Before it gets Sonic Mania Plus out of the door, Sega has updated Sonic Mania with a new patch that adds quite a bit. With complaints about the lack of stage transitions in the base game, each zone now has a stage transition to help better connect levels.
Over on Reddit and ResetEra, a number of other changes have been noted with this patch. It’s now possible to skip cutscenes, menus have been changed, the Time Limit can be disabled and the Metal Sonic boss fight has seen one phase overhauled (other phases have also seen tweaks). All levels have seen a number of graphical changes and there are new sound effects as well. The new boss, by the way, is worth checking out for yourself.
More changes will be on the way with Sonic Mania Plus which adds two new playable characters (Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel), a four player competitive mode and a brand new game mode on top of this. It arrives in mid-2018 for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC.