impractical: During the real final boss battle, Super Sonic can use a special attack activated by pressing jump while in flight, making him flash forward in a burst of speed. This can be useful to close a gap if you get a shot. Problem is, this move eats five Rings. Rings are rather scarce during the fight, and usage of the dash will only burn them faster. This is compounded by the fact that Heavy King is actually capable of damaging Super Sonic, which costs you ten Rings, thus making them even more critical than normal. It's easier and more efficient to just body-check the bosses to inflict damage instead.
• Background Music Override: Like the previous games, going Super will replace the background music with the Super theme. After Plus, you can use a Sound Test cheat to turn this feature off.
• Band Land: Mirage Saloon Zone features oversized honky tonk piano keys as level obstacles, while Stardust Speedway Zone features brass instruments.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game:
  • Literally done with the boss of Chemical Plant Zone Act 2, which involves fighting Dr. Eggman in a game of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.
  • The mini-boss of Hydrocity Zone Act 1 involves Sonic piloting the original Act 2 boss machine, attempting to suck up Eggman into the propeller blades as the latter did in Sonic 3.
• Beautiful All Along: Press Garden Zone, as shown in Act 2.
• Big Bad: Dr. Eggman and his Hard Boiled Heavies are the main antagonists.
• The Big Race: Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are racing to reach a powerful new energy source before Dr. Eggman and the Hard-Boiled Heavies can. Unfortunately for the heroes, the intro cutscenes show that Dr. Eggman got it first, as the Ruby transforms the surrounding ordinary Eggrobos into the Hard-Boiled Heavies.
• Bittersweet Ending: The good ending has Sonic managing to free Little Planet once again, but after the final clash with Dr. Eggman, the Chaos Emeralds react with the Phantom Ruby and disable Super Sonic, sending him into a void that transports him to an unknown location, originally to be continued in Forces.
• Blackout Basement: In Oil Ocean Zone Act 2, toxic fumes begin covering the screen until you can barely see anything and your rings start being drained, so you must look for switches that clear it all away. You don't need to worry like you're underwater, though, as the fumes can't actually kill you at zero rings.
• Bonus Feature Failure: Several features in the original release fell into this, with all of them being rectified for Plus:
  • With enough Bonus Medals, you can unlock the Insta-Shield (from Sonic 3 & Knuckles) and the Super Peel-Out (from Sonic CD) for Sonic's use in the game. This would be a fantastic reward, but unfortunately, they come with two major caveats: One, you can only use them in a No Save game. Two, you cannot use these abilities plus the Drop Dash at the same time; you have to swap between one of the three abilities. For reference, Generations allowed you to unlock both the Insta-Shield and Super Peel-Out for Classic Sonic's use in all stages with no need to swap them out. The first problem was addressed in Plus, which enables the alternate ability sets in save games. The second problem was also addressed in Plus. However, the "Max Control" option must be unlocked with a secret cheat code.
  • & Knuckles mode is limited to a No Save run, which is a bigger issue in this case because it has an exclusive ending. This too was also resolved in Plus.
  • Super Sonic has very few sprites of his own. This problem existed in earlier Sonic games as well, but in this game, it is especially noticeable, as the only unique sprites are of Super Sonic standing, walking, gliding, pushing, and crouching. Every other sprite simply defaults to Sonic's regular sprite, which can look weird depending on the pose he takes. Plus corrects this and gives Super Sonic a more complete set of animations.
• Bonus Stage:
  • Based on the ones from Sonic CD, with elements from Knuckles Chaotix and Sonic Heroes, and aesthetically inspired by the Sega Saturn. The player must catch up to a UFO and blow it up to obtain a Chaos Emerald. Collecting rings adds to the time limit, while blue spheres make the character run faster.
  • For the Star Post bonus stage, you play a round of Blue Sphere from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, where you run around a big globe and snatch up blue spheres while avoiding the red ones. There are 32 levels for this one and each one is worth a medal for unlocking extras. Clearing each level perfectly^note Collecting all the blue spheres and rings awards you with gold medals instead of silver ones.
  • In Encore Mode (and in Mania Mode after collecting all gold medals), the Star Post bonus stage is a large pinball table like that seen in Sonic Spinball. Hitting the ball to the top of the field activates the Combi Catcher from Chaotix, where you can try to grab an item or rescue a character.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy:
  • The boss of Studiopolis Zone Act 2 would have an unavoidable attack (the winds blowing from below that will push the player into spikes above) if not for the hanging bars they could grab onto at the sides of the area.
  • The boss of Flying Battery Zone Act 1 is a trash compactor machine that slowly closes the walls of the compactor inwards. Each time it does so, the scrap you're standing on compacts and is pushed upwards slightly, eventually allowing you to get in range of the weak point.
  • The boss of Flying Battery Zone Act 2 would be unbeatable if not for the conveniently-placed spikes and propeller stands around the area.
  • The boss of Press Garden Zone Act 1 would be a lot trickier to defeat if not for the brown boxes spread around the area, which will temporarily destroy its saw blades if it strikes them due to being made out of ice, allowing the player to get a good hit in.
  • The boss of Hydrocity Zone Act 1 wouldn't have happened the way it did if Dr. Eggman didn't leave his Egg Mobile out in the open.
  • The boss of Lava Reef Zone Act 1 would be nearly invincible if not for the lava in the rocks underneath it. Each time it lands on the rocks/platform, lava spurts up and hits it, heating up and damaging its armor until the armor breaks off and leaves it vulnerable to regular attacks.
• Boss Arena Urgency:
  • The boss of Green Hill Zone Act 2 is the Death Egg Robot, except it's now chasing the player character. There's a limited amount of ground that will run out if the fight takes too long.
  • The boss of Flying Battery Zone Act 1 is a trash compactor that slowly closes the walls inwards and will crush the player character if not beaten in time. Interestingly, this also makes it Boss-Arena Idiocy, as the trash the player's standing on will rise each time it compacts, allowing them to reach and damage the boss more easily.
  • In Plus, during the Metal Sonic fight in Stardust Speedway Zone Act 2, Metal Sonic advances towards the player character. They will fall to their death if they get too close to the left side of the screen.
• Boss Remix: Metal Sonic's boss theme is a darker remix of Stardust Speedway, complete with opera singing.
• Boss Warning Siren: Just before the final boss fight begins, several "caution" and "alert" lights briefly light up in the background. Interestingly, these lights reappear once the boss is defeated and the place begins to self-destruct, but only if you haven't collected all the Emeralds.
• Bottomless Pits: A couple of zones have platforming over bottomless pits.
• Bowdlerise:
  • The game references the "Genesis does what Nintendon't" slogan, but due to quieter tensions, the partnership between Sega and Nintendo, and the fact that "Nintendon't" is now the name of a piracy program they'd likely get in hot water for calling attention to, the slogan is shortened to "Genesis does".
  • A special infomercial for Plus and the physical release was based on an old one which was to promote the Genesis and riff on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The new one instead makes fun of the FPS genre.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Previously, Gold medals at Get Blue Spheres didn't unlock anything, but they did let you immediately play another round from the same checkpoint. Plus, however, removes the Blue Spheres minigame from checkpoints and replaces them with the bonus pinball stage primarily played in Encore Mode so you can use it in Mania Mode to get the prizes such as rings or shields.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • The clapboard ramps in Studiopolis Zone track your current time and have text crediting Sega and the development team via their initials.
  • As usual, Sonic glares at you if you keep him idle long enough with an addition of him being steady as he flexing his body, telling you to move already.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Tails and Knuckles return as playable characters in this game after an absence of 2D Sonic games. In addition, their Super Modes that haven't been seen since Sonic 3 & Knuckles finally return as well.
  • Bark the Polar Bear, Bean the Dynamite, and Fang the Sniper (a.k.a. Nack the Weasel) don't appear on wanted posters in Mirage Saloon Zone just as a cameo. They in fact stand in your way as bosses... or so it seems at first. They're actually illusions cast by Heavy Magician.
  • The Silver Sonic from the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 appears as a minion Metal Sonic can repeatedly summon during his boss fight.
  • After being gone for 25 years and 23 years, respectively, Ray the Flying Squirrel and Mighty the Armadillo make their return appearances in Plus.
  • The Death Egg Robot, the final boss of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, returns as Green Hill Zone's main boss.
• Call-Back:
  • The first few seconds of the game are a shot-for-shot recreation of the beginning of Sonic 3, except Knuckles is missing, replaced by by a group of Eggrobos supervising the unearthing of the Phantom Ruby which would turn them into the Hard-Boiled Heavies.
  • Who was really expecting a reference to Puyo Puyo, otherwise known as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine?
  • Stardust Speedway Zone has, at the end of each Act, the player destroy one of the two devices Eggman hid in the Past stages of Sonic CD, with the first Act even ending with them using a time travel post from the same game. The boss fight even merges elements of the original Stardust Speedway boss fight with the Generations version.
  • Both Stardust Speedway and Metallic Madness Zones use the appearance and a music remix of the past in Act 1 and the present in Act 2. While it was explicitly shown that Act 1 was in the past in Stardust Speedway, Metallic Madness merely had Act 1 be the outside of the base that happened to look like the past version. Encore has a palette swap of both Act 2 versions that make them both look like their Bad Futures.
• Character Customization: After earning enough medals from Blue Sphere stages, when playing a no-save game, you can opt to give Sonic the Super Peel-Out from Sonic CD or the Insta-Shield from Sonic 3 & Knuckles in lieu of the default Drop Dash. Plus allows you to have either active in a saved game, and a Sound Test cheat allows you to have all of them at once.
• Cheat Code:
  • Exclusive to the Switch version. Press B+Y on the title screen to open a Sonic 2-themed level select. This also enables Debug Mode by default. You can also access this screen in the PS4 and Xbox One versions, but only once you've unlocked Debug Mode the normal way. To do it, enable Debug Mode in the Secrets Menu, and hold Square+Options or A+X on the No Save option.
  • In Hydrocity Zone, hang on any hook and enter the Level Select cheat from Sonic 3 & Knuckles^*Left, Left, Left, Right, Right, Right, Up, Up, Up. If performed correctly, you will hear a Ring sound effect, and for the rest of the Zone, the boosters' "revving" sound effect is replaced with a sound clip of Videogamedunkey mimicking the original sound effect from Sonic 3 & Knuckles in his "Best of 2016" video. This used to be available on all platforms, until a patch removed it, for reasons unknown. The Switch version curiously kept the code prior to Plus.
  • Plus added the Sound Test cheat codes from Sonic 2. The old Debug code, 01, 09, 09, 02, 01, 01, 02, 04, enables unlimited continues instead. Input 04, 01, 02, 06 on the level select screen to unlock Super modes and 02, 00, 01, 07, 00, 08, 01, 05 to fly freely with them. 06, 02, 01, 04 disables the Super music, if you prefer it that way.
  • If you have Plus, you can use a new code on the Sound Test: 02, 00, 01, 08, 00, 06, 02, 03 ^note 2018/06/23 is the date corresponding to Sonic's 27th birthday. This enables Encore Mode stages for the Level Select, as well as Debug Mode and alternate abilities for Sonic in Encore (assuming you toggled them in Mania Mode's Options).
