I’m only about halfway done with Sonic Mania and it already might be one of my favorite games of the year. It manages to capture that feeling of frustration and pure enjoyment I rarely experience in modern video games. You’re just a speedy hedgehog, jumping around an endless series of tubes, jump pads and angry piranha plants. Platformers like Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario 3 defined my childhood and the level of aggravation you feel when you can’t beat a level is only eclipsed by the experience of pure ecstasy that comes from when you finally beat it. For Sonic Mania, the only way to move onto the next level is to beat the boss and that’s where the game truly shines.
A good boss fight in a video game involves a puzzle you need to solve. If all you have to do is shoot a hulking beast for minutes until it dies, like in Destiny, it isn’t a satisfying experience. Finding out a creature's attack patterns, the way it moves and finally its secret weakness is a feeling that can’t be replicated in real life. Your overdue credit card bills can’t be defeated by a shot of a frost arrow three times in the back. The last modern game to capture this feeling was Jotun, a Viking-inspired brawler that featured powerful giants that needed millisecond precision in order to beat. If you mis-timed your dodge or swung your axe at the wrong time, you’d end up dying and starting to fight all over again. Challenging boss fights are hard to come by, but Sonic Mania has them in droves.
Spoilers for Sonic Mania ahead.
Stardust Speedway Zone’s main boss almost made me throw my Xbox controller through a wall. Dr. Robotnik has remade Metal Sonic, one of the blue hedgehog’s oldest and best-known foes. Metal Sonic has been torturing animals and it’s up to you to defeat the metal monstrosity and when I saw the mechanical marvel kicking some bunnies, I was totally ready to take him down. I got out of my chair, stood with my feet equal ways apart for maximum balance and gripped my controller with gumption. Metal Sonic ran after me and Tails, soaring through the air with a flaming comet tail. I dodged them over and over, for almost five minutes, before realizing I was supposed to be running in the other direction.
Then, I encountered the most aggravating, challenging, wall-breaking boss ever –
Metal Sonic hooks himself up to a giant machine that turns those animals into Sonic robots. They keep coming at me and I kept killing them, but i still couldn’t understand how to damage my evil counterpart, losing three of my four lives in the process. Eventually, through a random fluke button press, I managed to bounce one of the animal slaves back at Metal Sonic, damaging him. But as I fit the puzzle pieces together, a bolt of energy struck through my hedgehog and it was game over.
After a walk around the block, a few stress ball squeezes and a long talk with myself, I jumped back into Sonic Mania. This time, I was ready and I assumed my serious stance all over again. Bouncing the animals onto Metal Sonic is hard, but when he’s shooting his fireballs at you, it becomes next to impossible. After two more game overs, I hurled my controller across the room, something I hadn’t done since I was 12 and my mother scolded me for “breaking her shit.” I felt alive, filled with rage and passion for a pixelated passion project made by Sonic fans.
Finally, the fourth time was the charm and I managed to beat Metal Sonic, at least that’s what i thought. Metal Sonic wanted to chase again, but I was ready to win. I dodged his attacks, using the new Drop Dash to speed up and move to the final fight. A wall of spikes appeared as Metal Sonic entered his final form. With a silhouette of Eggman’s robot looming in the distance, I jumped, collected coins and swore, landing the final hits on my archenemy. Two hours and 20 chicken McNuggets later, I finally managed to beat him.
Beating a good video game boss is a feeling that you can’t find anywhere else. I hope Sonic Mania shows the rest of the developers out there that innovative and unique fights beat “shoot something 70,000 times until it dies” any day.
