Sonic Mania will be releasing on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch on August 15, but will be released at a later date on PC according to a tweet from the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account (regardless of the announcement, if you don’t follow this account you should; it has some pretty solid Sonic memes).
Here is the announcement in full:
“Hi everyone,
In Sonic Mania, quality and attention to detail are some of the most important things for our team. We accept nothing but the best for Sonic Mania, and that’s why we want to spend a little more time to polish the PC version of the game’s release, which we plan to complete by August 29. All other platforms (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch) will still release on August 15 as planned.
We know you’re all super excited to play the game on PC, and as a thank-you to everyone who has purchased the PC Collector’s Edition, or pre-purchased the game on Steam, we will be unlocking Sonic 1 for free on your Steam accounts on August 15. If you already own Sonic 1 on Steam, you’ll be given a giftable version that you can trade or send to a friend.
On behalf of everyone involved with Sonic Mania — thank you very much for your patience. We can’t wait for you to get your hands on Sonic Mania soon, and we hope you enjoy playing it as much as our teams enjoyed making it!
-Aaron”
There have been several previous games in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise that have been released on PC before, so to hear that this game will be getting delayed for the PC platform is a little disappointing. Sonic fans have been waiting for this new version of their favorite classic Sonic the Hedgehog game to come out, but luckily the delay is only affecting the PC platform.
The most recent game to be released in the Sonic the Hedgehog series prior to Sonic Mania was Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice. The original Sonic Boom series, a spin-off of the official Sonic storyline, was heavily criticized when it came out due to its changes in the character’s concept art. The two previous games in the Sonic Boom series, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal were both met with negative reviews.
Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice did a lot better than its predecessor, receiving a score of 62 on Metacritic. One review from SpazioGames gave the game a score of 60.
“Even being the best title inspired by the Sonic Boom cartoon (Ryse of Liric [Rise of Lyric] and Shattered Crystal were both a mess), Sonic Boom Fire and Ice fails to impress long time fans of the blue Sega mascot, due to a bland level design, a childish difficulty level and the unimaginative repetition of the same puzzles and monster types,” it said in the review. The full review from SpazioGames on Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice can be found here.
Sonic Mania and upcoming 3D platformer Sonic Forces can be seen as a way of SEGA finally answering the fans’ pleas to bring back an older (but much better) Sonic the Hedgehog. Again, although the PC version delay is upsetting, fans will be able to play it on PC by the end of August which isn’t too long of a delay. Rather, I’m personally just glad that there will be a possible better Sonic game coming out soon.
Sonic Mania will be released on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and on Nintendo Switch on August 15 and on PC on August 29. You can find the game on Steam for $17.99.
Featured image via Flickr/BagoGames.
