Sonic Mania Gets a Release Date and the Best Sonic Trailer I've Ever Seen

Sega announced today that Sonic Mania, the company's retro throwback to classic Sonic games, will come out August 15 for consoles and PC. More importantly though, this is the best trailer for a Sonic video game I've ever seen.

Starting out with a rough sketch of Sonic coming to life like that one A-Ha music video, the trailer quickly transitions to footage of the retro, pixelated graphics of the game itself. Sega's launch trailer almost looks like a promotion for an awesome Sonic throwback collection, but that's the point of Sonic Mania I suppose.

Either way, I love the animated bits in the trailer. The sketch and color animations were done by artist Tyson Hesse (Diesel) with music by Hyper Potions. However, while the animation looks exactly like the old cartoons it still reminds me also a little bit of Masaaki Yuuasa's (Tatami Galaxy) animation work.

Despite its visuals, Sonic Mania is actually a new game masquerading in an old look. Developed by retro Sonic enthusiast and professional Sonic porter Christian Whitehead, alongside Pagoda West Games and Headcannon, Sonic Mania returns Sonic to his golden years but with a 60 FPS update. Mania will let players control either Sonic, Knuckles, or Tails and each using modern powers like the drop dash, wall climb, or flight respectively.

After a delay, it looks as if Sonic Mania is on track to deliver the same kind of classic Sonic goodness from the Genesis days, though to be perfectly frank, I was terrible at the old 2D Sonic games and I don't expect my skills to have magically improved over time.

Sonic Mania is out August 15 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch.