Sonic Mania’s opening animation is G-rated, but it’s aimed at the hearts of those of you old enough to be nostalgic

By Brenna Hillier

Sonic Mania is the Sonic you remember: warm, friendly, definitely not doing any weird sex things.

Sonic Mania’s opening animation comes via Tyson Hesse, who contributed pencils and cover art to many issues of the Archie Comics Sonic line. You’ll probably recognise his signature style in many of Sonic’s gestures and poses throughout the video; it’s worth pausing or slowing it to see all the little flourishes.

Since Sonic Mania is an officially published fan remix of 16-bit era Sonic games, it naturally taps into the Sonic of the 1990’s and those first four games rather than later interpretations. You know, before there was a whole generation of people having strong feelings for Sega characters and posting them on DeviantArt behind age gates.

That’s not to say you won’t enjoy it no matter when or why you joined the Sonic fandom, but this video should definitely speak most clearly to those old enough to remember plugging cartridges into other cartridges so they could play as Knuckles in Sonic 2.

Sonic Mania releases next week for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. It’s one of two Sonic releases this year, the other being yet another attempt to make a modern Sonic game. Sonic Forces allows you to create your own avatar to play alongside modern and newschool Sonic, which is interesting, isn’t it?

Alex will probably write something about Sonic Mania as soon as he breaks through the planks Sega has nailed over its office windows to prevent him getting in and stealing it, so stay tuned for that.