Ray the Squirrel and Mighty the Armadillo are two fine additions to Sonic Mania Plus, but if the upcoming Japanese soundtrack release is anything to go by there may be more callbacks to the game these two characters debuted in – SEGASonic the Hedgehog – than we thought.
On SEGA Japan’s official website for the game (which we covered right here), the track list for the 2CD pack contains an entry for ‘Trap Tower – Pinball Bonus Stage’ under the header ‘Sonic Mania Plus Additional Tracks’.
SEGASonic the Hedgehog was a 1993 arcade release that saw Sonic, Ray and Mighty run and jump their way around various traps against the pressure of a moving camera and chasing environmental dangers. The game used a unique trackball controller for players to navigate the stages (which has made it notoriously difficult to emulate accurately since its release), so it kind of makes sense that SEGASonic the Hedgehog would be referenced in Sonic Mania Plus by way of a pinball stage.
No official word from SEGA on this, as you’d expect, so we have no idea if there is a plan to formally reveal this ahead of the game’s release in July, but if we hear more we’ll be sure to let you know!
Via TSSZNews.
And of course, they STILL omitted the Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Oil Ocean remixes, despite how much fans have been asking for them. Look, I get that everyone’s favorite speculation is that because the Sonic 1 & 2 tracks are owned by the guy from Dreams Come True, they can’t sell them without paying the guy royalties. But ya’ll are forgetting a significant detail, Green Hill and Chemical Plant were already remixed before in Sonic Generations, along with Casino Night, and yet they still got to be sold on the OST. So why does this have to be any different? If the issue is really just paying the guy what he’s owed for using those tracks, why were they so willing to do so before with Generations but are suddenly getting cold feet with Mania? Did the guy just not care when they did it in Generations but suddenly cares enough to demand it with Mania? Does this have anything to do with the fact that the English version of Sweet Dreams (the original, not the Akon cover) is being taken down on Youtube lately? Why didn’t any of this prevent them from making and selling a 3 disc soundtrack for Sonic 1 and 2 on CD years ago? Those are LITERALLY the same unchanged tracks, it would have made much more sense to demand royalties for those instead of completely reworked remixes. Why is this only just NOW becoming an issue all of a sudden when it seemed for years to not be a problem whatsoever? This all just reeks of inconsistency and mismanagement and there really needs to be both an explanation and a resolution to all of this.