  • Another Plus cheat is 01, 09, 07, 09, 00, 08, 01, 01^note 1979/08/11 is Simon "Stealth" Thomley's birthday, which turns all animals into Ricky the squirrel.
  • Of course, we can't forget 09, 00, 00, 01^*Yes, Its Over 9000 being the key to activating all of Sonic's specials at the same time.
• Cherry Blossoms: At the start of Press Garden Zone Act 2, you're greeted with a rain of sakura petals falling across the screen.
• Cliffhanger: If you don't have all seven Chaos Emeralds, Encore Mode ends with Eggman tiptoeing away while the player party escapes. Heavy King then appears and takes the Phantom Ruby for himself.
• Climax Boss: Metal Sonic marks the halfway point of the game as the boss of Stardust Speedway, the sixth regular zone out of twelve.
• Continuing is Painful:
  • If you get a Game Over when playing a normal save file, you'll have to replay the current zone from the beginning. In No Save Mode, running out of lives will end the entire game unless you have a Continue to spare. To earn Continues, you must get the post-Mach 3 bonus during a Special Stage, which requires you to deliberately prolong the UFO chase for a while and is basically suicidal in the latter ones.
  • If you have to use a Continue in Encore Mode, you restart without any party members other than the lead you were playing when you got a Game Over. If you die for any reason before getting another party member, you can kiss another Continue goodbye.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The Special Stage is heavily based on the unused Special Stage from Sonic CD, but with the goal of catching up to a UFO.
  • Knuckles remembers the last time someone took the Master Emerald. Since he held onto the claw grabbing the Master Emerald, which resulted in a nasty electric shock, he decides to slam into it with a Spin Dash instead.
  • In Lava Reef Zone Act 2, near the end of the level, you'll remember that the Death Egg was stuck in the rock ceiling in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. In this game, there's no Death Egg, but you can see the impacted area where it was, now showing the sky, as the machine was lifted from the area after Eggman used the Master Emerald to get it to fly again in the previous game.
• Creepy Doll: During the fight with Dr. Eggman in Metallic Madness Zone, he'll summon a doll styled after Amy to attack. These dolls have the same general characteristics as the Tails Doll, such as blank eyes and a red gem sticking out of their head.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Ray's gliding is very potent in particularly open stages, but much more cramped stages that don't offer much room to fly, such as Metallic Madness and (ironically) Flying Battery, will often limit this ability. It also tends to make boss fights more difficult due to the lack of open space, forcing Ray to use the Spin Dash or basic Spin Jump.
• Crosshair Aware: The bosses do this quite a bit. In particular, the Death Egg Robot, just like before. Sentry Bug, one of the Badniks in the final zone has a very grandiose 3D targeting system. The final boss also has these appear when he launches missiles from his suit.
• Cutting the Knot: The achievement/trophy "The Password Is Special Stage" requires you to push a barrel out of the way so you can drop down a hidden passage and land on a squirt bottle, which will propel you to a Giant Ring. Or you can just fly in as Tails.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • The unlockable Blue Sphere minigame has a Mania Mode that adds a new Green Sphere, which turns into a Blue Sphere when touched. This can be very disconcerting to play around, since if a square formation has any Green Spheres in it, it will not turn into Rings, meaning that you must go inside the square and turn all Green Spheres into Blue before you can make a square.
  • Heavy Shinobi throws Asterons that you must get rid of once they get stuck on the floor. However, those Badniks look spiky, are explosive, and in Sonic 2, most of them were set outside of the player's reach. This causes a misconception that they can't be destroyed and makes the battle harder than it should be.
• The Day the Music Lied: If you play as Knuckles, the regular theme of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 immediately stops playing after Heavy Magician knocks him off the Tornado.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: Reaching each multiple of 100 rings awards a 1-up, which resets whenever rings are spilled. The Hyper Ring power-up makes it much easier to reclaim rings the next time they're spilled. By collecting over 100 rings and then spilling them with the Hyper Ring active, it's possible to earn additional 1-ups.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you decide to stop and race backwards to chase the UFO, thinking you can end the race early by meeting it head-on, it ends up turning around and following you, meaning you have a long way to go to catch up to it. If you did somehow go past the UFO, however, you are allowed to slow down so the UFO can catch up to you.
  • Despite not having any legitimate way of playing it, the Knuckles version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 in Mania Mode is beatable by Sonic and Tails or Tails alone without having to use any techniques outside of what is possible through normal gameplay. Encore Mode makes everyone play this version of the stage.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Ray's gliding mechanic requires a lot of open space to use effectively, and stops dead in his tracks if he comes into contact with a wall or enemy. It's also somewhat trickier to use right compared to everyone else's gimmicks. However, when done right in sufficiently wide areas, Ray can fly much farther and faster than either Tails or Knuckles while maintaining altitude indefinitely until he hits a wall, making traversing large sections a breeze.
  • The battle against the Egg Spider involves swinging around the pole gimmicks to slam it into spiked walls. When both walls are spiked, the player must Spin Dash into the boss instead, which is difficult but incredibly satisfying to pull off.
• Difficulty by Acceleration:
  • The Special Stages will increase speed the longer you survive, rated by a "Mach" meter at the top that ramps up the more spheres you collect. The increased speed improves your chances of catching the UFO, but it also makes it easier to slam into a ring-stealing hazard, and hitting zero rings boots you out with no Chaos Emerald. You also experience an increasing loss of traction the faster you go, making it harder to corner smoothly and it can make you miss rings or spheres, or even cause you to go off-course into grass that slows you down or a pit that kicks you out of the Special Stage.
  • Blue Sphere returns as a Bonus Stage this time and the rules remain the same, so the longer you take to collect all the blue spheres, the more you must contend with the elevated pace and lowered reaction time.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Mighty, after having shared the same abilities with Sonic and Ray in SegaSonic the Hedgehog, and having functioned as a stand-in for Sonic in Knuckles Chaotix, gets a Ground Pound called the "Hammer Drop", functioning most similarly to Sonic with the bubble shield, albeit without the requirement of having to have it first, and not having the same amount of bounce as well as smashing anything near the impact zone and certain fragile objects. His shell also protects him when jumping, giving him a significant advantages against enemies that use projectiles or when accidentally landing on spiky objects.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect:
  • In the Special Stages, you already move faster than the UFO at Mach 2. Since Mach 3 makes your character much harder to control, some stages are easier to beat by intentionally avoiding collecting enough blue spheres to reach Mach 3.
  • If you want to see the regular ending, don't get all the Chaos Emeralds, as once you collect them all, you can't see the old ending. This is particularly important if you want to see the "Wechnia" Easter egg in an "& Knuckles" game.
• Double Jump: If the Lightning Shield is equipped, Sonic can do a second jump in midair.
• Dragon with an Agenda: It's not clear if the Heavies simply remained loyal to Dr. Eggman after their transformation or if they made a deal with him, but if the conditions for the good ending are achieved, Heavy King takes hold of the Phantom Ruby after Dr. Eggman is defeated by Sonic. Eggman attempts to take it back, but is warped away. Amusingly enough, Sonic must fight both of them, as they take turns catching the gem every time one takes a hit.
• Dramatic Disappearing Display: The normal HUD goes away during the Mean Bean Machine match at the end of Chemical Plant Zone Act 2.
• Dual Boss: The finale in Egg Reverie has Super Sonic fighting off both Eggman and Heavy King, who each want the Phantom Ruby. Each time one of them is hit, the other catches the Ruby and comes into the battle, and they each need to be hit eight times to finish the game. Of the two, Heavy King presents more of a threat, as Eggman's machine can't harm Super Sonic initially, having to charge up an attack, whereas Heavy King is fully capable of killing Super Sonic without having to prepare an attack.
• Dungeon Bypass: It is possible to cheese Special Stage 2 in only a few seconds by staying along the right edge of the track immediately when the stage starts, going into the right path where the UFO flies down.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Because the Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 boss is based on Mean Bean Machine, which is itself based on the first Puyo arcade game, it doesn't feature Offsetting.^{Which is?}Any Garbage Puyo you send to your opponent will first be used to negate any other Garbage Puyo about to be deposited into your field and the excess will then be sent to your opponent.This can be rather jarring to modern Puyo players, since that has been a major mechanic for most of the series.
• Easter Egg:
  • If you beat the game as Knuckles in "& Knuckles" mode, you'll get a bonus image where Knuckles reads from a "Sonic Mania & Knuckles" book to a group of impressed little animals while Sonic and Tails look on in confusion. The music that plays during this scene is a remix of the main theme from Knuckles' Chaotix. On top of that, the escape sequence after the final boss makes a nod to the "Wechina" glitch from Knuckles' Chaotix.
  • A secret room in Press Garden Zone Act 1 has stamps that spell out "Hello". It's only accessible via the Debug mode. In the Encore Mode version of the zone, the first Giant Ring has been replaced with stamps that spell out "Nah".
  • In Hydrocity Zone, grabbing onto a hook and entering the Sonic 3 & Knuckles level select code (Left three times, Right three times, Up three times; you'll hear a Ring chime if inputted correctly) will replace the sound effect of the boosters with a sound clip from a Let's Play of popular YouTube personality Videogamedunkey. This was patched out in a game update, yet retained in the Switch version. However, this was also patched out in the Switch version as of Plus.
  • In the Encore Mode version of Studiopolis Zone Act 2, a room which previously had a Special Stage ring instead has a rack of panels which, when flipped over, spell "TOOT TOOT SONIC WARRIOR".
• Easy Level Trick: Once a file is cleared in either Mania or Encore Mode, the fastest way to get the Chaos Emeralds is to use the Giant Ring in the upper path of Chemical Plant Zone Act 1, which can be reached in less than 30 seconds.
• Eject the Loser: This happens when either the player character or Eggman loses the Doctor Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine boss fight of Chemical Plant Zone, where the floor under the loser opens and dunks them into Mega Mack.
• Elite Mooks: A series of custom Eggrobos called Hard-Boiled Heavies serve as the bosses for certain zones.
• End-Game Results Screen: After clearing Encore Mode, the game shows you a tally of the elapsed time for each Act in the game, then tells you how long it took you to beat Encore Mode.
• Enemy Mine: The situation during the real final boss battle. Both Eggman and Heavy King want control over the Phantom Ruby, but killing Super Sonic takes priority. Every time one gets damaged, the other catches the gem and moves in.
• Eternal Engine:
  • Press Garden Zone is a literal Propaganda Machine which produces newspapers.
  • In addition to the returning Chemical Plant, Oil Ocean, and Metallic Madness Zones, there is the new Zone Titanic Monarch, a truly colossal robot that Act 1 consists of getting to, while Act 2 takes place inside the robot to fight Eggman.
• Every 10,000 Points: Like in the Genesis Sonic games, you get an extra life every 50,000 points. Unless you're in Encore Mode, where The Points Mean Nothing, since instead of lives, you can only resurrect or obtain party members by breaking their relevant monitors.
