Video Game / Sonic Mania & Hatsune Miku

"Be Miku. Be Cool."

"This mod contains totally fictitious representations of companies and people. Please don't sue us."
[ OK ]

— The opening disclaimer, warning of the many things to come....

Sonic Mania & Hatsune Miku is a 2018 PC fan-made modification of the SEGA game, Sonic Mania created by Tracker_TD. It replaces the titular character with that of the popular Vocaloid, Hatsune Miku. While it is mostly a re-skin of the original game keeping the core mechanics of Mania, it surprisingly features an original story plot, cutscenes, remixed music mashups and even characters.

The plot is as follows: While performing at a concert in Tokyo, virtual idol and popstar Hatsune Miku is suddenly pulled into a mysterious portal created by the Phantom Ruby and transported into the world of Sonic while also finding herself inexplicably wearing the 20th Anniversary Sonic Miku outfit, which somehow grants her all of Sonic's powers.

An equally bewildered Tails explains to her that the CEO of Crypton Future Media has commenced an invasion of the world alongside various corporate sponsors and past affiliates of Miku with the intent of installing her as the planet's mascot, as well as gaining control of the entirety of SEGA. Worse, the actual Sonic has also disappeared after his last endeavour. Miku then decides to help Tails out to free Sonic's home from the clutches of her parent company and restore peace to the world while finding a way back to her own.

...yeah.

Despite the wacky premise, the mod has received much praise from the community as a whole due to the astounding amount of content put into it as well as the musical mashups of Mania's soundtrack. The brand new opening cutscene for the mod can be watched here.

The mod can be downloaded from here, as long as you own the original Sonic Mania game on Steam. A bonus Game Mod of Sonic 1 that replaces Sonic with Miku and Eggman with Kasane Teto is also bundled with the download.

This game mod provides examples of:

