Sonic Mania Boss Details Leaked

E3 winds to a close tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still some surprises left in store for those of us out there with our ears to the ground. Last night, Giantbomb.com posted their “Sealed Envelope” podcast, where Jeff Gerstmann talks with the site staff about the games he saw during “E3 Judges Week,” where the E3 organizers fly select members of the games press out to see games early and give out awards for things like best graphics, best sound, and so on. This gives any E3 Judges advanced knowledge of some (but not all) of the games that will be featured at E3, and for many years now, Giantbomb.com has turned that in to their “Sealed Envelope” podcast, where they discuss the games Jeff saw as an E3 judge — with the caveat that the podcast won’t go up until after E3 has begun. This way, time-sensitive information doesn’t get spoiled too early, but the Giantbomb crew can still discuss these games while they’re fresh in their minds.

It would appear that, for one reason or another, during the “Sealed Envelope” podcast for this year’s E3, Jeff Gerstmann has let information slip about Sonic Mania that hasn’t actually been made public yet, and may not have intended to be. Here’s a fairly large chunk of their discussion vis-à-vis Sonic Mania, with the leak towards the bottom:

(And just to make it perfectly clear — this information is a spoiler for something that happens in Sonic Mania, so read onwards at your own risk)

Jeff: Sonic Mania… actually looks like it might be cool.
Brad: Yeah. That looks neat.
Ben: People are excited about that. People who… I don’t write off as being Sonic fans.
Jeff: So I played some of that. And like, that game is weird because in some cases you’re like, “This is some brand new Sonic!” but in some cases, like the first level of that game is the first level of Sonic 1…
Brad: I think I’m okay with that.
Jeff: …But wide-screen 16:9…
Brad: I think I’m okay with that!
Jeff: …And, y’know, the music’s a little bit crisper, and when you push up to make Sonic look up, there’s way more frames of animation in his look, and you’re like, “yeah okay this actually looks pretty nice.” It’s a good looking 2D sprite-based Sonic game.
Brad: It sounds so simple when you say it that way.
Jeff: It has the elemental shield stuff from Sonic 3 that I was never a huge fan of.
Ben: Seems like it has tons of little easter eggs, and just, like…
Jeff: So there’s a boss fight in there where you fuckin’ play Mean Bean Machine. Where you play Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. It just– it just erupts in to that. And you’re just like, “fuckin’ WHAT?”
Brad: That sounds– that sounds clever!
Jeff: So that says to me that this game’s on the right track for what they wanted to probably do with Sonic 4.

If you would like to listen to this podcast for yourself, it can be listened to on Giantbomb’s podcasts page. Discussion for both Sonic Forces and Sonic Mania starts at around the 21 minute mark in the “E3 2017 Sealed Envelope” podcast.