• Everyone Has a Special Move: Everyone has their own abilities unique to them. The three original playable characters behave in a largely similar manner to Sonic 3 & Knuckles:
  • Sonic is the only character who can use the full potential of the elemental shields (Double Jump for Lightning, bounce jumping for Water, and flame dash for Fire) and can also use the new Drop Dash ability to quickly transition from jumping to speeding along the ground. An unlockable feature also allows you to replace the Drop Dash with either the Super Peel-Out from CD or the Insta-Shield from Sonic 3.
  • Tails can fly/swim for a limited time and deflect bullets/destroy enemies with his tails in flight, allowing him to access hidden areas too high for any other character to easily reach. It also makes platforming easier for him since he can avoid some tricky jumps this way. When paired with Sonic, you can command Tails to fly by double-tapping the jump button and holding Up, enabling Sonic to jump onto Tails' hands and take advantage of his special ability. This gets a bit trickier if you're using the Fire Shield.
  • Knuckles jumps lower than the other characters, but he can glide and climb walls (he can also destroy badniks whilst gliding with his knuckles). He can also plow through barriers without Spin Dashing, and this gives him access to some exclusive routes to make up for his lowered jumping ability (he also gets a special version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 in Mania Mode that focuses on his unique traits).
  • Like Sonic and his Insta-Shield in Sonic 3, Mighty is geared for combat. He is able to bounce off of various damage sources unharmed once per jump or roll and his Hammer Drop can pierce the defenses of certain enemies. Even by leaving him crouching on the spot, you can deflect certain projectiles and trivialize a couple of bosses.
  • Ray has what amounts to an improved version of Knuckles' glide ability (with the ability to stay airborne similar to Mario's cape ability in Super Mario World). Wide-open areas can be cleared with surprising speed and ease once you learn to control him. However, he lacks Knuckles’ wall-climbing and obstacle-smashing abilities.
• Evil Counterpart: The Phantom Ruby acts as this to the Chaos Emeralds, warping reality in mischievous and malevolent ways on a whim while the Emeralds are understood to be of a naturally benevolent alignment.
• Evil Laugh: Eggman's laugh kicks off the main boss theme and the Mean Bean Machine theme.
• Facepalm: Mighty gives a rather defeated one to himself in the Continue screen.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: Egg Reverie, a purple pocket dimension created by the Phantom Ruby.
• Flunky Boss: During the Final Boss battle against Eggman, he'll sometimes create a pair of hands from the Phantom Ruby that will grab the characters and whisk them away to fight one of the Hard-Boiled Heavies (minus Heavy King). These short fights only last a few seconds and you can't defeat any of them before you're taken back to fight Eggman.
• Food End: The ending of Encore Mode has the gang hanging out at an ice cream bar at Mirage Saloon, which is tended to by Heavy King.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Before Eggman drops you down into the garbage pit where you fight the Flying Battery mid-boss, you can see blueprints on the back wall of a spider-like robot. These are the blueprints for the boss you fight at the end of Act 2.
  • At the end of Press Garden Zone Act 2, our heroes confront Eggman working at a monitor that shows Metal Sonic and the chained-up Little Planet. Metal Sonic is the next boss and the game ends at Little Planet.
  • Before Eggman sends the heroes to Hydrocity Zone with the Phantom Ruby after they defeat Giga Metal, you could notice a 3D model of a giant robot being shown. It's the Titanic Monarch robot, Eggman's ultimate creation & the final zone of the game.
  • In Sonic and Tails' version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1, they come across a train being driven by Eggman and transporting oil tanks with a familiar green, yellow, and purple color scheme, with the acronym "OOZ" labeled along the bottom of the tank. Unsurprisingly enough, Oil Ocean is the next zone.
  • Sonic, Tails, Mighty, and Ray's version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 ends with what appears to be a surprise appearance by either Fang, Bark, or Bean shooting down the Tornado. Except that the theme of the Hard Boiled Heavies plays during this cutscene even though none of the Heavies are in sight, hinting that it's really just an illusion by Heavy Magician.
  • In Knuckles' version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1, the back wall of the arena where you fight the Uber Caterkiler has wanted posters of Fang, Bean, and Bark. You'll see them in the next act as illusions created by Heavy Magician during her boss battle.
  • The Act 2 boss of Oil Ocean Zone uses elements from the original mini-boss of Lava Reef Zone. Guess which zone is next?
  • The bad ending of the game has a shot of Eggman, surrounded by the Chaos Emeralds, tossing the Phantom Ruby back and forth in his hands; in Encore Mode, Heavy King takes Eggman's place. While this is the requisite "get all the Chaos Emeralds" hint, it also foreshadows the real final boss, and how the Phantom Ruby is tossed between Eggman and Heavy King.
  • The Collector's Card that comes included with the Collector's Edition of the game has the phrase "Fun Is Infinite" printed on the very bottom-right of the back of the card in extremely tiny, almost unreadable transparent fine print. While it's obviously a reference to a certain secret in Sonic CD, it's also a subtle hint towards Infinite from Forces' ties to the Phantom Ruby, and by extension the plot of Mania.
  • The standard and final boss tracks are called "Ruby Illusions" and "Ruby Delusions", foreshadowing what the Phantom Ruby really does. Even the game's title, Sonic Mania, ties into it. Also, the joke ending where everything is a story told by Knuckles is listed as the "true ending?" in the Developer Menu...
  • The visual glitch displayed by the Phantom Ruby's powers in the true ending foreshadows the fact Infinite draws his power from it, as his powers were shown to cause similar visual glitches in Sonic Forces teasers.
  • The true ending of Mania Mode closes out with Sonic getting sucked into a portal and making the same pose from the Sonic Forces debut trailer. It turns out that the portal that he gets sucked into in the true ending is a portal to Modern Sonic's dimension, thus explaining Classic Sonic's presence in Forces.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The Hard-Boiled Heavies start off as ordinary Eggrobos, but the Phantom Ruby turns them all into their deadly forms.
• Furry Confusion: It's possible to save Ricky the squirrel as Ray the Flying Squirrel.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • At launch, the Switch version had some issues with the Home Button and Sleep Mode, in that there would be a lengthy delay between the button being pressed and the action being performed. This could occasionally cause a game crash as well. Fortunately, this was later fixed in a patch.
  • After defeating the Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 boss, there's a chance that you'll wind up glitching through the floor even if you defeat Eggman, resulting in death. This prevents you from progressing the game.
  • In the Blue Sphere minigame in Mania Mode from the Extras menu, there's an off-chance that touching a Pink Sphere will cause the game to soft-lock mid-warp.
  • If you roll by the last checkpoint in Stardust Speedway Zone Act 1 in a specific way, the game may mistakenly think you're in a tube and put you into a spin you can't jump out of, leaving you stuck at the right edge of the boss fight, where the boss will never make contact to get you out of it. Even if Tails as a second player defeats the boss, the game remains soft-locked.
  • You can trigger a soft lock in Stardust Speedway Zone Act 1 simply by finding a monitor after the mid-boss is defeated then standing to the left of it. Because the characters are programmed to run to the right to enter Act 2, the game didn't account for this and just has them infinitely pushing the monitor, finding no way to get around it.
  • Some of the bosses have flags that on rare occasion don't flip when they're supposed to. One example is the machine at the end of Metallic Madness Zone Act 2; the boss can fail to return even after all of the enemies released are defeated.
  • Using debug mode, it's possible to play Sonic and Tails' version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 as Knuckles. However, the gun that normally shoots them to the boss won't shoot Knuckles, causing a soft lock.
  • If you fly too far to the right side of the screen when the train appears in Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1, the plane may suddenly fly off the screen, causing you to immediately fall to your death.
  • The PC version of Plus came out with severely screwed-up graphics. Either the animated cutscenes turned monochrome or graphics in general became glitchy and miscolored. Changing "shaderSupport=" from n to y in the game's setting file works for some but not for others. The game's sound can also cut off if you repeatedly enter Special Stages.
  • During the battle against the Phantom Egg, if a secondary character like Tails is grabbed by both the giant hands projected by Eggman, absolutely nothing will happen, since you need to be grabbed by them in order to proceed.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The Phantom Ruby is, in the story, believed to be perhaps above even the Chaos Emeralds. During the unlockable final boss, this is the main threat, as, much like in Rush's final boss^note the Egg Salamander with the Sol Emeralds, Heavy King can channel its power to hurt Super Sonic.
• Gelatinous Trampoline: These appear in Chemical Plant Zone Act 2, but aren't too powerful on their own. You must use nearby syringes to inject more chemicals in them, which makes them bouncier and allows you to reach higher paths.
• Genre Shift: The boss for Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 shifts the gameplay from a platformer to a puzzle game.
• Genre Throwback: To the gameplay style of the Genesis games, even more so than Sonic the Hedgehog 4.^note The Taxman "Retro" Engine is expressly designed to mimic the behavior of the Mega Drive games, whereas Sonic 4 was built on an engine that descends from the Sonic Rush games. It's notably the first Sonic game made after Sonic Adventure to use the "Classic" character designs exclusively, with Sonic Superstars following a few years later.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Robotnik's boss fight in the Chemical Plant Zone is a friendly game of Puyo Puyo, a.k.a. Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. Robotnik even lowers the control panel for the shorter Player Character, and proves himself to be a total joke at the game. Sure, you'll still lose a life if you fail to beat the good Doctor, but it kinda comes off as Robotnik just wanting to play the game and give you a sporting chance.
• Golden Super Mode: Super Sonic is in. And so is the pink Super Knuckles and golden Super Tails, though Tails doesn't have his Super Flickies...
• Green Hill Zone: It returns once again as the first level in the game.
• Guide Dang It!: The second phase of the Metal Sonic fight has a puzzle element that requires the player to ricochet Silver Sonics at him. Unfortunately, that is not exactly intuitive. People who have finished the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will quickly realize what to do, but those who have no idea who Silver Sonic is are likely going to avoid bouncing them off because, while the method is consistent with how Heavy Shinobi and the pillbug Badniks are beaten, trying to do the same on Metal Sonic during the preceding chase doesn't work. An update released with Plus changes this so that destroying the Silver Sonics releases a few bits of shrapnel that can also damage Metal Sonic.
• Gusty Glade: The outdoor segments of Flying Battery Zone Act 2 take place in a rainstorm.
• Harmless Freezing: In Press Garden Zone Act 2, you can be frozen by cold air blown from pipes. Unlike in Sonic CD or Sonic 3, however, this is only a minor annoyance that isn't harmful by itself. You're actually required to get frozen in certain spots and let springs send you through barriers and frozen spikes that the Spin Dash can't break.
• Hailfire Peaks: Press Garden Zone mixes The Lost Woods, Slippy-Slidey Ice World, Wutai, and a newspaper factory.
• Hell Is That Noise: The drowning jingle, as expected. This game even gives it a Scare Chord that gradually gets louder as the timer ticks down, just for added scariness.
• Here We Go Again!: Encore Mode starts with Heavy Magician giving the Phantom Ruby to Heavy King, who uses it to essentially repeat the events of Sonic Mania, with minor differences.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: For the Act 1 boss of Hydrocity Zone, you get to pilot Eggman's machine from the original version of the zone and turn it on him.
