There's an area in Sonic 2's Chemical Plant Zone that still has me clutching my chest when I think of it. Tucked towards the end of the second act is a shaft filled with moving blocks, sliding around in clumps of four to create a precarious series of stairways. Nothing too horrendous in itself, but as you climb to the top the zone's underlying ocean of toxic purple goop surges abruptly, flooding the shaft even as the door slams shut behind you. Is there any track in all of video game music more nightmarish than Sonic's drowning countdown? And is there anything more dreadful, when you're in the teeth of that music, than having to wrestle with the game's underwater physics - wilting in horror as you graze a block by a pixel, precious seconds squandered as the blue blur drifts lazily to the platform beneath?
That flooded shaft kept my eight-year-old self from the relative peace of the Aquatic Ruin Zone for months - and it's back in Sonic Mania, Christian Whitehead's absurdly lovely homage to Sonic's 16-bit heyday. Much else has changed, however. Dotted throughout the 2017 incarnation of Chemical Plant you'll find power-up TVs lifted from Sonic 3 - including the Bubble Shield, which staves off the threat of suffocation. Entire sections of the course have been uprooted, rearranged and spruced up with new fixtures, such as troughs of gel you can harden into bounce pads by jumping on giant syringes. And the bosses, above all, have been completely reimagined. I won't spoil it, but Act 2's concluding clash is the kind of gleeful nod to a certain other Sonic game that should have any long-in-the-tooth fan laughing hysterically. It's representative of a project that doesn't merely restore the past with the care of a museum curator touching up a faded classic, but also twists and expands it, to create an experience that is equal parts nostalgia pang and giddy excitement.
To put that in slightly less grandiose terms, 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 it 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). The game's 12 zones mix comprehensive, extremely playful reworkings of classic levels from Sonic 1 through Sonic & Knuckles with three brand new stages - all designed by Whitehead, fellow Sonic aficionado Simon "Headcannon" Thomley and Major Magnet studio PagodaWest using the Retro Engine, a proprietary technology built specifically to support features from the 32-bit console generation and before.
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