'Sonic Mania' reviews say this is the game fans have been waiting on for ages

There's a new Sonic the Hedgehog game called Sonic Mania, and it's apparently great.

That's not the typical look for Sega's mascot. Plenty of games starring the speedy, blue hedgehog have come out since the '90s heyday when he went toe-to-toe with Nintendo's Mario, but few have managed to really resonate.

Until now. Sonic Mania seems to be drawing praise from all corners of the games-loving media. At heart it's a throwback to the series' 2D side-scrolling roots... but there's something else in the mix that's making it click.

Let's take a look at how the critics are defining that special sauce.

The Verge, Andrew Webster

Sonic Mania has been billed as a return to form for the series. It’s far from the first game to claim that mantle, so it’s easy to be skeptical. But Mania is different than its predecessors. Most notably, it brings the series back to what made it so popular in the first place: blazing-fast side-scrolling action. It’s a game that looks and feels like it was made 25 years ago, and I mean that in the best possible way. It channels the best parts of the series’s glory days — the speed, the twitchy action, the Rube Goldberg level design — and largely improves on them.

Kotaku, Heather Alexandra

Much of Sonic Mania’s success is owed to the many fans turned designers attached the project. In seeking to produce the best retro remix possible, Sega recruited well-known modders and hackers. Christian Whitehead, known for porting Sonic games like Sonic CD to new platforms and Simon Thomley, a modder who worked on the topsy-turvy ROM hack Sonic Megamix, worked on the project, and their enthusiasm is clear. Level designer Jared Kasl’s work is arguably the most noteworthy. There is extreme care built into every loop, spring pad, and corkscrew.

Ars Technica, Sam Machkovech

Mania employs an interesting design tactic of remaking older games' zones—a lot of them, in fact, with eight classic zones represented from five games (Sonic 1-3, Sonic & Knuckles, and Sonic CD). You may expect the worst after diving into Mania's first level: a nearly identical version of Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone (which, ugh, Sega has already remade about 40 times at this point). But eagle-eyed players will notice a few intriguing differences in this first level, in terms of brand-new running paths and other tucked-away secrets. But that's nothing compared to the zone's second stage, which sees design studio PagodaWest open up the tried-and-true level with a simple zip-line system.

IGN, Heidi Kemps

The zones aren’t the only things to get an overhaul, either. Reworked Sonic stages look more beautiful than ever, packed with vibrant color and dazzling visual flourishes, while the new zones’ artstyle meshes perfectly with the 2D pixel art of classic Sonic. Everything, down to the smallest of background elements, is more detailed and features more movement than ever before. That goes for the enemies, too -- Eggman’s new “hard-boiled heavies” are depicted with lots of quirky personality, making them interesting and unique villains without speaking a shred of dialogue. The soundtrack is also top-notch, packed with remixes of classic Sonic tunes alongside all-new compositions.

Eurogamer, Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Mania is Sonic without 20-odd years of slowly accumulating bullshit. The wider pantheon of sidekicks - Shadow, Silver, Big the sodding Cat - have been cast headlong into the screaming cosmic abyss from whence they came, reducing the playable line-up to the Holy Trinity: Sonic himself (who can use each shield power-up's special ability), long-suffering fox acquaintance Tails (who can fly and swim) and beefy echidna rival Knuckles (who can smash through certain walls, climb and glide).

USgamer, Caty McCarthy

Sonic Mania actually reminded me the most of another throwback game of recent years: Super Mario Maker. Yet where Super Mario Maker put the labor of its intensely-driven stages on the players themselves to create, Sonic Mania instead offers something else. Levels with so much care, detail, and buoyancy implemented into every pixel, that they feel fan-created themselves. (And as luck would have with a non-Sonic Team-developed game: They are.) Like a great Mario Maker level, now crafted with thousands more tools at their behest. But down to both games' cores the levels are all brewed with the same amount of love, care, and creativity tossed into the mix.  

During its best moments, Sonic Mania feels like a Sonic fan's dream game. Now that that dream is fulfilled, maybe it's time for a new dream. Like an ideal, hypothetical Sonic 5 in the vein of Mania where we get only new levels thrown into the mix, instead of mostly remixes.