• Homefield Advantage: The Death Egg Robot was the final boss of Sonic 2 and was infamous for being the hardest boss of the second game thanks to the lack of rings, the smaller space, and the lack of high ground making it tricky to get past the robot's claws. Here, in Green Hill Zone, the hills give Sonic and friends an ample amount of rings, and more importantly, the elevation needed to bypass the Death Egg Robot's claws and safely hit the boss. As such, it's far easier and fitting for the first proper boss of the game.
• Humongous Mecha:
  • Bet you weren't expecting the Death Egg Robot to appear in Green Hill Zone. The fight appears to borrow aspects from the one in Sonic Generations, where it was also reduced from a Final Boss to a Warm-Up Boss.
  • The Titanic Monarch is an enormous robot that Eggman has built in the heart of Little Planet. It's so big, in fact, that its interior makes up an entire Act in Titanic Monarch Zone.
• Hurricane of Puns:
  • The amount of "egg" Visual Puns seen in Studiopolis Zone is staggering. Such as "Eggnog".
  • Mirage Saloon Zone gets in just as much — of particular note is a Seltzer bottle labeled "Egg-seltz-ior!"
• Hyperactive Sprite: Super Sonic's idle animation has him tensing his muscles and vibrating intensely.
• Idle Animation: As per usual, waiting around a bit will have the characters do something. Sonic will naturally glare at the player and, after a bit, getting into a running postion to encourage the player to move on. Tails will start yawning and nodding off to sleep, sometimes jarring himself awake. And Knuckles will loosen up his arm before shadow-boxing a bit and laughing to himself.
• Immediate Sequel: Encore Mode picks up where Forces left off, as it is stated that Sonic has returned from helping the Resistance defeat Dr. Eggman in the Forces dimension. However, the Phantom Ruby has made its way back as well, which can only mean more trouble.
• Incendiary Exponent: A few of the returning Zones have been modified to react to fire in some way. Namely, the spiked bridges in Green Hill Zone burn down when they come into contact with the Fire Shield, and in Oil Ocean Zone, any oil the Fire Shield or otherwise any other source of fire comes into contact with will light ablaze, and will harm you if you do not have a Fire Shield.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: The Shrink Ray returns in Metallic Madness Zone Act 2. This time, however, you have to fight Dr. Eggman while still tiny.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: Just as it did in Sonic CD, the themes to Metallic Madness Zone feature almost-indecipherable rapping at several points. Listening hard enough, one can make out that the rapping is Sonic and Eggman dissing each other.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Upon attaining all Gold Medallions from Blue Spheres, the pinball Bonus Stage introduced in Encore Mode is used in Mania Mode instead of Blue Spheres. This helps if you need to get rings or a specific type of shield.
• Interface Screw:
  • During the real final battle, the strange forces at work make the time counter display random numbers.
  • Oil Ocean Zone Act 2 has toxic fumes slowly making a layer of orange (blue in Encore) smog over the screen more opaque until a switch is pulled to clear the air. It's not just for obscuring vision, as at its worst the fumes will slowly drain any Rings held.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Act 1 of Titanic Monarch Zone involves climbing up the zone's titular giant robot with the help of magnetic spheres, bumpers, hydraulic lifts, and a large elevator where the miniboss battle takes place.
• Jack of All Trades: Sonic in Encore Mode. The Drop Dash gives him good ground speed momentum and he can use the secondary abilities of the Elemental Shields, but without the Shields, Sonic has no access to any specialized movement ability and is blocked off from accessing several hidden areas and shortcuts.
• Joke Ending: If you clear the game on "& Knuckles" mode as Knuckles, so that there are two Knuckleses, the entire thing is revealed to be a story read by Knuckles to the animal buddies.
• Kaizo Trap:
  • There are certain cases where it is possible to become harmed or outright killed after having defeated the boss in question. For example, if you take too long against the Death Egg Robot and you aren't paying attention, you may wind up accidentally bouncing into the Bottomless Pit at the end due to rebound from landing the final hit on the boss. This especially holds true if you use Super Mode to ignore objects that would otherwise harm you, as defeating a boss causes the Super status to wear off immediately, while the object may not.
  • Due to the rolling topography of the area and its bobbing motion, it's possible for the animal capsule in Green Hill Zone to push you through the floor and to your death, even during the victory animation. See it in action here.
  • The achievement "Professional Hedgehog" is earned by completing Titanic Monarch Zone Act 1, including the boss, without taking damage. If you reach the boss and activate Super Sonic, you can't take damage any more, so that should be a free win. However, winning the boss fight automatically ends the Super form, and you can still be hit if the boss has any projectiles onscreen.
• Kick the Dog: Before the boss fight of Stardust Speedway Zone Act 2, a projection can be seen of Metal Sonic stepping on a rabbit.
• King Mook:
  • The boss of Stardust Speedway Zone Act 1 is a giant version of the firefly enemy. It summons regular-sized versions of itself during the course of the fight.
  • The boss of Oil Ocean Zone Act 2 is a giant version of the Octus Badnik, combined with the boss of the original Oil Ocean Zone from Sonic 2 and a portion of the mini-boss of Lava Reef Zone from Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
• Large-Ham Announcer: The announcer in the Time Attack and Competition modes.
• Law of 100: Like in many other Sonic games, you get an extra life every 100 Rings. However, in Encore Mode, this doesn't happen, because in place of lives you have a party of characters that you expand by breaking character monitors or getting them through the pinball Bonus Stage.
• Lazy Backup: One of the features of Encore Mode averts this; you can have two partners in play and three on standby, and if any of the two get defeated, one of the standby characters will tag into play.
• Leitmotif: Metal Sonic's boss theme incorporates parts of Stardust Speedway's Bad Future theme into it despite the fight taking place in the Present due to how iconic the theme is for him.
• Lethal Lava Land: Lava Reef Zone from Sonic & Knuckles returns and the first act is a fiery volcano.
• Level 1 Music Represents: The music from the first level of the first original zone, Studiopolis Zone, has come to represent this game in the popular imagination far more than the title theme or even the theme for the opening animation.
• Level in Reverse: Encore Mode's Special Stages are the original seven Special Stages with both their order and courses flipped around. The first Encore Special Stage is based on the original 7th Special Stage, the 2nd Encore Special Stage is based on the 6th original Special Stage, and so forth. In addition to being played backwards, the object placement has been shifted significantly so they are all much harder than the original Special Stages.
• Levels Take Flight: Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 acts similar to Sky Chase from Sonic 2 in that you'll be spending the majority of the level on top of the Tornado. This is not the case if you're playing as Knuckles.
• Load-Bearing Boss:
  • After the defeat of Shiversaw in Press Garden Zone Act 1, it explodes and presumably destroys the newspaper factory. Aside due to the coolant tanks Shiversaw had which exploded, turning Act 2 into a Slippy-Slidey Ice World, this doesn't cause hindrance due to the next Act taking place outside.
  • Defeating the final boss causes the Titanic Monarch Zone to self-destruct.
  • After the seven Chaos Emeralds are collected in Encore Mode, defeating the final boss causes the Phantom Ruby to lose control, generating a wormhole that starts destroying the Titanic Monarch.
• Locomotive Level: Halfway through Sonic & Tails's version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1, you'll drop from the Tornado and onto a train driven by Eggman.
• Long Song, Short Scene: The updated mix of Angel Island Zone Act 1 gets cut off due to the intro sequence (and sadly there is no full version of the theme in the sound test; it just ends where it would in-game). Like a lot of things, this is corrected in Plus with the inclusion of a playable Angel Island section that preludes the new Encore Mode, during which the complete Angel Island Zone Act 1 theme is played.
• Loophole Abuse: The "Professional Hedgehog" achievement in the non-Switch versions requires you to complete Titanic Monarch Zone Act 1 without taking any damage (including damage to shields). Ain't No Rule that you can't use your character's Super Mode to take advantage of their invincibility to anything besides Bottomless Pits or crushing.
• Made of Iron: The Hydrocity Zone Act 1 boss is Eggman out of his machine in scuba gear while Sonic rides the propeller machine from the original Hydrocity Zone Act 2. When Eggman is hit by the propeller, it still makes the same "machine hit" sound that most bosses use, and even when he takes enough damage to be defeated and his scuba gear explodes, he merely falls off the screen and he's right back in the next Act, no worse for the wear.
• Make My Monster Grow: The overhauled Metal Sonic fight after a certain major update now features Eggman giving Metal Sonic the Phantom Ruby during the final phase to turn into Giga Metal, becoming a monstrosity that takes cues from the Great Eggman Robo from Death Egg Zone Act 2 in Sonic 3 and Knuckles.
• Man-Eating Plant: Large red biomechanical carnivorous plants appear as a new hazard in Stardust Speedway Zone, stretching vines through the level when you break flower capsules. You can platform off their leaves, but the toothy creatures themselves are invincible.
• Marathon Boss:
  • The fight with Metal Sonic in Stardust Speedway Zone has four phases (trying to avoid Metal while making your way up the stage, the machine where he sends mini Silver Sonics at you, another race up the stage, and finally the spike wall encounter), and no checkpoint. Plus revises this fight and makes the second phase easier to beat, the third phase much shorter with a checkpoint, and completely reimagines the final phase.
  • The Eggman fight in Hydrocity involves you having to avoid obstacles while being blown through a water tunnel while trying to keep yourself from drowning and sending bombs into Eggman. Afterwards, you're sent into another area where you must fight his Whirlpool Machine, from Sonic 3, to complete the level. There are no rings in the area, so if you come in with zero rings, damage avoidance is a major priority at this point — otherwise, you'll be starting the fight from the tunnels again.
  • Oil Ocean's boss is like the original from Sonic 2, except that you also have to fight or dodge the turrets from Sonic 3 & Knuckles' Lava Reef midboss. They and the sub itself only appear above the oil for a short time, after which you have to survive a round with the laser shooter. The turrets are optional targets, but their accuracy in shooting you, which Plus reduces, makes destroying them a priority.
• Marathon Level:
  • Flying Battery Zone Act 2, a mash-up of the original and Wing Fortress, is the first level that feels noticeably longer than the ones before and after it.
  • The final zone is the lengthiest in the game, comparable in size with notorious levels such as Carnival Night Zone Act 2, Sandopolis Zone Act 2, and Egg Rocket Zone Act 1. It has appropriately demanding platforming for a final challenge, so each act can last for around 4 to 8 minutes depending on the player's skill. On top of that, the Act 1 miniboss can be a drawn-out fight and cause you to time over anyway. Thankfully, the timer resets when you reach the Final Boss in Act 2.
• Master of Illusion: Heavy Magician is one, demonstrated when she turns into Bark the Polar Bear, Bean the Dynamite, and Fang the Sniper (a.k.a. Nack the Weasel) as bosses to fight Sonic.
• Meaningful Rename: The zones in Sonic CD were called "rounds" (though not on the title card) and the acts called zones ("Tidal Tempest Zone 2", for example). For Mania, however, the returning zones use the standard nomenclature.
