If you’ve been playing Sonic Mania, you may probably have noticed by now that there seems to be a connection between Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces.

Sonic Team head honcho Takashi Iizuka has formally confirmed that there indeed is a connection between both games, and players can finally get the full picture once they have played both titles.

Last month, in August, was released a game called Sonic Mania that got a really warm welcome from everyone in the community from all the fans, especially abroad, a lot of people enjoyed playing it. And I really hope that if you played Sonic Mania, you get to play Sonic Forces too because you may think those titles are unrelated, but actually they may not be… definitely I want you guys to check out both titles because there’s something going on between the two. And I’m going to keep it at this right now.

One such connection that players have discovered is the same Sonic Mania sound effect that is used by Infinite in Sonic Forces.