Let's start by dealing with the talking hedgehog in the room, huh? The lighting in the video you'll find above is… Pretty bad. We'd love to say that we unleashed our inner-Super Sonic and somehow turned our skin a subtle shade of Simpsons yellow, but as amateurs we just completely cocked up the colour grading both at source and in the MP4 export. It happens when you don't know what you're doing, unfortunately!

Nevertheless, we do think that this is a good video, so we're going to post it anyway. Sonic Mania was, of course, announced for the PlayStation 4 recently, and it's excited a lot of people. Where the blue blur is concerned, however, this is a recurring theme, so what reason do we have to believe that this will be different to the many disappointments of yore? Well, we've come up with three reasons why we reckon the 'Hog's latest will rock.

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It looks like a Mega Drive game

Imagine if Sonic had received a Mega Drive-esque entry on a 32-bit console. It probably would have looked a little bit like Sonic Mania, right? While we've seen some negativity pointed at the throwback's retro artstyle, we reckon that it's a good thing, because it means that the developer should be able to authentically replicate the physics of the original entries. Remember when Sonic 4 attempted a pseudo-polygonal look? Yeah, it controlled like absolute garbage.

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The bad ass Drop Dash

What's the key ingredient to a Sonic game? Momentum. The blue blur thrives on fast movement, but being a platformer, even the Mega Drive games would have impediments that slowed you down. Sonic Mania looks to be solving this with the Drop Dash, a brand new mechanic that – judging by the trailer – will allow you to chain together sprints and spin dashes better than ever before. That should result in some of the most fluid gameplay that the series has ever seen.

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Fans are at the helm

Christian Whitehead, one of the key names attached to this project, is best known for deconstructing Sonic's gameplay and rebuilding it in a contemporary engine called the Retro Engine. In other words, the Aussie indie understands what makes the series tick better than anyone else. And he's at the helm of this brand new project, which means that you can bank on authentic controls, and level design that's in keeping with the series' once great origins.

Are you excited for Sonic Mania? Do you think that this is going to be the comeback that the character needs? Scoff some Chili Dogs in the comments section below.

[source bit.ly]