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Things have been a little quiet for Sonic Superstars news this month. Other than an appearance at San Diego Comic Con, most of the time spent with Sonic Superstars news has been simply waiting for when SEGA and Sonic Team are ready to reveal more on the game. Today, however, has changed that with the publishing of a new issue of Game Informer magazine, complete with loads of new information on the game.
First, let's check out the amazing cover artwork for the latest GameInformer issue, created by none other than Mark Hughes - aka @thesketchsector!
So, where to begin with the information itself, then? Well, first things first, we now know the names of the first 7 zones of the game. Bridge Island and Speed Jungle, we've seen plenty of in the past month. Game Informer, however, introduces us to 4 more. Sky Temple, inspired by Sky Sanctuary from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, occurs after Speed Jungle and one act that goes for 9 minutes long.
The next zone is Carnival Pinball, which we briefly saw in the Nintendo Direct footage from last month. Lagoon City then follows, which seems to be the game's water zone. This is followed by Sand Sanctuary, a desert zone. The final zone that Game Informer mentions is Press Factory, but we know little about it because it was the moment the zone's name appeared that Game Informer's time with the game concluded.
There is also a zone called Golden Capital, but it isn't known where it fits in the zone order. In fact, the name may have been accidentally confirmed via the names of screenshots Game Informer uploaded of the zone.
There are still 5 unknown zones, and there are some of levels, including the one seen in the reveal trailer where we got to see the characters become pixelated, that don't immediately seem to have association with any of the named zones. What we do know, however, is that there are exclusive acts. For example, Sonic has an exclusive act in Act 2 of Speed Jungle. Amy Rose receives an exclusive act in Act 2 of Lagoon City, and there's an interesting part in the very end of the level where Amy escorts Trip to safety.
What is, perhaps, the most interesting part of these exclusive acts is that Game Informer says that they're "seemingly optional". You don't necessarily have to do Sonic's exclusive act, for example, as the game will asking you after clearing a level if you want to do his exclusive act next, or a regular one.
Oh, but that's not all. Not even close. According to Game Informer, the game has a world map, which they describe as "reminiscent of Sonic Generations' hub where you are running around a 2D plane and selecting your zone". Speaking of selecting Zones, Game Informer seems to be suggesting that you don't have to do multiple full playthroughs of the game just to play all the levels again with a different character. You can now apparently change characters on the fly in between playing zones and pick up where you left off to your own heart's content. It sounds similar to Sonic Mania's Encore Mode, but it's now the main game.
So, with all that said, now we have to talk about the emerald powers. We already knew of Avatar, which causes a bunch of clones of your character to appear, so nothing new to report there. We already knew of Water, which allows Sonic to swim up waterfalls. But Game Informer and Takashi Iizuka revealed that this ability isn't limited to just waterfalls. It can be used to swim underwater too! Vision, an emerald power we learned in the Nintendo Direct, does exactly what we thought it was. It allows us to see hidden stuff. Iizuka, however, told Game Informer that there's an indicator that will let players know that there's any interesting stuff that's hidden in their general area.
What makes this information particularly interesting is that, not only did we get new details about emerald powers we already know, we finally know all of the other emerald powers. Bullet, an ability where you can blast a character in a any direction you want, was revealed. Ivy allows your character to grow a vine where they stand and direct its growth in a certain direction. Slow, well, slows everything down on the screen.
And the 7th emerald power may be the most interesting of all. It's an ability that is exclusive to each character. Sonic gets a Homing Attack, Knuckles gets a Punch, Amy can throw her hammer, and Tails can create a tornado (Tornado Spin) that will follow the ground and take out enemies in its way. There's also an 8th emerald power that all the characters can use, but we'll refrain from saying much more about it to avoid spoilers. You can probably guess what it is though!
The final major bit of information we got, other than descriptions of the various bosses Sonic and his friends will encounter (for example, Carnival Pinball features Eggman in a roulette wheel), is that we finally know what collecting those gold medals do. There's a shop on the world map that will allow you to purchase various cosmetics for your characters. They include cosmetic parts for the head, body, arms and legs. There are also patterns, colors, accessories, and something that Game Informer says is called "prototype". That is all we know, unfortunately, as Game Informer isn't entirely sure how it will work, and they said that Takashi Iizuka "played coy" whenever they asked him about it.
And that's everything. The game still has a "Fall 2023" release, but it's safe to say that it probably won't stay this way for much longer. Not only has Game Informer stated that they will have more Sonic Superstars-related news to share, but Gamescom is next month. So, it's very likely that we'll know by the end of August. So, we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, all this news from Game Informer came with a lot of screenshots. You can see them all in the gallery below.
Via Game Informer
Shiny Gems
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