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Sonic Heroes
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Feels like Halloween with all these ghosts! 
— Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Heroes
Mystic Mansion is the twelfth stage in Sonic Heroes. It takes place within a haunted castle and an underground cave.
Description
In the mansion, the teams face even more strange things. Hallways go in infinite circles before straightening out, skeletons with mischievous smiles on their faces hide behind doors that go nowhere, paintings come to life as robots emerge from the walls, and huge spiderwebs hang above bottomless pits. Taking the Trolley mid-way through the stage reveals that it is built underground alongside a massive cave. There is a well in the mansion's center that opens up into a distorted, multicolored pocket dimension filled with pumpkin ghosts.
The pocket dimension has a strange water-like background inside of the well that changes color with the appropriate formation. Once the three formations are completed, the team (Sonic or Dark) arrive on the outside of the mansion in a giant reservoir with a Goal Ring in the center.
Mystic Mansion, much like Hang Castle, is filled with booby traps (such as the pumpkin-headed ghosts that appear, and the Trolleys). There is also a special enemy that only appears in Mystic Mansion and Hang Castle called the E-1009 Egg Bishop. These red-clad robots wear wizard caps and carry around a scepter. Instead of attacking, they can perform incantations or spells that heal their robot comrades when the player damages them. This robot also has a unique Jekyll and Hyde type design with two personalities, as they can flip over and transform into their alter ego, the E-1010 Egg Magician. This sinister blue robot can put a curse on the ground to create a vacuum that sucks rings from anyone unlucky enough to run into it. It will not flip faces of its own accord, only doing so if the player forces it to by creating a tornado in Speed Formation or by doing a Homing Attack with a level 3 Speed type character.
Story
After managing to get inside of the creepy fortress, Team Sonic must escape the mansion located within to intercept the Egg Fleet. Team Dark must escape to interrogate Eggman. Team Rose must escape to rescue Froggy and Chocola. Team Chaotix must put out the 60 red torches in the mansion to escape. When the level is beaten by Team Dark or Team Sonic, players will find themselves standing in a giant, ghostless, calm reservoir on top of Hang Castle.
Rank requirements
The following is a list of requirements to attain a rank for each mission with each team.[1]
Normal Missions
| Rank A
| Rank B
| Rank C
| Rank D
| Rank E
| Mission 1
| |
| Team Sonic
| 36,000 | 32,000 | 28,000 | 20,000 | <20,000 | Escape the haunted castle! |
| Team Dark
| 58,000 | 50,000 | 40,000 | 25,000 | <25,000 | Escape theĀ crazy castle! |
| Team Rose
| 45,000 | 40,000 | 35,000 | 25,000 | <25,000 | Escape the haunted house! |
| Team Chaotix
| 25,000 | 20,000 | 15,000 | 10,000 | <10,000 | Blow out allĀ the red torches! |
Extra Missions
| Rank A
| Rank B
| Rank C
| Rank D
| Rank E
| Mission 2
| |
| Team Sonic
| 36,000 | 32,000 | 28,000 | 24,000 | <24,000 | Get to the goal ring within 7 minutes! |
| Team Dark
| 11:00 | 11:30 | 12:00 | 13:00 | >13:00 | Defeat 100 enemies! (Time minutes.) |
| Team Rose
| 3:30 | 4:00 | 4:30 | 5:00 | >5:00 | Collect 200 rings! (Time in minutes.) |
| Team Chaotix
| 20,000 | 18,000 | 15,000 | 10,000 | <10,000 | Blow out all of the blue torches! |
Trivia
- Lasers will occasionally block the player's path in this level, but if Espio is invisible, he can slip through them unharmed.
- Aside from the access to the Team Chaotix edit for Rail Canyon exclusively used for thatĀ team, this is the only stage where all teams start at the exact same point.
- In the very first room, there is a picture of the whale-shaped island from Seaside Hill.
- The ring hallways cannot be accessed by Team Rose or Team Sonic (on normal mode). However, Team Sonic can access the hallways in Super Hard Mode, but there are only comments made in those locations forĀ Team Chaotix. The only location that has voice clips regarding another Team Chaotix area is at the spider web room near the lobby, which leads to another robot statue and picture frame room.
- The E-1006 Egg Hammer appears when the player falls off the edge which leads teams downstairs from the hallways in Super Hard Mode.
- Every time the player enters a room where the door has the usual skulls, another part of the level's music will be added until the player gets the full skull.
- The skeletons in Mystic Mansion resemble Jack Skellington, the main characterĀ from the Tim Burton madeĀ Disney film The Nightmare Before Christmas. This was most likely intentional. They also resemble the skeletons from Corpse Bride, another film madeĀ by Tim Burton.
- Team Rose is the only team to have another door located in three rooms with the giant skeleton statue, which is how they escape the castle.
- The standard pose of the giant skeleton resembles the skeleton in the stage select screen from Golden Axe, which also appears in Adder's Lair.
- The doors are also placed in the hexagonal cornered rooms in Team Chaotix's mission. One in the fan room is placed to block the team from getting to the skeleton room from the fan part of the structure, with collision detection behind the door to prevent glitching through it. Another is in the room with the hole to the well, placed to block the team from going into the wall crossing area.
- The three colors of the pocket dimension's areas represents the colors of the team formations; blue (Speed type), yellow (Fly type) and red (Power Type).
- The mipmap textures used for the Gamecube, PC, and Xbox versions are somehow not seen in the PS2 version. One mipmap texture has the skulls on the floor with bat decorations on it. Other ones are blue walls that do not have much of the green coloring on it, unlike Terror Hall's wall textures.
- In addition, the PS2 version uses a simpler texture effect for the pocket dimension area of the stage. A static texture that resembles a simple water surface pattern flows across the surfaces that surround the pocket dimension, as opposed to the dynamic special effect that resembles a rippling watery surface seen in all other versions of the game.
- It is possible for Team Rose to explore beyond their goal ring. At the skeleton part near the end of the stage, the player should hit the switch on the left side so the skeleton's hand is closer to the goal ring. They must Rocket Accel off the stage and instantly switch to Cream, then fly to the plate in his hand and then onto his head. The player will see the grind webs leading towards Team Sonic's level, and must use Cream to get through the hole in the wall. To get to Team Chaotix's section, the player should not touch the switch in the room with the second fan. Instead, they must glide to the top of the door, belly flop and then cancel the move by switching to Cream and fly to the area. To reach the spider web room using this team, aĀ Flower glitchĀ is required to be active and the torches must be lit in the lobby room with the Heavy-Egg hammer. The player must then jump onto the flower in the robot statue and picture room.
- The music is split into six different segments that change depending on where the player is in the stage. The first segment is exclusive to the starting point of the stage, whilst the pocket dimension at the end of the stage has an exclusive segment as well. These segments will loop endlessly until the player moves to the next area with a different music segment.
- This is the only stage in the game which features this segmented structure.
Music
| Name | Artist | Length | Music Track |
|---|---|---|---|
| STAGE 12 : MYSTIC MANSION | Naofumi Hataya, Jun Senoue | 2:43 |  |
Videos
See also
References
- ā Guess, Gerald (6 January 2004). Sonic Heroes: Prima's Official Strategy Guide. Prima Games. p. 159. ISBN 0761544496.
