This past Friday, a Sonic The Hedgehog bombshell was dropped at an event at San Diego Comic-Con that was celebrating the blue hedgehog’s 25th anniversary. Sega, in collaboration with Pagodawest Games, Christian Whitehead, and Simon “Stealth" Thomley, have announced a brand new Sonic game called Sonic Mania. It once again tries to tap into what made the original set of Sonic games so beloved back in the 16-bit era, and features classic-style visuals, gameplay, and both original levels and remixes of classic levels. It pretty much sounds like the Sonic game fans have been begging for for decades, and, at least based on the trailer, it looks like it might finally deliver.
Now, as you probably know, Whitehead and Thomley are the duo known for bringing the incredible remastered versions of Sonic The Hedgehog and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 to mobile devices, which all started with Whitehead building his own engine and essentially rebuilding Sonic CD (Free) from scratch for mobile back in 2010. Pagodawest is also an experienced developer with several releases on the App Store, most notably the Major Magnet series. So there’s every reason to get excited at the potential for Sonic Mania, but there’s also every reason to exercise caution. The Sonic Cycle exists for a reason, after all.
Anyway, currently Sonic Mania is scheduled for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in early 2017, but I am keeping all my extremities crossed that we’ll see a mobile port at some point down the line. I mean, that just makes sense, right? Unless Sega hates money. Which they might. At any rate, I figured there’s enough Sonic fans in our audience to warrant sharing the amazing trailer above even without a mobile version being announced, and we’ll be following the development of Sonic Mania closely just in case Sega decides to throw us mobile gamers a bone.