• Megamix Game: To a lesser extent than Generations, but two-thirds of the Zones in the game are remakes of those from the old games.
• Mêlée à Trois: The implication of Egg Reverie is that Eggman and Heavy King are struggling to take control of the Phantom Ruby while Super Sonic fights to keep it out of both of their hands.
• Metropolis Level: Studiopolis Zone. Act 1 takes place outside a colourful city filled with skyscrapers. Act 2 goes into one of the buildings, which is a TV studio owned by Eggman.
• Mineral MacGuffin: The plot revolves around the Phantom Ruby, a strange and powerful purple gem that was detected on Angel Island.
• Money for Nothing: Because Encore Mode eschews the life system of the main mode, holding onto lots of rings doesn't really benefit anything. It gives you a higher score at the end of a level but since you can't earn lives, that too is rendered moot.
• Motif Merger:
  • The original Sonic game used lampposts for checkpoints, while the later 16-bit games used star-posts, which are emblazoned with a star at the top. Mania uses the classic lampposts, with the star-post emblem added to the base to combine both into one design.
  • The Special Stages are a Motif Merger for multiple across the series' history: they draw mainly from CD, with the Blue Spheres from 3 & Knuckles, the bomb obstacles from Sonic 2, 3D graphics based on the Saturn's 3D Blast, and the trippy backgrounds from the original game.
  • Several stages merge elements from their namesake levels, for example, Stardust Speedway Zone Act 2 takes elements from both the Good and Bad Futures, but other stages have elements from other, separate stages added for flavor; for example, Oil Ocean Zone Act 2 has a gimmick similar to Sandopolis Zone Act 2's light switches, albeit without the ghosts.
  • In Encore Mode, Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 mostly uses Knuckles' version as the basis, but has the train section from Sonic and Tails' version at the end of it.
• Multiple Endings:
  • Normal / Bad Ending: Sonic and co. destroy Dr. Eggman's Titanic Monarch mecha before it can be activated, but as usual, The Stinger shows Eggman alive and well with both the Phantom Ruby and the Chaos Emeralds you missed in hand, ready to start another plan. Although this is not the case if you get all the Emeralds as Tails or Knuckles, where said stinger won't occur. This ending also goes for Mighty & Ray as well, with the difference that they replace Tails & Knuckles at the ending scene.
  • Good Ending: Super Sonic defeats both Eggman and Heavy King, but the Phantom Ruby suddenly dispels his super form and warps him through a void. The Titanic Monarch is destroyed and the Little Planet is unchained, but Tails and Knuckles are left wondering what happened to their friend.
  • & Knuckles Ending: The whole game was just a tale Knuckles was reading from a book to some animal friends. Only available when playing with Knuckles & Knuckles.
  • Encore Mode Bad Ending: While the heroes and Eggman flee the Titanic Monarch, Heavy King drops in and steals the Phantom Ruby for himself. After the credits, he is shown to have also found the Chaos Emeralds you missed.
  • Encore Mode Good Ending: After Eggman is defeated, the Phantom Ruby's power goes out of control and begins to destroy the Titanic Monarch. Eggman slips away and tries to escape in a shuttle, but Sonic and his friends all go Super at once to outrun the vortex and Eggman ends up getting sucked into it when they knock his shuttle off-course. The last scene is of the heroes enjoying a small celebration in the Mirage Saloon Zone, only for Heavy King to crash the party... with a big bowl of ice cream!
• Musical Nod:
  • The file select theme has a brief nod to the one from Sonic 3 near the beginning.
  • The theme for Studiopolis Zone Act 1 ("Lights, Camera, Action!") has a breakdown similar to Collision Chaos Present's Japanese theme.
  • The true final boss music has a brief riff from "Fist Bump", a song from Sonic Forces.
  • Chemical Plant's boss music is a remix of Satan's theme from Puyo Puyo, which was used as the 2-player theme in Mean Bean Machine.
  • Mirage Saloon Zone's Act 1 variation for Sonic and Tails includes a brief nod to Sky Chase Zone from Sonic 2, befitting the gameplay.
  • The game's final boss theme references Sonic 3 & Knuckles's final boss theme 28 seconds in.
  • The Competition Results theme quotes Sonic 2's version of the theme.
  • The Special Stage theme, "Dimension Heist", has a brief snippet of Seaside Hill halfway through.
  • As Mighty and Ray hail from SegaSonic the Hedgehog, two additional songs in Plus are remixed from the game: "Back in Action", the music that plays when Mighty and Ray are freed in Encore Mode, is a remix of "Run Run Run!", while the Pinball Bonus Stage theme is a remix of "Trap Tower".
  • The staff roll theme has a small nod to Bridge Zone from the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • "Built to Rule", the song that plays during Titanic Monarch Act 1, samples the snare from Quartz Quadrant's American soundtrack.
• Musical Pastiche: A few of the game's original songs are made to feel reminiscent of other Sega and Sonic games:
  • The Main Menu theme, "Comfort Zone", was inspired by Sega Rally Championship's Car Select theme, "Judgement".
  • The File Select theme, "Sunshine Cassette", is done in a calypso style like Sonic 3's File Select and even quotes it briefly.
  • The Encore Mode File Select theme, "Double Take", is more reminiscent of Sonic CD's Japanese Bad Future stages, being a minor key version of "Comfort Zone" with a heavier beat.
  • The Competition Menu theme, "Head 2 Head", is reminiscent of Daytona USA's brass-and-guitar soundtrack. The Competition Results theme, "The Winner!", has the distinctive beat of Sonic 2's Competition Results theme.
  • Press Garden Zone Act 2's music ("Blossom Haze") has less of a bass-and-snare Sonic motif but more of a slower-paced, sweeping feel reminiscent of the Shinobi series, which may even double as foreshadowing since the stage boss is Heavy Shinobi.
  • Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1 for Sonic and Tails, "Skyway Octane", uses backing guitars and arpeggios as a reference to the After Burner soundtrack. Knuckles' mix for that level, "Wildstyle Pistolero", has a more hip-hop feel that'd be at home with his Sonic Adventure 2 raps.
  • The Act 1 Boss theme, "Danger on the Dance Floor", emulates not only Sonic 3's Act 1 Boss theme but also "Blood on the Dance Floor" by Michael Jackson (who had long-standing ties with the Sonic series).
  • The Hard Boiled Heavies' theme, "Hi-Spec Robo Go!", was specifically inspired by the works of Hideki Naganuma, such as Sonic Rush and Jet Set Radio.
  • The True Final Boss theme is a hard rock song reminiscent of "NiGHTS and Reala" from NiGHTS into Dreams...; both use a synth and brass combo with backing guitars.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Only one of the shields can be active at any given time. Grabbing a new shield will have it replace the old one.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page here.
• Nested Story Reveal: Played for Laughs in & Knuckles mode when playing as Knuckles; the ending reveals that the events thus far are actually just a story called Sonic Mania & Knuckles that Knuckles is reading to some animal friends.
• New Game Plus:
  • In a sense; continuing a game from a Clear save will carry over your score from the end of the game, in addition to the usual Chaos Emeralds and life counter.
  • Plus has Encore Mode. In addition to changing the level layouts and giving all of the levels a Palette Swap, Encore Mode introduces a brand new gimmick where instead of having Video-Game Lives, you can collect other party members and swap between on-screen characters instantly, as well as use power-ups to change playable characters in the middle of a stage. Encore Mode also features a brand new Bonus Stage and harder Special Stages (played in reverse order).
• New Jack Swing: Thanks to going back to a more Sonic the Hedgehog CD-influenced soundtrack, the game features New Jack Swing-inspired songs, such as the mini-boss theme, Studiopolis Zone, and of course, Stardust Speedway.
• Ninja: Heavy Shinobi. His boss fight even includes sound effects from the Genesis-era Shinobi games.
• Nerf:
  • In the unlockable "& Knuckles" mode, Knuckles has his ability to destroy certain blocks removed to prevent Sonic or Tails from accessing areas typically only accessible by Knuckles.
  • The Combi-Ring, here renamed the Hyper Ring, causes the player to drop eight big rings upon getting hurt, rather than just one, making it harder to recollect your rings. On the flip side, regaining your rings like this can net you extra lives, unlike previously, likely due to an oversight by the devs.
  • The Water Barrier/Shield's special attack can't be spammed like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. As a result, it gives the player less control, evoking Damn You, Muscle Memory! for people who are familiar with said game.
  • The optional Insta-Shield grants Sonic a moment of invincibility, but the move's hitbox only extends upwards.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The reason why Oil Ocean Zone Act 2, has the toxic fumes everywhere? It's because Sonic/Tails/Knuckles destroyed the mini-boss, a repairman robot whose duty was venting the gas (which is even used as one of its attacks). By destroying it, the gas builds up, exploding the pipes and releasing the fumes around the area.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • While not explicitly more difficult than the games it harkens back to, Mania doesn't hold its punches either, especially in certain boss fights and the final zone. Bring a lot of extra lives, or a possible game over may cost you your whole progress in the zone. Don't be surprised if later zones also cause a Time Out; this is especially apparent in Titanic Monarch Zone, Act 2, where it's a level that can go on long enough that the final boss fight actually resets the timer to avoid this problem.
  • The original Special Stages posed a decent enough challenge, but were relatively on the low side of difficult for being Special Stages. Plus introduces their Encore versions, which give Sonic 2's notorious half-pipes a run for their money.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • Giant Rings won't let you use them more than once. Even quitting while playing them and restarting the level won't let you use them again. You have to wait until the file is cleared before they respawn.
  • Just like normal Puyo Puyo, pausing the game during the Chemical Plant Zone, Act 2 boss will hide all Puyos onscreen.
  • If you decide to race backwards to chase the UFO in an attempt to meet it head on early, it ends up reversing its direction and giving you a far longer distance to catch up to it.
  • If you use the All Medals cheat to get the 32 Gold Medallions, you won't earn the associated achievement for collecting them all.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The real final boss battle plays as this in the player's favor, with Super Sonic cutting loose on Eggman and Heavy King as they struggle in vain against him. Don't get too cocky however, unlike most previous final battles, these guys can actually hurt Super back rather than just distract him.
• No Ontological Inertia: The moment the blue missile hits the Heavy Gunner's mooks, the red missiles still already flying somehow gets disarmed.
• No-Sell: Just like in the game they debuted in, the fire, lightning, and bubble shields will deflect bullet-type enemy projectiles. They won't stop beams, however.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The original version had many level transitions being nothing more than Offscreen Teleportation (for example, how you suddenly get dropped into Hydrocity Zone isn't clear, since there's no transition from Stardust Speedway). This gets corrected in Plus.
  • In Plus, one of the transitions remains ambiguous: the one between Hydrocity Zone (on Angel Island) and Mirage Saloon Zone (on Westside Island) sees the character simply leaving the former and suddenly finding himself riding the Tornado at the start of the latter, having apparently reunited with one or two of his friends along the way.
• Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: If you fail to platform in certain areas of the final zone, you might fall on teleporters that send you a few steps back.
