Sonic Mania – How to Change Characters, All Playable Characters

Sonic Mania brings the fun and joy of old-school Sonic games to the new generation of gaming consoles, including all the weird little quirks and features that fans grew up loving. Like many previous Sonic games, players can take on the role of multiple characters, allowing them to experience levels in slightly different ways—thereby experiencing a new story altogether. In this article we’ll talk about all the playable characters, how you can change to a different character, and more.

It should be noted that the at this time you cannot change characters mid-level. Instead you will need to leave the game and start a new save file.

All Playable Characters

Currently Sonic Mania offers three different characters for players to control and lead through the danger-filled levels that Eggman has placed before Sonic and his pals. Obviously, fans will be able to play as the blue hedgehog himself, but those who want to play as Tails—Sonic’s squirrely sidekick—can also do so. Finally, players can take on the role of Knuckles the Echidna, who’s story varies quite a bit from the others.

How to Change Characters

If you want to change characters in Sonic Mania, then there is one unfortunate downside—which we mentioned above. As of this moment, Sonic Mania’s character selection system works very similar to how it used to in older Sonic games. To change characters, you’ll need to make your way to the Main Menu, and then enter the game save area. Once here, highlight a new save file and then press the up and down buttons. This will allow you to change which character you want to use in the game, allowing you to experience all the levels from a few different vantages.

Once you have selected the character that you want to play as, you can go ahead and start the game up and play through it using that specific character. Unfortunately, there’s no way to change characters mid-game, as the stories do differ, so you’ll have to change the character through the save file menu. Want to unlock some epic goodies in Sonic Mania? Be sure to check out our Sonic Mania guides, where we have a slew of content available to help you unlock every secret that Sonic Mania has to offer.

You should also take a look at our guide on how to unlock debug mode, which will allow you to use several secret commands and options to mess around inside of Sonic Mania’s developer mode. You can also check out our guide on how to unlock level select, which will allow you to unlock the level select screen and choose where you want to start playing the game.