Sonic Riders
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Sonic Riders is a racing game developed by Sonic Team in collaboration with NOW Production and published by Sega. It is a spin-off of the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and was released in 2006 for PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Windows to coincide with the franchise's 15th anniversary. It's also the final Sonic the Hedgehog game to be released for the Nintendo GameCube and original Xbox. The Game Boy Advance version was planned, but it was cancelled, possibly due to hardware limitations. It was also the last Sonic game to have direct involvement from series co-creator Yuji Naka before he left Sega in mid 2006 to form his own company Prope.
The game was followed by two sequels: Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity in 2008, and Sonic Free Riders in 2010.
Why It's One Heck of a Ride
- It's the first in the modern sonic racing games and was the first entry in the Sonic Riders series.
- Unlike most racing games at the time, it uses hoverboards known as Extreme Gear (or Gear for short), which takes elements from other hover board games like TrickStyle, AirBlade, and EyeToy: AntiGrav.
- 16 playable characters, including guests from Nights into Dreams, Space Channel 5, and Super Monkey Ball.
- Characters are separated into three classes; Speed, Flight, and Power, each with their own unique Extreme Gear and type of shortcuts.
- Players can perform a variety of stylish tricks when jumping off of specific ramps in the tracks, and the more tricks they can perform while landing correctly, the more Air they will receive.
- Players can also ride their opponent's slipstream to catch up with them and (if prompted) perform tricks along the way.
- If charged enough, the Air gauge will allow you to attack your opponents which can put them behind and boosts you to give you an edge in their position.
- The game's mechanics have several hidden depths to them: when jumping off ramps the player can hold the left stick upward to travel greater horizontal distance, and if the stick is held backwards the vertical height of the jump is increased. This can be used to access alternate routes.
- Entertaining story and dialogue, such as Sonic's "Even without wings, I can still fly!"
- Great graphics that pushed the 6th gen console's last legs to their limits.
- Rings acquired during races can be used to buy new Extreme Gear.
- There are 3 types of Gear: Boards, Skates and Bikes.
- Great voice acting from all of the characters (except for Jet, mentioned on BQ #6).
- Great soundtrack for the main theme and all of the tracks.
- This appears to be the ONLY good 15th anniversary game (aside from maybe Sonic Rivals), as games like Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis on the GBA and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) accompanied Riders.
Bad Qualities
- Just like with Sonic Heroes, the game's quality is inconsistent between the consoles, making it hard to pick which is the best one.
- The PlayStation 2 version does run smoothly at 60 FPS compared to the PS2 versions of Heroes and Shadow The Hedgehog, but it suffers from slighty downgraded graphics and longer loading times that can actually effect the mini clips on the menus and Omochao's voice clips during races (which have a tendency to pause his lines for a few seconds before finishing his sentence).
- The Xbox version has lower quality FMV that has a tendency to lag, despite being the most powerful console out of the three.
- Whilst the GameCube version has none of these issues, its main issue is the stick rotation itself as the controller's analog stick is shaped in an octagon rather than a circle and since this game has a lot of stick rotation, it can become an annoyance to rotate constantly. Sound familiar?
- The PC version is the worst version of the game due to it is just a lazy port of the Xbox version, because of this, some of the reasons are carried over from the Xbox version like choppy FMV cutscenes. In addition, the characters never move their eyes in Story Mode cutscenes, the music never stops when you pause the game and there's no exit button.
- There are some quirks to the racing; one example is grinding. Unlike other Sonic where your character will automatically grind on the rail when jumping on it, here you must press A to jump, then press A again to attach to the rail.
- Small number of tracks, at only eight tracks (sixteen if you count the tweaked versions of those tracks).
- Omochao is as annoying as the likes of the Mario Kart Arcade GP commentator.
- The game can be a bit complicated at first, while this isn't a problem but the tutorial is a demo video that appears if you don't touch the controller, new players may have a hard time if they don't know about this.
- Jason Griffith's performance for Jet the Hawk is kind of cringe-worthy, sounding almost the same as his performance as Usopp from the 4Kids dub of One Piece. Speaking of Jet...
- Him, Wave the Swallow, and Storm the Albatross don't have much personality aside from being the typical self-centered sport rivals for the majority of the game, but they do get character development which would continue in Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity.
- Unlocking the two Robots, E-10000G & E-10000R, can be a pain since you have to play for multiple hours to unlock them.
Reception
Sonic Riders received mixed-to-positive reception by critics, players, and Sonic fans alike and sold very strong that it managed to obtain a Player's Choice and Greatest Hits for the GameCube and PS2, respectively. On GameFAQs, the game has a user score of 4.00 out of 5 for GameCube and Xbox, as well as a score of 3.50 out of 5 for PS2.
Trivia
- Just like Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic 06 and the next game, it became a RealTimeFandub, and spawned memes like "Top 30 reasons why Sonic is sorry", "GameCube 2", "Fuck desks!" and "I nearly drowned like Scrooge McDuck!".
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