• Nostalgia Level: Several Zones from the classic Sonic games made for the Sega Genesis and Sega CD (Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Oil Ocean, Hydrocity, Flying Battery, Lava Reef, Stardust Speedway, and Metallic Madness) are all revisited in this game, with each one revamped with new level designs, graphics, and stage gimmicks and bosses. The Special Stages from Sonic 3 & Knuckles also return (albeit downgraded to bonus stages), with at least some of them being direct copies of the originals.
• Not His Sled: Thanks to the nature of the Remixed Zones, they are many modifications, such as the presence of new items, enemies imported from Zones in the other games, obstacles and gimmicks that are new or given a twist, old bosses with new attacks, new bosses, and sometimes even bosses from different games.
• Not Quite Dead: The beginning of Encore Mode shows that Sonic and the gang's previous escapade turned all of the Hard-Boiled Heavies except Heavy Magician into barely-functioning scrap metal. Unfortunately for Sonic and friends, Heavy King is just functional enough to use the Phantom Ruby again...
• Not Quite Flight: In addition to Knuckles's gliding, Ray can also glide through the air by diving through the air before pulling up.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • After you play a Special Stage (win or lose) and are booted back out into the level, the game grays out said Giant Ring for the entire playthrough. Restarting the level won't help you, as it remains grayed out until you beat the game.
  • An infamous trick to gain Infinite 1-Ups in Sonic 3 & Knuckles involved holding a constant Spin Dash at a point close to the beginning of Launch Base Zone that spawned infinite enemies. The ink jars in Press Garden Zone Act 1 likewise spawn enemies infinitely; however, they won't spawn if the player is holding a Spin Dash, thus preventing the trick from being abused again.
• Offscreen Start Bonus: At the start of Studiopolis Zone Act 1, if you turn around immediately and go left, you'll find a red spring that bounces you to the right. If you jump up while standing right in front of the spring, you'll hit a Monitor containing a 1-Up that will drop to the floor. In a Sonic & Tails game or Tails Only game, Tails can also fly up above the structure to grab four Rings.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Oddly enough, while some zones neatly transition to each other, like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, others simply move on to the next zone with no explanation. This is fixed in the Plus update.
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: Oil Ocean Zone returns from Sonic 2, and now it gets set on fire between Acts 1 and 2, resulting in thick smoke that will cause gradual damage unless Sonic periodically pulls switches that dispel it.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: When the Phantom Ruby is about to send Sonic to another dimension, it glitches for a brief instant.
• One-Winged Angel: In Encore Mode, the final phase of Stardust Speedway's boss battle sees Metal Sonic transform into Giga Metal, courtesy of the Phantom Ruby.
• Orbiting Particle Shield:
  • The Amoeba Droid as Chemical Plant Act 1's boss uses Mega Mack bubbles as a shield.
  • Tubinauts are featured in Studiopolis Zone, but their shields are merely bumpers instead of spike balls, though they will spin them fast to disencourage enemies from attacking them. If you destroy every bumper, the Orbinaut gets sad.
• Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles: These return alongside Hydrocity Zone. Some switches will activate ones big enough that you can float in them a la Aqua Lake and Tidal Plant.
• Outrun the Fireball:
  • In the Normal/Bad Ending, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles hop onto a sled to escape Titanic Monarch Zone as a massive wall of flames hurtles towards them.
  • In the Encore Mode Good Ending, the party and Eggman attempt to escape from the Phantom Ruby's wormhole after Eggman loses control over it. The party uses the Chaos Emeralds to turn Super and escape, but unfortunately for Eggman, he gets knocked aside by the heroes and is sucked into the wormhole.
• Palette Swap: Every Encore Mode stage, unless one counts Angel Island Zone, has its palette altered from its original version. This can range from Green Hill Zone simply being at sunset or the orange and white of Flying Battery Zone swapping to even affecting the smog in Oil Ocean (turning it a strange sky blue instead of orange). Enemies are also recolored if their sprites were based on the level's palette.
• Party in My Pocket: In Encore Mode, you can only have one playable and one partner character on the field at once. Everyone else stays in backup, and you can only rotate character positions in the lineup by finding power-ups.
• Period Piece: The game itself is designed as if it were a 2D Sonic game released for the Sega Saturn, so this is invoked on the Genesis/Mega Drive-styled reversible cover that came with the physical release of Plus: it has a blurb on the back stating "Graphics so Crisp You'll Think it's 1999!" This would've been an oversight, since the fully 3D Sonic Adventure was first released in Japan in 1998, but the box is clearly evoking the Totally Radical sensibilities of mid-'90s marketing.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Angel Island Zone in both Mania and Encore Mode are cut off from play upon finishing it; not even a cleared file or Time Attack will let you play it again.
  • Once a Blue Sphere stage is completed, it's dropped from the file's lineup to prevent players from repeating it again. The only way to replay them is to start a new file or unlock the Blue Sphere mode.
  • The Giant Rings only allow one try per save file; only clearing a file or starting a new one lets you play them in their respective stages again.
• Perspective Flip: The Hydrocity Zone Act 1 boss has you piloting the boss vehicle Eggman used against you in the original version of the zone. Eggman himself is snorkelling below and you have to use the propeller to suck him up and damage him. The only danger comes from the mines he plants, which will hurt you if you suck them up.
• Pinball Zone: Studiopolis Zone features the usual pinball bumpers from Spring Yard Zone and the like. Mirage Saloon Zone also gets flippers and bumper objects similar to those from Collision Chaos. The bonus stage in Encore Mode is literally a giant pinball table.
• Platform Hell: That one shaft with rising water, a.k.a. "Mega Mack", from Chemical Plant Zone Act 2, appears on Act 1 here, and the water now rises too fast for even skilled players to avoid getting submerged.
• Player Nudge: Encore Mode starts off by giving the player the choice of choosing Mighty or Ray as Sonic's initial partner. To encourage the player to learn about and use their unique abilities, the path ahead splits in half, and each path can only be accessed by one or the other—Ray's flight is needed to reach the upper path, which is too high for Sonic or Mighty to jump up too, while Mighty's Hammer Drop is needed to smash through the ground to access the tunnel below.
• Plot Hole: While Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, Studiopolis Zone, and Flying Battery transition to each other, almost every stage after the latter often gives no explanation or context for how the player character got there. It's particularly strange with Hydrocity Zone, as it comes after Stardust Speedway in Little Planet and is followed by Mirage Saloon in Westside Island. Worse is that Knuckles then reunites with Sonic and Tails from out of nowhere as well. Plus adds more level transitions, making certain transitions make more sense (the Phantom Ruby is used by Eggman to transport Sonic to Hydrocity Zone, and a submarine on Oil Ocean makes its way to Lava Reef Zone).
• The Points Mean Nothing: Traditionally, Scoring Points have been used to earn extra lives every 50,000 points. However, in Encore Mode, the points have no functional purpose, due to obtaining "lives" by breaking monitors of characters currently not in your party.
• Poison Mushroom: Eggman monitors that damage Sonic and friends are back.
• Power Trio: The classic era trio (Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles) are the main playable characters of the game. Plus portrays Sonic, Mighty, and Ray as a "second" trio if the latter two are selected in Mania mode, with Tails and Knuckles being absent in the cutscenes^note Except Knuckles getting knocked off in Mirage Saloon's opening and Sonic acting as their pilot.
• Pre-Rendered Graphics: The opening and ending cutscenes are fully-animated 2D cartoons.
• Propaganda Machine: The entirety of Press Garden Act 1 is this.
• Purple Is Powerful: The plot focuses on the Phantom Ruby, a strange and powerful purple gem. Its power is demonstrated when it disables Super Sonic.
• Puzzle Boss:
  • Quite literally, in Chemical Plant Zone, Act 2. Sonic is forced to engage Eggman in a Puyo battle.
  • A more traditional example is Metal Sonic in Stardust Speedway Zone, Act 2. When engaging his second phase, Metal Sonic spawns an infinite number of Silver Sonics while blasting you with laser balls. You can go killing the mechas repeatedly for minutes, only for the fight to never end. You're supposed to strike the mechas, either Spin Dashing them while they're revving or jumping into them once they take off. The update with Plus made it easier by having the Silver Sonics break in to balls of energy that can also damage Metal Sonic, so the player does not have to be as accurate.
  • The Act 1 boss of Lava Reef Zone is an armored version of those mining drills in the area and is very resistant to damage. To damage it, you need it to get it to target the rocks and drill through them, causing lava to spurt up and damage its armor casing, eventually causing it to fall off and the boss to become vulnerable.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Hard-Boiled Heavies, but to a more literal extent, Heavy Magician's illusions of Bean the Dynamite, Fang the Sniper, and Bark the Polar Bear during her boss fight in Mirage Saloon.
• Railroading: Notably, some of the new Blue Sphere stages made specifically for Mania are designed in such a way that there's only one possible route you can take. Any other route inevitably leads to a red sphere.
• Power Up Letdown: Breaking a shield monitor will give you that shield, at the expense of your current shield if you have one already. This gets problematic if it's the basic shield, as it does not block projectiles, protect against specific elements, or (Sonic only) offer mobility upgrades. Sure it's still better than no shield at all, and it won't be removed by going underwater, but if you're carrying a shield that makes the current zone much easier (like a Water Shield in Hydrocity Zone), a basic shield suddenly looks like a Poison Mushroom.
• Readings Are Off the Scale:
  • Played for Laughs in the boss for Studiopolis Zone Act 2, which features the weather report as a central theme but with ridiculous exaggerations. When hot weather is being forecast, for example, you'll see a recorded temperature averaging around '400' or ''7000' degrees.
  • In Egg Reverie Zone, the timer itself can't make sense of the surroundings and displays random numbers.
• Rearrange the Song: Just like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the music for Act 2 of each zone is a remix of the music for Act 1. For example, while Green Hill Zone, Act 1 is a faithful remaster of the original song, Green Hill Zone, Act 2 has a funkier Palmtree Panic-esque take on the song.
• Remixed Level: Plus has an "Encore Mode", which allows the player to play modified versions of the levels in the game, with new layouts and palettes.
• Retaliation Mode: In the battle with the Phantom Egg, Eggman grabs the player with projections from the Phantom Ruby and forces them into a "boss fight" with one of the Hard Boiled Heavies after being damaged four times.
• Retraux:
  • The game as a whole is this, in the style of the classic era titles. The graphics in particular take inspiration from Sonic CD and Knuckles' Chaotix, having a pixelated art style with a color palette that's brighter than the original Genesis games. Word of God has stated that this game is being made as if it were a 2D Sonic game for the Sega Saturn. You can even enable a CRT-inspired filter to complete the effect.
  • The game's Special Stages are in the Saturn's distinct low-poly 3D style, with extravagant 2D backgrounds based on the original game.
  • The trailer for the Collector's Edition is designed to look like a commercial from the 1990s (specifically, it's a parody of a real informercial for a Sonic 1 & 2 Genesis bundle), complete with a filter that gives the impression of watching it on an interlaced screen.
• Role-Reversal Boss: There is a boss fight at the end of Hydrocity Zone's first act where the player controls one of Dr. Robotnik's flying machines, and has to suck Dr. Robotnik into the machine's propeller to defeat him. This fight is a reversal of the one from the same zone in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, where Dr. Robotnik was controlling the machine.