• Affectionate Parody: Of the whole issue of corporate collaborations and the selling out of brands and people. Each stage takes a known Miku collaboration and then pumps the imagery up to ridiculous levels.
• Alliterative Name: Several stage titles have been altered with this in mind:
  • Anime Aircraft Zone ^note originally Flying Battery Zone
  • Deluge Dancehall Zone ^note originally Hydrocity Zone
  • DLC Dunes Zone ^note originally Mirage Saloon Zone
  • Mobage Mines Zone ^note originally Lava Reef Zone
• Badass Cape: The CEO of Crypton Future Media sports a red flowing cape, to go with his sterotypically evil Dragon Ball Z villain-styled outfit.
• Battle Cry: In the mod's original release, the memetic/annoying "NICO NICO NIIIIII!" soundbyte is heard immediately before the Tunnelbot, piloted by Nico Yazawa herself comes crashing down during Mobage Mines Act 1's Boss stage. Averted in the Sonic Mania Plus version, where the Tunnelbot and Nico are replaced by Michelle the bear who has no memetic/annoying catchphrase in her canon.
• Big Bad: The CEO of Crypton Future Media, with most of Eggman's boss fights edited to feature the former fighting against Miku in his bid to take over all of Little Planet and SEGA.
• Boss Rush: The Hard Boiled Heavies are still present, but the lineup is emboldened by the appearance of other characters, namely the past corporate sponsors of Miku.
  • Heavy Magician's illusions have been replaced with Yowane Haku, Akita Neru and Kasane Teto in DLC Dunes Zone.
• Crossover: Mainly between Sonic the Hedgehog and the Vocaloid character, Hatsune Miku, amongst others.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Heavy Rider's Boss battle in Mobage Mines/Lava Reef Act 2 is replaced with Iori Minase driving a police car while swinging a helpless Pooka around for her flail. Heavy Rider herself however appears unaltered in the Boss Rush section of Miku Expo Act 2's Boss stage.
  • Kasane Teto, who was the Big Bad in the Miku in Sonic 1 rom hack, also by Tracker_TD, is reduced to being one of the characters Heavy Magician can transform into during her boss fight, replacing Bark the Polar Bear.
• Developer's Foresight: Seriously. Almost all the sprites and instances of Miku^note namely Super Sonic Miku, shrunken-down form (including shrunken-down Super Sonic Miku) in Family Mart Zone or any of the altered bosses were edited seamlessly into the game. Even the Blue Sphere and Special Stages have custom sprites and 3D models specifically for Sonic Miku.
• Excuse Plot: Really, Crypton's CEO trying to take over SEGA and the world is just an excuse to put Hatsune Miku into the world of Sonic Mania and have her fight an armada of funny references.
• Foreshadowing: Noid's advertising billboards and Domino's branding in Dominopolis and DeepDish Cheeseway foreshadows his attempted comeback in the latter level's Act 2.
• Funny Background Event: The developer changed many of the stage details, including the backgrounds to facilitate the new plot.
  • The eyes of the Puyo Puyo blobs can be seen in the chemical liquids in Shampuyo Factory Zone.
  • One of the Eggrobos flying alongside Heavy Gunner in Dominopolis Act 1 is carrying a slice of pizza instead of a police baton. The emergency broadcast headline after defeating the boss of Act 2 also reads, "BREAKING: SONIC PIRATES ANIME!"
  • The panel seen right before Anime Aircraft Act 1's Boss shows a message: "CRUNCHYROLL PREMIUM REQUIRED."
  • The various constellations seen in the sky of DeepDish Cheeseway Act 1 features Sonic Miku, Domino's logo, the Noid and the smiling face of the CEO of Domino's Japan. The gaudy Eggman statue near the end of Act 2's boss battle is also replaced with a giant Domino's pizza box.
  • The True Ending's boss stage has Sonic the Hedgehog's splash screen textured within the rolling storm clouds.
• Game Mod: It's one for Sonic Mania.
• Green Hill Zone: As explained in Serial Escalation below, this the only level almost completely visually unmodified from Mania, save for Act 2's boss and its Encore Mode palette.
• Hero Antagonist: Super Sonic, having abruptly returned from the events of Sonic Forces attacks both the Crypton CEO and Miku in the True Ending, having not recognised either and assuming both of them were the bad guys.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The idol and supposed mascot of Crypton Future Media's prospective world is the very person attempting to bring it down throughout the game.
• Made of Incendium: Pepsea Max Zone, being a re-skin of Oil Ocean Zone, illogically renders the ocean of Pepsi Cola as HIGHLY FLAMMABLE.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: With many of Miku's past sponsors and collaborations, the list is huge. There are characters and references to the Vocaloid series, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA, Puyo Puyo, Love Live!, The Idolmaster, and many, many more.
• Multiple Endings: Being a mod of Mania, it inherits this mechanic depending on if you've obtained all the Chaos Emeralds or not.
  • The Normal Ending: Miku escapes the exploding Miku Expo Zone and simply returns to Tokyo, finishing her concert, but sometimes wondering if she would ever see the strange world of Sonic again...
