Sonic Mania's director, Christian Whitehead, has confirmed that Sonic Superstars will use the same physics engine, noting that it has been "fully translated to 3D".
One of the biggest surprises at Summer Game Fest last week was Sonic Superstars, a new 2D adventure that not only allows you to play cooperatively with your friends (local only, I'm afraid), but also updates the graphics to make them 3D. Since the reveal trailer was fairly short, it left a lot of questions about how Superstars played, something that's slowly become clearer thanks to gameplay demos and comments from developers.
One of the biggest questions that Sonic fans have had since seeing Superstars is about its physics engine, something that's always a big deal when it comes to new Sonic releases. Since Superstars is being developed in-house by Sonic Team and Arzest, and not by the Mania developers, fans have wondered if it uses a similar physics engine, as we've all seen how badly it can go before with games like Sonic 4.
Thankfully, reports from those who got to play the game at Summer Game Fest Play Days suggested that the physics were basically one-to-one. Now, it's been confirmed by Sonic Mania's director that there's reason for that - they are the same. Christian Whitehead responded to a comment on Twitter that confirmed that fact, noting that the mechanics had been "fully translated" from 2D to 3D.
Responding to a tweet that compared Mania's physics to Superstars, Whitehead said, "Will have more to say on this when it's appropriate, but the Mania physics were indeed fully translated to modern 3D". This confirms that, apart from the co-op and new abilities that Sonic and friends have, Superstars will play extremely similarly to Sonic Mania.
Considering all of the gameplay footage that we've seen so far has made Superstars look very similar to Mania, this isn't too surprising, but it's certainly good news. Mania was largely praised as being one of the best-feeling Sonic games in years, so it's the perfect base to work from when making a new game.
The use of Mania's physics engine when making Sonic Superstars does make it a little stranger that the team behind the game didn't return to make Superstars. It was revealed by VGC last week at Summer Game Fest that that was almost meant to be the plan, but that the deal fell through and didn't end up happening. This led to Naoto Ohshima's (one of the original creators of Sonic) company Arzest working on Sonic Superstars instead, which seems to have turned out well.