Homebrew Review! "Sonic Mania" for New Nintendo 3DS (Retro Engine v5)

I've written on Sonic CD for 3DS already, but that was just Sonic CD. What about a bigger game? A more complex one? Well good news! In relation to the Retro Engine decompilation project, there exists a port of Sonic Mania for the New 3DS! It's available on Universal Updater, though keep in mind that you'll have to access the SD card to manually set up the RSDK or data folders in order to run the game. They're required as an anti-piracy measure to ensure that the decompilers are not at fault for distributing an archive of every Retro Engine Sonic release. The source can be found here, as well as more detailed setup instructions.

Note that this port only officially supports New 3DS, and as such, my review is based on my experience playing on a N3DS.

As soon as you open the app for the first time, you realize what the developer was warning about: really long loading times. When I initially set up this port, just loading the Sonic Mania title screen took about a full minute, and then another minute after that for the main menu to appear. These times can be boosted by extracting your RSDK into a data folder, and also was recently boosted when the dev folded a fork of the project into the main, which optimized some loading times. Personally I've never minded longer loading times, I feel like it gives me a moment to breath and settle my mind between tasks, though I can see how this could get annoying during long play sessions. Hell, even just entering a Special Stage and then loading out of it again is roughly a 2 minute round trip. It can me minimized if you keep this limitation in mind going into it, but it's a part of it nonetheless.

However, when the level finally does load, it looks and plays gorgeously! The graphics of Sonic Mania feel like they were tailor made for the 3DS display, it controls wonderfully, and other than the load times, you aren't sacrificing any functionality short of Achievements by playing this version. The Plus DLC can even be played, though you have to compile the app yourself from the source, using data from a purchased copy of the DLC. Another anti-piracy meassure from the devs.

A little note to people who may not know: when you load up the game, the menu will flash a username as if you are logging in, naming you "IntegerGeorge". This can be changed by accessing the game's file directory, and adding a lite to the settings.ini file. Credit to this random GameBanana thread that taught me how to do it, because god knows I never would have figured it out on my own.

Overall, really cool to be able to play Sonic Mania on a 3DS! Despite the limitations, it's a project that deserves all the love in the world for accomplishing what it has, and I'm excited to see what changes and updates the dev provides in the future! I highly recommend taking a look at this project if you get the chance!

~ Alex Amelia Pine

This post is a part of the series Game Reviews
Also check out "Sonic CD" for 3DS!