• Rolling Attack: The Drop Dash is a technique new to this game. Sonic can charge a Spin Dash in midair and then release it upon landing to keep up the pace.
• Samus Is a Girl: The game's digital manual refers to Heavy Magician and Heavy Rider as females.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: Downplayed in level design compared to the original games, but it's there. An obvious example is in Chemical Plant Zone Act 1, which has a famously tough part of Sonic 2's Chemical Plant Zone Act 2. As in Sonic 2, Chemical Plant is just the second zone in Mania. The bosses also vary a lot in difficulty.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: Encore Mode starts with Sonic freeing Mighty and Ray from a capsule, and then picking one of them to pair up with. The character you don't select turns out to be Heavy Magician in disguise. Internally, the capsule is literally named "Schrodingers Capsule".
• Score Screen: The traditional one appears. This time, alongside the Ring Bonus and Time Bonus is a new Cool Bonus, which rewards style and discovery.
• Self-Deprecation: After beating Studiopolis Zone Act 2's boss, the TV in the background features a "technical difficulties" message, with loud static. Said static is directly taken from Sonic's 25th Anniversary livestream, which was infamous for plaguing the entire stream.
• Sequel Hook:
  • In the good ending, Sonic is sent through a portal to an unknown location; setting up the events for Sonic Forces.
  • In the Encore Mode Good Ending, Eggman falls into the Phantom Ruby's wormhole when the Super team knocks him and his shuttle into it.
• Sequential Boss:
  • When going against Metal Sonic, the player first must run forward while avoiding his attacks until they come across a machine room. After the player figures out how to bounce four Silver Sonic mooks at him there's another chase sequence and a finish where a moving spiked wall comes up and Metal Sonic can finally get damaged. This battle is so expansive that it internally counts as its own level. Plus adjusts the Metal Sonic battle in various locations to tone down the difficulty and replaces the last part with a battle against Metal Sonic's giant monster form from Knuckles Chaotix.
  • The boss for Hydrocity is Eggman piloting a bigger version of the zone's original miniboss while chasing you on underwater tunnels. After causing him to drive into a few bombs, you must face a recreation of the original "washing machine" fight that is a bit harder due to the Laundry Machine being smaller than the Whirlpool Mobile.
  • The miniboss for Metallic Madness is an easier version of the Egg Pistons final boss from Sonic 1 that always allows you to stand between two of them. After only 4 hits, it gets faster, but drops the guessing element, as only one piston will come at a time and Eggman will always be on the fourth one to move.
• Serial Escalation: The Death Egg Robot was the Final Boss of Sonic 2. Here, it's the very first boss of the game (second if you count the Act 1 Mini-Boss as one). Granted, Sonic does have easier ways to get a good hit on it or outright avoid its attacks.
• Shifting Sand Land: Mirage Saloon Zone, which is new to this game, is a Wild West-inspired level.
• Shmuck Bait: Feel like using the Eggman phase of the Egg Reverie boss fight to stock up on rings for the more threatening Heavy King? If you take too long, Eggman quits fooling around and charges up his slapdash mech with the Phantom Ruby to charge at you at unavoidable speeds for three passes, along with a massive and painful aura to punish your complacency.
• Shout-Out:
  • The red light at the beginning of the title screen sequence is reference to the power light of the original Sega Genesis, which was also red and in a red strip at the bottom of a circle. The yellow ring that appears over it in the title screen proper contains arrows and dots similar to those around the d-pad of the Genesis controller.
  • Chemical Plant Zone:
    • The moving purple slime platforms/walls found in Act 2 use the exact same sound effect used when landing Puyo in the arcade and Mega Drive versions of both Puyo Puyo and Puyo Puyo Tsu. The game even takes the callback even further... by having Eggman challenge you TO Mean Bean Machine outright in the same stage. It plays exactly the same as the original, with the only difference being the inclusion of the double rotation introduced in Puyo Puyo Tsu.
    • The double helix devices that elevates Sonic up to a new location in Chemical Plant Zone, Act 2 strongly resembles the Asterite from the Ecco the Dolphin games.
  • Studiopolis Zone is an entire stage referencing many things related to Sonic and Sega in general, starting with the name itself: it shares its name with the voice acting studio which Sega has been using for the modern Sonic games since Sonic Colors, albeit being unintentional at the time of development:
    • Both the song and the overall aesthetic of Act 1 takes cues from many of the bumpers and station IDs played during the first few years of the WB Network.
    • In Act 1, one of the objects that transports you to the next area of the stage is a popcorn maker, which references a not-well-known arcade game called SegaSonic Popcorn Shop.
    • Daytona USA gets two cameos: One is the news vans in Act 1 featuring the "Hornet" logo that teleport you to the next part of the stage, and the other is the lottery machines with the "Gallop" logo in Act 2. The TVs the Hornet vans send you into bear the red, green, & blue dots of the Game Gear logo, and the sound effect they make is pulled from Sonic Spinball.
    • In Act 1, large signs appear in the background advertising "Club Spin", appearing similar to the logo for "Club Sega", a chain of arcades in Japan featured prominently in the Like a Dragon series. Below this is an "Ages" logo, which is "Sega" backwards and a reference to Sega's former slogan: "To be this good takes ages..."
    • The "Pink Bot" shops are a nod to the Pine Pot bar seen in the first level of the first Streets of Rage, and the buildings in the background of are actually from the same game.
    • Studiopolis Zone, Act 2, pays tribute to Wheel of Fortune by having panels that, when flipped over, spell out Sonic-related phrases (such as "GENESIS DOES" and "LOCK ON").
    • The sun in the weather report of its boss fight is directly traced from Master System game manuals. After the boss is defeated, the TV shows The BBC's test card, with an Eggman symbol swapping out the original girl and clown. To top it all off, the tone that plays on the test card is identical to the notorious tone that afflicted much of the 25th Anniversary Party livestream due to technical issues through which Mania was first revealed to the internet at large. If there was any doubt about this being a coincidence, the numbers on the test card even match the date of said party.
  • Heavy Shinobi not only uses sound effects taken from the Shinobi series — particularly The Revenge of Shinobi — but his attack pattern is reminiscent of the latter game's second boss.
  • The Act 1 boss of Mirage Saloon Zone is a reference, in appearance, to the bosses from Space Harrier.
  • The Collector's edition infomercial tosses out a reference to a certain image macro: "Alone on a Friday night? No problem!"
  • The hexagonal warning signs that appear in the background at the start of the Phantom Egg boss fight are a less than subtle homage to NERV's HQ.
  • The mini-boss theme, "Danger on the Dance Floor" references the Michael Jackson song, "Blood on the Dance Floor". Also doubles as a Mythology Gag given Jackson's involvement with the Sonic 3 & Knuckles soundtrack, with "Blood on the Dance Floor" potentially having been a basis for the Sonic 3-exclusive versions of Knuckles's theme and the miniboss theme.
  • A few achievements include shout-outs:
    • Two achievements are called Magnificent Seven and Full Medal Jacket.
    • The "Collect 'Em All" achievement states you "Gotta gacha 'em all".
    • The "King of Speed" achievement is a shout-out to the song that plays on Daytona USA's beginner course.
  • The Hard Boiled Heavies share the same color scheme as the original Super Sentai team, Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, and Magician and Rider being female references how yellow and pink Sentai rangers and Power Rangers are usually female. While this is more likely a coincidence than anything when taking development time into account, Heavy Shinobi is green, matching up with Chameleon Green, the Green Ranger of the incumbent Sentai team at the time of Sonic Mania's release, Uchu Sentai Kyuranger, who happens to be also the lone ninja of her squad.
  • The HUD in the Special Stages looks a lot like the top part of Daytona USA 2's HUD.
  • Ray the Flying Squirrel's flight ability appears very similar to that of the Cape Feather power-up from Super Mario World.
  • In Plus, the cheat that enables Drop Dash, Insta-Shield, and Super Peel-Out simultaneously is a reference to Dragon Ball, the code in question being "9001".
  • The boss of Flying Battery Act 2, Spider Mobile, has a lot of similarities to the Egg Tarantula◊ from the Archie Sonic comic.
  • The "It's showtime!" sample heard in the second act 2 boss theme is a reference to the one heard in Sonic the Hedgehog Megamix, which in turn was ripped directly from Street Fighter Alpha 3.
• Sigil Spam: Both the EG icon from Sonic 2 and the icon of Dr. Eggman's face from the later games are seen all over pretty much everywhere except Green Hill Zone.
• Sky Heist: In Knuckles' storyline, when Knuckles returns to the Master Emerald shrine, Heavy King flies down on the claw of the Egg Mobile in an attempt to steal the Master Emerald. Knuckles, having remembered getting electrocuted the last time someone tried to steal the Master Emerald from him, knocks the Emerald out of the claw. After Knuckles defeats Heavy King, Heavy King flies away on the claw.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The second act of Press Garden Zone.
• Speed Echoes: When Speed Shoes are acquired, the character gains afterimages when they run à la Sonic Advance.
• Spiritual Antithesis: The game can be considered this in regards to Sonic the Hedgehog 4. Both are throwbacks to Sonic's early games, but while Sonic 4 featured 2½D graphics, a retraux soundtrack inspired by the Genesis games, and the modern character designs, Mania uses 2D graphics, a modern soundtrack inspired by Sonic CD, and the classic character designs.
• Spooky Painting: Mirage Saloon Zone has portraits depicting Heavy King that stare at you when you're looking away.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix:
  • Though the main gameplay is mainly 2D, there are some minor 3D elements à la Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, such as the Giant Rings and certain signposts in Studiopolis Zone.
  • The Special Stages use 3D models for the characters, the UFO, item boxes, and certain scenery objects. Everything else is 2D, including the terrain, which is flat like in Sonic CD.
• Stealth Pun: The boss of Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 implies that the entire zone is literally a Mean Bean Machine.
• Stealth Prequel: At the true end of Mania, Sonic is sent into a portal, which sends him to the setting of Forces.
• Studiopolis: The Trope Namer is Studiopolis Zone, which has a bright city skyline, production light platforms, Airborne paparazzi robot mooks, giant televisions, billboards advertising "Egg TV," and even Wheel of Fortune-style panels that spell out phrases such as GENESIS DOES and LOCK ON when flipped. It has some Casino Park elements in Act 2 when your player character enters a giant lotto ball machine, and a giant popcorn machine based on the real SegaSonic Popcorn Shop machine made for Japanese arcades in the '90s.
• Super Mode: As usual, collecting all seven Chaos Emeralds with Sonic or Knuckles will allow you to transform into Super Sonic and Super Knuckles, respectively, if you have 50 Rings. This also applies to Tails, who will become Super Tails. However, he no longer has his Super Flickies as in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Mighty and Ray also try Super Mode in Plus for the first time.