  • The True Ending: Super Sonic Miku defeats both the Crypton CEO and Super Sonic, triggering the Phantom Ruby's power. Miku and Sonic are teleported back to Green Hill Zone, where Sonic explains his disappearance and then apologizes to Miku for attacking her. Having saved Sonic's world, Miku returns to Japan, finishing her concert, which was a smashing success. The Epilogue explains the fates of the various Bosses as seen below in "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The various real-life figures featured in the mod are not explicitly referred to by name, but just implied to avoid any legal issues.
  • The CEO of Crypton Future Media greatly resembles its current president, Hiroyuki Itoh.
  • Scarlett Johansson is heavily implied to be the boss of Shampuyo Factory Act 1, being a reference to a weird collaborative advertising campaign involving her and Miku. The trope is enforced in the epilogue where her name was cut off as "Scarl- ahem, LUX's main model".
  • Averted for the Domino's Japan's CEO, Scott Oelkers. Dominopolis Act 1's theme is that of Studiopolis' mashed up with sound bytes taken from the infamous promotional video of Miku-branded pizza boxes and the related app. The TV station multi-screens in Act 2 even plays a loop of the opening snippets from the same video before fading out to the Domino's logo. The level also concludes with Scott himself piloting the Weather Globe Eggmobile.
• Palette Swap: Really, many of the game's sprites have either been slightly altered, or changed completely.
  • The Death Egg Robot from Green Hill Zone Act 2 is just re-coloured green, but the sprite of Eggman has been replaced with that of the Crypton CEO.
  • Anime Aircraft Act 2's Spider boss is also this, but changed to orange, the abdomen changed to that of the Crunchyroll logo, and finally piloted by Crunchyroll-hime herself.
• Product Placement: Exploited in-universe by Crypton's CEO and his allies. On a meta level, it is Played for Laughs by the mod developer, just to poke around for fun. Dominopolis takes this up to eleven, by spamming the Domino's logo and having most of the SEGA-related advertisements retained. Even the Noid gets in on the action with his billboards appearing in that stage, before his imagery completely takes over DeepDish Cheeseway. Pepsea Max Zone also has oil cisterns marked with the Pepsi logo while Family Mart Madness has their logos printed all over the background.
• Punny Name: Some of the level titles.
  • Shampuyo Zone is a portmanteau of 'shampoo' and 'Puyo' from Puyo Puyo.
  • Pepsea Max Zone, it being a sea of Pepsi.
• Rage Against the Author: Miku is essentially doing this in-universe, as she flatly decides during the intro that she wanted no part of a world ruled in her image by the CEO of Crypton Future Media.
• Serial Escalation: Green Hill Zone initially starts off with almost no visual modifications save Miku, and then the altered stage names begin popping up alongside the sprites of the bosses. Then the music gets more and more mashed up with whatever the altered theme of the stage is. The subsequent stages add an increasing amount of visual and audio modifications until you forget that you were ever playing Sonic Mania. Word of God confirmed this trope was intentional during his playthrough commentary.
• Sigil Spam: Dominopolis Zone had the Domino's logo popping up everywhere, replacing the windmills, advertising billboards, and neon signs.
• Shout-Out: Despite the numerous references to Miku and her history of corporate sponsors, several subtle left-field shout outs are added purely for comedic effect:
  • Anime Aircraft Zone is a barrage of anime references currently under publishing rights of Crunchyroll. Several mooks have been replaced with clones of Hamtaro and Guts, while various trash piles have extremely pixelated anime DVD covers. Even Act 1 and 2's background music is mashed up with the music of Kill la Kill^note "Until My Body is Dry" by Mika Kobayashi and David Whitaker and Eureka Seven^note "Shonen Heart" by Home Made Kazoku respectively.
  • DeepDish Cheeseway's Act 1's Boss spawning phase plays Magneto's infamous "WELCOME TO DIE!!!" sound byte from the 1992 X-Men Arcade game.
  • Family Mart Act 2's music is Metalic Madness Zone's Act 2 mashed up with of all things, Kanye West's "Good Life" and "I Am A God"^note Word of God claims it's a reference to a Youtube Poop reaction to the Miku-Family Mart ad.
  • Scott Oelkers is called the "President of Pizza" in the good ending, in reference to a YouTubePoop of the Domino's x Hatsune Miku promotion that opens with him introducing himself as such.
• Shown Their Work: The author of the mod did a bang-up job on visually editing the levels, as well as incorporating elements of the various references into the mod.
  • Shampuyo Zone add more blatant Puyo Puyo references, including Arle Nadja's appearance due to their connection to Mean Bean Machine, as well as the collaboration with Nadja's costume from the Project DIVA games respectively. In addition, the Amoeba Droid is re-shaped to look more like a SodaStream bottle (a nod to another unfortunate Scarlett ad), with Scarlett being a reference to a collaboration advertisement she did with Miku in 2016.
  • Dominopolis Zone is one drawn-out parody of the infamous Domino's X Hatsune Miku augmented reality pizza boxes promotion. The Noid also makes an appearance as the newscaster for Act 2's Boss battle.
  • Anime Aircraft Zone is laden with anime references as well as being owned by Crunchyroll, owing to the fact that Crunchyroll-hime is portrayed as an avid fan of Miku in several canon 4-komas made by the website.
