![]() ![]() While the Eggman angle was dropped, the Hard-Boiled Heavies remained as major antagonists in the game. To fill the gap, a group of Egg Robos would become independent, calling themselves the Hard-Boiled Heavies. One story considered for the game saw Eggman fall into a deep depression following Sonic & Knuckles. The game’s pre-order trailer and introduction were animated by Tyson Hesse, known for his work on Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog comics and the parody, “Sonic’s Big Fat Adventure”. Audio engineer Falk Au Yeong is known for his contributions to several Sonic soundtracks, and artist Kieran Gates has helped organize the UK fan convention, “Summer of Sonic”. Artist Paul Veer (known for his work on Nuclear Throne) was commissioned to provide Cook & Becker’s official Sonic print. Programmer Hunter Bridges and designer Brad Flick previously worked on the fan game, Sonic Nexus. He then added one more title: “Sonic Mania”.Īs the project advanced, more staff had to be brought on with many of these new members also boasting a history in the Sonic fan community. When they came back, Iizuka wrote a series of titles on a white board going from Sonic 1 through Sonic & Knuckles. After the presentation concluded, Iizuka simply told the team “I have many questions…” before they had to break for lunch. Only Studiopolis Zone was made at the time, and the game went under the title “Sonic Discovery”. The project was first presented to Sonic Team head, Takashi Iizuka in 2016. Sonic Mania was pitched to Sega by these three companies. Joining them was musician Tee Lopes, known for his unofficial Sonic remixes. Their experience on Sonic 2 HD was invaluable, teaching them the importance of keeping to deadlines and choosing the right team for the job. PagodaWest’s Tom Fry and Jared Kasl met on the project, and formed a close friendship based on their similar outlooks on game design. This time, the unofficial remake, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 HD. Joining them was PagodaWest Games, a company born of yet another Sonic fan project. Whitehead and Thomley (under his company name, “Headcannon”) would go on to form a core part of Sonic Mania’s development team. The pair’s collaboration was fruitful, and their ports of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 boasted many advantages and were well-received by the community. While Whitehead reproduced the games through observation and recreation, Thomley was more familiar with the assembly code of the original games. He also created an unofficial port of Sonic 1 for the GameBoy Advance, a response to the poor quality of the GameBoy Advance’s Sonic Genesis. He was involved in the community during its formative years, heading the popular Sonic Megamix project, and was responsible for porting fan creations to the Wii and Sega CD. Thomley also had a storied history with Sonic fan works. Working with him was Simon Thomley (aka “Stealth”). Whitehead’s version of Sonic CD was even published by Sega in 2011.įollowing his port’s success, Sega contacted Whitehead again, this time to handle ports of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2. The push was successful, with Sega responding to the video on Twitter. He also prompted fans to let Sega know if they were interested in seeing this prototype become a reality. In response, Whitehead publicly revealed his Sonic CD prototype, wanting to send them a clear message about what they should be working on. Two weeks later, Sega asked the community on their blog which games they would like to see ported to iOS. Whitehead emailed Sega to pitch the game to them, but did not receive a reply. Whitehead had to manually reconstruct them through rigorous frame by frame analysis of the original title. However, it was not the engine itself that replicated Sonic’s physics. This allowed for new features to be added as well as a consistent frame rate and widescreen support. Unlike Sega’s iOS ports, which ran on an emulator, Whitehead’s proof of concept was instead rebuilt from the ground up and used his Retro Engine software development kit. ![]() In 2009, Whitehead developed a proof of concept for the iOS port of Sonic CD. This engine would become integral to Whitehead’s official involvement with Sega. Retro Sonic ran on the Retro Engine, which was custom built by Whitehead and allowed him to replicate the physics of the classic Sonic games. Christian Whitehead (also known as the “Taxman”) was known for creating the fan game, Retro Sonic. Much of Sonic Mania’s development staff have a history in creating Sonic fan games and other projects. ![]()
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