primary attribute. Swell. Put ‘em in a spate of platformers that helped define the 16-bit

era. As it’s been seen, judging from Sonic The Fighters and other failed attempts at

spinoff games, that’s where they belong and that’s where they should stay. (Unless

there’s pinball happening, that’s apparently perfectly fine.) But when the Saturn hit,

Sega needed to parade their shiny blue hedgehog around wherever anyone could see it, and if

that means making an utterly deplorable racing game, well, so be it. After all, it just MAKES

SO MUCH SENSE.

Or it would, if the game was just about racing. We’ve seen racing done well in Sonic before,

in the versus mode of Sonic 3. Just take the platforming that made the series playable

in the first place, put two characters head to head to get from point A to point B, BAM.

You’ve got the answer. Instead, Sonic R uses low-poly characters running through terrifyingly

convoluted tracks, which compensate for their poor design by mercifully presenting you with

only... five. Five tracks in the entire game, one of which is locked. And four racers, Dr.

Robotonic (who’s locked until you beat the game), and four more hidden characters (locked

until you collect the five Sonic coins in each track and then get third or better in

the race). That’s right, it’s a racing collectathon, just like Diddy and Banjo’s

Theoretical Kart Frustration Solution. It wouldn’t be bad if you could scout out and

explore a track outside of the context of a race, so you could figure out your line

and actually stand a chance. That is, if the controls deign to allow you your intended

direction. But the time trial mode doesn’t have rings or emblems or anything to help

you figure this crap out. And don’t get me started about trying to find Chaos Emeralds

in each track, or the doors that only open if you’ve collected enough rings, and that

you can’t learn in time trials anyway. Heck, even Mega Man Battle & Chase knew where to

tone it down. That was mostly a control issue. This game WISHES it was just a control issue.

And then the soundtrack. Heck, even Sonic the Fighters kinda got a pass on the back

of a decent musical score, but playing this game I just kinda feel embarrassed for whoever

they got to sing these clunkers. I’ve had quesadillas less cheesy than these lyrics.

This is another one of those games sharing the title of “gems” with Sonic CD, which

is kinda laughable. Just stick to your Sonic 3 versus mode and leave this one be, else

you’ll get... um, honestly, I don’t even know what just happened there. Except that

Amy seems to be stuck in a wall. Oh well, at least she’s not shouting “HI I’M

AMY!!!” every eight seconds. Then she’d have to get into a deathmatch with the background

vocalist and... well, maybe the world WOULD be a better place.