Sonic Mania Plus

Sonic Mania Plus (ソニックマニア・プラス) is an expanded version of Sonic Mania. It will be released in July 2018 both physically for the Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and as downloadable content to digital copies of the original game for all platforms.

Development
During an interview with Famitsu, Takashi Iizuka explained that Sonic Mania was not intended to have a physical release; Sega staff requested one, but a retail version would have presented a challenge for the production schedule. After the game launched, fans also expressed interest in a physical version. As a retail release would cost more than the downloadable version, the team added value with new content.

When it came to deciding the new content, Sonic Team followed Sonic Mania ' s way of giving stimulus to fans’ curiosities and expectations by adding Ray and Mighty, two highly requested characters, to the game, despite the two characters being considered "sealed characters" by Iizuka; to accommodate them, level designs had to be altered. When the team had to decide on Mighty and Ray's special actions, Mighty received his "Hammer Drop" after the team reflected on his "strong guy" setting and hard shell, while Ray received his "Air Glide" as a callback to his species. Multiplayer was also updated to have up to four players at once because there were more characters to select from.

Encore Mode
Sonic is transported to Angel Island by the Phantom Ruby. He traverses the land and finds Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel trapped within a capsule. After freeing them, the Heavy Magician reveals herself to have been disguised as one of the prisoners (the one that the player did not select to team up with). She steals the Phantom Ruby, leaving Sonic and his new teammate to chase her down. The Heavy Magician gives the Phantom Ruby to the wrecked remains of the Phantom King, among the other Phantom Heavies. The Phantom King then uses the Ruby to restore the Hard Boiled Heavies, leaving Sonic and his teammate to begin hunting them down in Green Hill Zone.

New features

 * Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel will be featured as playable characters. Like the original playable characters, Mighty and Ray play similarly to Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. These two characters also have moves exclusive to themselves: Mighty has the Hammer Drop which let him do a downward Spin Attack that can destroy obstacles, and Ray has the Air Glide which lets him glide large distances through midair.
 * A fully playable Angel Island Zone will be added as a brand new Zone.
 * The Competition Mode will be expanded to allow up to four players.
 * An "Encore Mode" will be added to the game. This mode features remixed Zones with visual changes, such as different color pallets and gimmicks. Players can also switch between the five playable characters when the button prompt shows up.
 * A new pinball Bonus Stage in the style of Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball gameplay and the way players choose from characters in Knuckles' Chaotix will be available in Encore Mode as well. Some of the prizes are additional characters who become playable after one of them who were already playable gets knocked out in-game.
 * A save and playback function of speedrun attempts.
 * Optimized difficulty for boss fights.

Promotion
With the announcement of Sonic Mania Plus, a wave of promotional material was announced. Those buying the physical version of Sonic Mania Plus will receive a holographic slip cover, a reversible SEGA Genesis or Sega Mega Drive-themed sleeve (for the United States and Europe, respectively), and a 32-page art book.

Exclusive to Japan, the physical release of Sonic Mania Plus will include limited edition packages that feature artbooks and the game's soundtrack on CDs. The soundtrack will be a double disk album with fifty-four tracks, which not only include all the songs featured on Data Discs' Sonic Mania album release (which contained all of the original tracks in the game and will be back in stock for the launch of Sonic Mania Plus), but also nearly all of the “re-imagined” classic Zone songs (excluding compositions by Masato Nakamura). In addition, there are four Sonic Mania Plus bonus tracks included, along with all Hyper Potions tracks, including "Time Trial Plus" with Crush 40’s Jun Senoue on guitar.

There will also be a SEGA Shop Japan exclusive Deluxe package containing physical goodies like a t-shirt, canvas purse, and stickers.

Trivia

 * This is the first game that Mighty returns as a playable character since Knuckles' Chaotix in 1995, while Ray has not been playable in any game since his debut in SegaSonic the Hedgehog in 1993.
 * In addition, this is the first 2D sidescroller Sonic game that Ray appears in.
 * Some players accidentally got an unintended patch for Sonic Mania for PlayStation 4 in the UK on April 17, 2018. The patch added transitions to stages that lacked them in the original (such as going from Flying Battery Zone to Press Garden Zone), options to use the No Save mode special abilities, a no time limit mode, a completely redesigned Metal Sonic boss, new menus, and the option to download the Encore DLC (which currently is not functioning).
 * Sonic Mania Plus ' trailer theme song ("Time Trial Plus") is a modification of "Time Trials" by Hyper Potions featuring Jun Senoue on guitars. This is the second time the trio have performed together, if including a live performance at Magfest 2018.
 * Mighty and Ray's high speed running animations resemble the ones they performed in SegaSonic the Hedgehog.
 * Ray uses his tail as well as his hands when moving across bars. This is a technique that he could perform in SegaSonic the Hedgehog.
 * One of Ray's idle animations depicts him looking out into the distance in a pose similar to a piece of [[media:Sonic-I-JP-Art-XII.png|artwork]] from the original Sonic the Hedgehog. One of Mighty's idle animations has him holding out his hands and looking at the player in an impatient tone, similar to Sonic in the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Videos
Trailer = Dev Diary 1 (Art and Design) =