At the 25th anniversary celebration of Sonic The Hedgehog held at San Diego Comic Con, Sega announced something special. While Sonic Team is busy with another mainline Sonic game, teased later on, we will also getting another game called Sonic Mania.
Made to be in line with the classic, 2D Sonics of the yesteryear, Sonic 1-3 specifically, Sonic Mania takes the old sprite-based graphics and tight gameplay it was known for and reimagined a few classic stages as well as introducing new stages and moves. Sonic, Tales and Knuckles are playable.
Check out the trailer here. Do check it out, because the song used in the trailer is pretty rad!
This is not the first time Sega went back to the old days of Sonic. Sonic The Hedgehog 4 went that direction, though with updated 3D graphics instead of the old 2D sprites, but its episodic release was rather short-lived. Sonic Mania is developed by Christian Whitehead a.k.a. Taxman, a well known member of the Sonic community that also worked on emulating Sonic CD to PC and mobile- officially sold by Sega, Headcannon and PagodaWest Games, a development team that had made strides in the mobile world.
Expect to see Sonic Mania to be on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in Spring 2017, so sometime around March to June.