Sonic Mania

With this brilliant game Sonic at last reminded us why he was once a worthy rival for Mario.

It is surprising how well the developers understood the underlining reasons Sonic was so loved in the 16bit era. Gone are the autorun, the messy 3D levels and the horrible clown characters, gone is the linear cheap thrill design of the modern 3D games. In their place, we got excellent level design with hundreds of different routes, elegant design choices and supremely balanced gameplay which bring us one of the best Sonic games since Sonic & Knuckles. Pity Sega was too afraid to budget for modern graphics because they would have had a full priced, instant classic on their hands.

Sonic Mania is a wonderful celebration of what's made Sonic so great in the past while also striving to push it forward. This isn't to say it's perfect – it has some of the problems of the previous games as well – but it's such a perfect encapsulation of old Sonic games, it's impressive. If you've ever been curious about what makes these old games special, or if you're just interested in revisiting the series you loved as a kid, this is the best way to do it. It's the old and the new wrapped together in a way that makes both shine. I hope this team goes on to do more, and eventually break themselves away from needing to remix old levels and just make their own.