Sonic Mania Plus: Encore Mode Prologue: Angel Island Zone

Here's the start of Plus' Encore Mode. I also plan to have a separate new playlist of the regular Mania Mode with ALL 6 CHARACTER OPTIONS (Sonic & Tails, Sonic Only, Tails Only, Knuckles, Mighty, Ray).

This could be an alternate take on what happens to Sonic after the final battle against Eggman and Phantom King in Egg Reverie Zone. Sonic finally gets the Phantom Ruby from those villains, but loses the Chaos Emeralds. The Phantom Ruby then warps itself and Sonic all the way back the the very beginning of his Mania adventure, which had him start out in Sonic 3 & Knuckles' Angel Island Zone.

The Phantom Ruby then floats away from Sonic, and now Sonic has to go after it again!
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Angel Island Zone is a compressed remake of the first half of its original Act 1 form. Every rock you find here can be smashed through from the side, though some far-off areas and hidden areas are sealed off, such as the very first big Special Stage ring location or the underground spot that you had to push a rock out of the way to get to. Besides all of the original Badniks of this zone, there's also a new one in the first small water section called a Sweep, and it was apparently going to be used in Sonic 2's Chemical Plant...

Simply put, I wanted to explore every nook and cranny of this place before I moved on.
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After reaching the point where Angel Island's jungles would've been set a blaze, Sonic instead encounters a special Egg Capsule alongside the Phantom Ruby. This capsule contains two very, VERY old friends, Mighty the Armadillo, and Ray the Flying Squirrel.

After setting Mighty and Ray free, you get to choose which one of the two you team up with. I chose Mighty for this, so Ray ended up being poofed away by none other than the Heavy Magician, who survived all of the onslaught Sonic, Tails and Knuckles had on Eggman's Titanic Monarch.

After the game never lets Sonic catch the Phantom Ruby again, Heavy Magician just quickly stuffs it in her hat like it was nothing, and then makes Sonic and his partner go after her.
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Mighty is essentially a Sonic that's even stronger than Knuckles. His exclusive technique is called Hammer Drop, where he quickly drops down and smashes through any breakable obstacles, including enemies and item monitors. He can also use this move to shake items down from things like trees.

His shell also gives him an awesome ability to bounce off of spikes while he's in his ball form, but he can only do this once before he has to land on solid ground. Using a Hammer Drop on spikes will make him flinch backwards, but that won't actually hurt him, either. However, the mercy invincibility he gets right afterwards will be shorter than usual, so you still kinda have to think fast.
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Once Sonic catches up the Heavy Magician, its right where Magician meets up with the rest of her team of Hard-Boiled Heavies. They were all almost completely destroyed, but then Heavy Magician hands the Phantom Ruby to Heavy King... who just barely manages to activate its power, again!

A new adventure awaited Sonic from there, and this time, instead of 2 friends, he'll now have 4 friends to help him out!