In our last preview of Sonic Mania, we had pointed out that while gameplay footage hinted at the inclusion of Special Stages, we had yet to see any of them in action. Well, it was confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con that they are indeed in the game, and now we finally get to see some full gameplay footage of them, complete with Bonus Stages and a clip from the Time Attack mode, all of which you can check out in the video below.

The Bonus Stages bring back the classic "Blue Spheres" levels from Sonic the Hedgehog 3, where after collecting enough rings and jumping through a set of stars, you traverse a section of a giant sphere, collecting all the blue spheres and avoiding the red ones. The Special Stages, though (accessed through giant rings hidden in each level), are modeled more after the Mode 7-ish ones from Sonic CD, but with a twist. This time, you only have to chase down one UFO that's running away with a Chaos Emerald, while collecting blue spheres to increase your Mach level to catch up with them, all while making sure you don't fall off of the track. It even comes complete with low-poly versions of the characters to fit in with the era (a call back to Sonic X-Treme, perhaps?).

Finally, we get a little bit shown of the Time Attack, or rather, one particular feature in Time Attack sure to please speedrunners. Should you ever feel like you've made a fatal mistake at any time, you can seamlessly reload the level just at the push of a button and begin again. So it looks like Sonic Mania is going to have a lot of fun extras in it when it launches for all major consoles and PC on August 15, and make sure to stay tuned then for our review of the game.