  • Worth noting that this is the first time Tails has been able to access a Super Form with just the standard Chaos Emeralds. Justified; as the initial reason was Tails was too young to use the power properly. Now he's slightly older; he can access a Super form, albeit one not as strong as the one he could reach with the Super Emeralds previously, with just the basic Chaos Emeralds.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity:
  • Particularly astute players can find the rather abundant amount of 1-up monitors spread out in the Zones. They will need every single one of them.
  • Most bosses give three rings after the final checkpoint, just so that if you die and restart at the checkpoint, you're not completely without rings. The boss of Lava Reef gives fourteen. This is a particularly tricky boss and you're expected to get hit a lot.
• Swapped Roles: The boss of Hydrocity Zone Act 1 has Sonic pilot a mech and fight Eggman, who is on foot, instead of the other way around (as is usual for the series).
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Boss difficulty can vary wildly based on which character you're playing and (particularly as Sonic) which shield you have. The Death Egg Robot becomes a pushover if Sonic has the Lightning Shield, as its Double Jump ability means he can attack it any time he likes, while Knuckles' weak vertical jumping ability makes many boss fights a lot harder than they are for Sonic or particularly Tails.
• Tactical Suicide Boss:
  • The Death Egg Robot has the same glaring weakness it had in Generations. Climb up his arm when he tries to Rocket Punch you.
  • Heavy Gunner would be unbeatable if he didn't shoot the blue, reflectable rockets.
  • The first phase of the Hydrocity Zone Act 2 boss will always follow the characters' movements even if an armed bomb is about to plow into him.
• Take That!: The Sonic Mania Plus commercial (a recreation of an old commercial during the Console Wars which itself was a Take That! to the SNES) has a FPS as the title the salesman is trying to force on the customer, as well as offering lootboxes as leverage.
• Taking You with Me:
  • In a sense. If you pop a Gohla in Oil Ocean Zone and don't have a Fire Shield, be wary if it's near a pool of oil because if one of its detached fireballs lands in the oil, it will set the whole pool on fire and the flames are damaging without the right equipment.
  • This is done literally with Amy Doll in Metallic Madness Zone Act 2 boss, who proceeds to explode once it hugs you.
• This Just In!: After the boss of Studiopolis Zone Act 2 is defeated, the TV in the background shows a breaking news report on the return of Flying Battery Zone.
• Time Crash: Given the timer going haywire, that seems to be the implication of the effect of the Phantom Ruby in Egg Reverie. Foreshadowed in Metallic Madness Zone, which now consists of the Past (the background for Act 1), Present (the foreground for both Acts), and Bad Future (the background for Act 2) versions combined together.
• Time-Limit Boss:
  • The Death Egg Robot constantly chases you in an auto scrolling section. However, unlike most instances of boss fights like these in the series, the area does not loop endlessly; if you take too long, you'll eventually run out of terrain and be chased off into a Bottomless Pit if the fight lingers for about 90 seconds.
  • The Flying Battery Zone mini-boss fight takes place in a trash compactor. As the fight goes on, the walls periodically close in further and further... and if you take too long, they'll move to crush you completely.
• Trailers Always Lie: Promotional material for the game suggested Dr. Eggman created the Hard Boiled Heavies. In the game proper, he sends a squad of normal Eggrobos to seek the Phantom Ruby, which is what actually transforms them into the Hard Boiled Heavies.
• True Final Boss: Just like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. there is an extra boss after the Final Boss if you manage to collect all the Chaos Emeralds, in which Eggman and a rogue Heavy King team up and harness the Phantom Ruby's power to fight Super Sonic. This boss can only be fought as Sonic, unless you're playing as Knuckles in a No Save game with "& Knuckles" mode toggled on, in which case Knuckles becomes Super Knuckles and challenges the boss instead.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change:
  • The boss battle in Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 involves battling against Eggman in a round of Puyo Puyo, paying reference to the Doctor Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine reskin it had in the West. This can be unlocked later as a side game mode.
  • If you're playing as either Sonic or Tails when you reach Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1, you'll spend most of the level controlling the Tornado with forced side-scrolling. Knuckles gets blown off and has to make his way below on normal gameplay, though.
  • The mini-boss for Hydrocity Zone presents an odd challenge: a Role Reversal. You pilot Dr. Eggman's machine from the original while he swims below and must try to suck him into the machine's blades.
• Unreliable Narrator: According to Knuckles (or rather, the storybook he was reading), he, Knuckles, & Knuckles defeated Eggman, destroyed the Titanic Monarch, and saved the day.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Due to Continuing is Painful in Encore Mode, using a Continue farther into Encore Mode is even more penalizing than using a Continue early on, due to power-ups that give party members becoming scarce to the point where the only reliable way to get party members is to play the Bonus Stage at checkpoints, and maintaining Ring counts to carry to checkpoints gets harder the farther you get into the game due to the progressively more difficult level layouts.
• The Unfought:
  • In Mania Mode, Tails never fights the Heavy King under any normal circumstances, and Sonic only fights him in his good ending.
  • In Encore Mode, depending on which path is chosen in Lava Reef Zone Act 2, the player can fight either Heavy Rider or Heavy King, turning the Hard-Boiled Heavy not selected into this, baring the potential to encounter Heavy Rider during the final boss.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The new stage transition added to Metallic Madness in Plus presents Titanic Monarch this way, complete with lightning and the giant robot being entirely shadowed except for its glowing eyes, before eerily fading out to leave the player to wonder what they're in for.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Like most instances in the series, some players can strive to defeat every Badnik they see to free the animal inside.
  • Because of the way Encore Mode works (as, rather than lives, your party size determines how long you can go for before you have to use a continue or get a Game Over), it feels a lot more pressing to let your lead character die as they're dropped from the party until you can find a way to bring them back (either by locating a partner monitor in the level or visiting the pinball bonus stage and picking them up from the Combi Catcher). Getting down to the last member in the queue can feel very lonely and somewhat desperate to find a way to bring back another party member.
• Video-Game Lives: While the main game uses the standard variation of lives, Encore Mode changes things up. Instead of having lives, every time you would die you switch to one of the playable characters to whom you currently have access. Instead of getting extra lives you regain one of the characters you lost.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: The Hard Boiled Heavies don't die in their initial boss fights, instead leaving to fight another day.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • In Press Garden Zone Act 2, there are the ice spray machines that freeze your character in a block of ice. If you've played Sonic 3, you'd expect these to be harmful just like in 3's IceCap Zone. However, not only are the freeze sprays harmless this time, but getting frozen is frequently required in order to break ice obstacles (such as ice cubes and spikes) and make progress.
  • Those who have played Sonic 2 before will know that it's a wise idea to stay clear of the Asterons. In fact, since most of them were out of reach, many don't realize that they aren't actually invincible. During Heavy Shinobi's boss fight, you can imagine the confusion when he begins throwing these like shurikens that stick in the ground, and the best way to destroy them is to spin or jump into them before they blow up into spikes.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The boss of Green Hill Zone Act 2, is the Death Egg Robot from Sonic 2. It's merely comparatively tougher than the Act 1 mini-boss thanks to several weaknesses available and its harmless legs allowing the player to beat the point of the fight, but still gets the player to expect grand bosses with complex movesets for the rest of the adventure.
• The Walls Are Closing In: The boss of Flying Battery Zone Act 1, is a trash compactor-like machine that spawns flunkies from the junk, each time after closing the compactor walls a bit until it crushes you. It's initially too high to reach, but as the junk you're standing on gets compacted, it also gets pushed up higher, eventually allowing you to get in range.
• Waterfront Boss Battle: The mini-boss of Hydrocity Zone Act 1 involves Sonic piloting the original Act 2 boss machine, attempting to suck up Eggman into the propeller blades as Eggman did to him in Sonic 3.
• Waxing Lyrical: A few messages for unlocking things quote song lyrics from the series, such as "Knock knock!" when unlocking & Knuckles Mode and "You can do anything!" when unlocking Debug Mode.
• Wham Line:
  • BREAKING! FLYING BATTERY RETURNS!
  • Future!
• Wham Shot:
  • Super Sonic collides with the Phantom Ruby, and when the scene clears, Sonic is back to normal and the Chaos Emeralds are now surrounding the Ruby. Then a portal opens up and send both Sonic and the Ruby into a void leading to an unknown destination... which is implied to be the timeline seen in Forces.
  • The end of Green Hill Zone Act 2, where you run into a seemingly empty dead end... only for a familiar target indicator to appear, followed by the Death Egg Robot appearing. In the first level of the game.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Heavy King isn't fought with the other Heavies in Titanic Monarch Zone. Instead, he consists of part of Egg Reverie when you collect the Emeralds. However, you're able to fight him in Lava Reef Zone Act 2 as Knuckles.
  • The Hard Boiled Heavies initially had unresolved fates; none of them are destroyed when beaten normally, and they cannot be destroyed in the last boss battle, leaving only Heavy King's fate to any resolution when defeated by Super Sonic. Encore Mode, however, shows that the Heavies were destroyed—and eventually repaired, appearing in the same capacity as the original game. Since the hidden final boss is skipped, Heavy King makes a cameo in the good ending.
  • The Phantom Ruby goes into the same portal Sonic entered, traveling to an unknown destination, but what became of it afterwards isn't revealed until Sonic Forces.
  • Eggman's fate in Encore Mode's good ending is left unknown, as he's apparently sucked into the Phantom Ruby himself.
• Wild West Armadillo: In Sonic and Tails' version of Mirage Saloon Zone Act 1, the Armadilloid enemies consist of tiny robotic armadillos piloting bigger ones, allowing them to shoot at Sonic and Tails, much like the Turtloid enemies in Sonic 2. Knuckles' version of Act 1, as well as Act 2 of the same stage, features the return of Roller, a robotic armadillo previously seen in Sonic 1 who defends itself with a roll attack.
• A Winner Is You: Getting the Bad Ending gets you a short ending FMV followed by a stinger showing Eggman with the Chaos Emeralds you failed to collect and the Phantom Ruby. Collecting all Chaos Emeralds as any character other than Sonic nets you the same ending without the stinger. That's right, you actually get less content in the Good Ending. Sonic actually gets a different ending FMV in his Good Ending, but even this one is extremely short and too similar to the Bad Ending FMV.
• Wreaking Havok: As Mania is created to be a throwback to the classic Genesis games, it shares the classic games' propensity for physics demonstrations.
• Wutai: Press Garden Zone Act 2 has some East Asian influence in the background.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: The Phantom Ruby reacting with the Chaos Emeralds sends Classic Sonic to the world of Forces.
• You Are Too Late: A strange example in that it happens at the beginning of the game; the entire reason Sonic and Tails visit Angel Island again is to unearth the mysterious energy source before Eggman does, but the moment they get there, Eggman's EggRobos beat them to the punch and cause the Phantom Ruby to activate and Knuckles to get caught up in the events. The entire rest of the game has them racing to prevent Eggman from using the Ruby to its full potential.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Halfway through the game, after destroying Metal Sonic, the Phantom Ruby is lying on the ground without any protection or even enemies nearby. And just when you think you've won, a random Badnik comes by and punts it some distance away, where it conveniently lands near Dr. Robotnik. Oops.

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"Together, we are greater than the sum of our parts."

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