Netflix is bringing the excellent Sonic Mania to mobile

theverge.com:

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

Netflix has figured out that the only thing better than having a bunch of Sonic cartoons on its platform is having a Sonic game. The streamer has announced that Sonic Mania Plus — y’know, the best Sonic game this decade — is coming to mobile via Netflix in 2024.

Sonic Mania launched on console and PC in 2017 and, in 2018, was updated to Sonic Mania Plus. The upgrade to Plus added two new playable characters — Mighty and Ray — a new tutorial zone, and expanded, color-swapped levels.

But the biggest addition was a new game mode called Encore mode. In this new mode, instead of Sonic and pals accumulating lives that get spent every time they find themselves on the wrong end of the drowning timer music, you accumulate party members a la the Kong swapping barrels in Donkey Kong Country. Throughout each level, there are boxes that you crack, adding a new character to your party. You can swap between characters at any time to take advantage of their unique powers (Knuckles’ wall climb or Tails’ ability to fly, for example), and if you die, one of your party members takes over until there’s nobody left and you “Game Over.” It is a really, really friggin’ cool addition that I’m actually legit excited to play for myself for the first time on Netflix, of all places.

With that bit of Sonic fangirling out of the way, Netflix’s announcement featured a couple more titles, including Cozy Grove: Camp Life, the sequel to the Animal Crossing-like life sim Cozy Grove, Game Dev Tycoon, and fashion dress-up game FashionVerse — all of which, along withSonic Mania Plus, willlaunch next year.

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