He’s had his fair share of ups, downs, and loop-de-loops, but Sonic has proven to be one of gaming’s most beloved and enduring icons. With Sonic Mania

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“ Even the old zones are packed with plenty of new tricks.

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“ Not every throwback to an old Sonic game is welcome, though.

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But even the old zones are packed with plenty of new tricks. They’re bigger, more elaborate, and filled with traps and gimmicks both old and new that tickled my nostalgia bone and surprised me. Sonic 2’s Chemical Plant Zone was always been a fun romp filled with high-speed tunnels and ramps, but with the addition of chemical jelly goop that bounces you around and lets you cling to walls, it feels fresh and fun in a whole new way.Sonic Mania has all the the crucial elements that go into making a great Sonic adventure: big, elaborate stages, responsive controls and movement physics, interesting and engaging tricks and traps, lots of hidden nooks and crannies to discover, and hazards that challenge you to stay alert and act fast. I replayed many of these stages over and over, finding little nuances and secrets that eluded me the first, second, and even fifth time around.And there is incentive to replay these stages, as there are numerous hidden special levels you’ll need to conquer to collect the Chaos Emeralds and see Sonic Mania’s ‘true’ ending. In special levels, you chase a UFO through a 3D landscape by collecting speed-enhancing blue spheres and rings. It’s a fun concept, but it can be tough to see barriers that block your way on the ground, and collision detection on some objects seems off. Making matters worse, colliding with a bomb can start a chain reaction that sends you careening uncontrollably into other sets of obstacles, which can make otherwise good runs turn bad very quickly.Also returning are bonus stages from Sonic 3, which you’ll find at the checkpoints scattered across the zones. These stages don’t unlock emeralds, but do unlock bonus features once you’ve completed a set number of them, like a sound test, a debug mode, and even hidden sub-games. They started out easy, but grew satisfyingly challenging, and completing them all perfectly took quite a bit of time and practice.Not every throwback to an old Sonic game is welcome, though. Chances are that if there was something you saw in an old Sonic game, it’s in Sonic Mania somewhere -- even if it wasn’t a particularly good element of an old Sonic game. For example, it’s neat to see a callback to Sonic 2’s Sky Chase Zone, but let’s face it -- the forced autoscrolling and wonky controls in Sky Chase Zone were not very fun then, and they’re still not great now. And that incredibly annoying “keep the lights on” mechanic from Sonic 3’s Sandopolis Zone remains just as incredibly annoying 23 years later.