Sonic Mania's new release date and trailer will make you believe in the hedgehog again

Sonic Mania's return to '90s high-speed sidescrolling action has a release date: August 15. It also has a new trailer with equal parts lovely sketch animations, nostalgia-laden pixel art, and some rad chiptune rock.

If you're one of those lapsed Sonic fans who wishes Sega would go back to the good old Genesis days, this is your moment. Or if you're more excited to see the future of Sonic with Sonic Forces, Sonic Mania should at least be a nice little appetizer at just $19.99 (UK price TBA). It'll be available on PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.

For more needlemouse nostalgia, read our list of the best Sonic games of all time, or join us as we explain 59 Sonic games each in 10 words or less.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.

Latest in Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic Unleashed Recompiled
Sonic fans are leading the charge on a new preservation tool that can help give any Xbox 360 game a native PC port
Jet The Hawk, Shadow The Hedgehog, Sonic The Hedgehog, Knuckles The Echidna, and Tails The Fox race towards us on a variety of vehicles in Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, emerging from ring portals depicting various levels from Sonic history
Sonic driving a car in Sonic Racing: Crossworlds makes perfect sense, and after 30 years I'm sick of explaining why
Sonic Racing CrossWorlds
Sonic Racing CrossWorlds announcement trailer proves Sega is coming for Mario Kart 9's throne with transforming cars and a closed beta this month
BioWare's Sonic The Hedgehog RPG "actually uses Dragon Age: Origins dialogue system heavily streamlined to fit on the Nintendo DS"
Knuckles
21 years on, Sonic Heroes voice actor reveals that Knuckles was responsible for the games' first curse word, not Shadow
Shadow brandishes a gun in Sonic The Hedgehog 3
With Sonic, Persona, and Yakuza under its belt, Sega thinks making a subscription service like Xbox Game Pass would be "very interesting"
Latest in News
Jordan A. Mun looks at herself in a mirror in just a vest in Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet screenshot
5 years after starting development, Neil Druckmann says Naughty Dog's new game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is "still evolving and changing as we're making it"
Silent Hill f
After 2 years of silence, the next mainline Silent Hill game is getting a dedicated stream this week with "the latest news"
Original Xbox console
Former Microsoft exec says the first Xbox was killed early in favor of 360 because it was "losing money left right and center," but luckily "we could afford to hemorrhage cash"
A Monster Hunter Wilds character holding binoculars.
Despite Monster Hunter Wilds suffering monstrous performance problems on PC, it still outsold the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions in the US
Jordan A. Mun looks at herself in a mirror in just a vest in Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet screenshot
The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann says Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will also be about "being lonely," as if his zombie apocalypse wasn’t isolating enough: "I really want you to be lost"
A screenshot of Jordan drinking a soda during the reveal trailer for Intergalactic: The Hertic Prophet.
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is "a game about faith and religion," which Neil Druckmann jokes will surely get less hate than The Last of Us 2