  • News Three-Nine and Senbonzakura Zones shares their names with known Miku music.
  • DeepDish Cheeseway Zone has The Noid, Domino's old mascot character who used to play the Foil to the delivery staff in many of their promotions. The music takes sound bytes from the old games Avoid The Noid and the Yo Noid series. Noid himself also uses some of his signature equipment like the Pizza Crusher◊ against the player during his boss fight.
  • The title of DLC Dunes Zone is a reference to the various character downloadable content of Project DIVA 2nd; Yowane Haku, Akita Neru and Kasane Teto who incidentally appear on the Wanted Posters of Act 2 before being summoned as illusions by Heavy Magician during her boss fight. Mikudayo also cameos as the Uber Caterkiller Boss in Act 1.
  • Pepsiman's machine in Pepsea Max zone is based off the old 1990s Pepsi soda cans and still sporting the historically-appropriate Pepsi Globe. Pepsi's inclusion into the mod may have been inspired by them hosting the then-upcoming Miku US Concert Tour in 2018, with Pepsiman being added for hilarity and a throwback to the past.
  • Mobage Mines is a reference to the Japanese social mobile gaming platform which incidentally has Love Live and iDOLM@STER games on its belt. The two mentioned franchises have done collaborations with Miku in the past, Snow Miku having appeared alongside the cast of μ's. Miku has also made a cameo in The iDOLM@STER 2 as a rival character in DLC. In addition, Iori Minase is also supposedly dressed as a policewoman in reference to a series of artwork covers her character did for a Bandai Namco project. This also explains Pooka's cameo, being made by Namco and whatnot.
  • Family Mart Zone's music also uses sound bytes from a jingle Miku sang for their cross promotion campaign.
• Small Reference Pools: Most players would know of Domino's Pizza and maybe even the bizarre collaboration they did with Miku back in 2013, but very few players and Youtubers actually managed to recognise The Noid, Domino's old and largely-forgotten mascot from the 80s.
• Stealth Sequel: The mod supposedly takes place almost immediately after the events of Sonic Mania, but is also an Interquel to Sonic Forces, as the Final Boss includes a hostile Super Sonic just returning from said events of Forces. The mod's Sonic Mania Plus update ends with the opening shot of Sonic Mania Adventures, which itself takes places immediately after Forces.
• Take Over the World: Part of the Excuse Plot by the CEO of Crypton Future Media, along with the intention of taking over Sega.
• Take That!: In the True Ending, Sonic himself explains that he was helping another Sonic in an alternate dimension, which he admits "sounded kind of naff." Considering Forces and its mixed reception, it's hard to blame him.
• Visual Pun: Anime Aircraft Zone has various anime DVD covers mixed within the piles of rubbish. In short, anime is trash.
• Waddling Head: Well more like, Paddling Head, in the case of Tako-Luka's appearances in Deluge Dancehall Zone.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Delugue Dancehall Zone Boss, Tako-Luka's fate is never explained in the epilogue. Heavy King is also missing from the True Ending's final boss battle.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The game's Normal and True Endings have their own custom cutscenes detailing the (often hilarious) fates of the various bosses and the main characters.
  • Arle Nadja has now replaced the defeated Scarlett Johansson as LUX's main model, but with no understanding of shampoo commercials, her future is uncertain.
  • In the vanilla Sonic Mania version of the mod, Crunchyroll-hime is seen getting therapy with Monokuma in order to treat her Yandere personality. The narrator cheekily adds that while it did help her with her state of mind, it still did not help her get the streaming rights to Pretty Cure. In the Sonic Mania Plus version (which came out after Crunchyroll finally did get the rights to PreCure), Crunchyroll-hime assumes that an evil spirit was to blame and visits Arataka Reigen for help.
  • Following Pepsiman's defeat, PepsiCo melted him down and replaced him with Pepsi Convoy.
  • Iori Minase and the Mobage Mines Act 1 boss (Nico Yazawa in the vanilla version, Michelle the bear in the Plus version) were each sentenced to 5 years of jail for their scheme in Mobage Mines Zone, with their respective employers refusing to post bail for either of them.
  • The President of Domino's Japan and the Noid retreat to their secret Moon base to plan their revenge following the collapse of their pizza chain in Sonic's world.
  • Following his defeat, the banished Crypton Future Media CEO is forcibly teleported and crash lands into SEGA's staff carpark, while someone who definitely isn't Aaron Webber of SEGA looks on disapprovingly with baseball bat in hand, having earlier learned of his plans for the takeover...
  • The three Vocaloids Heavy Magician transformed into during his boss fight all go do what they usually do- Haku, for examples, goes binge drinking.
  • Hatsune Miku eventually returns to her world and even manages to complete her Tokyo concert in time in both endings.
  • The Plus version has an additional epilogue for Sonic. It's the first seconds of Sonic Mania Adventures.
• Yandere: A Flanderization of Crunchyroll-hime's known obsession with Miku, which Hand Waves why she is hostile to Miku in Anime Aircraft Zone.

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