Sonic Riders | DJcube

Who needs wheels when you’ve got air?

NA release: 21st February 2006
JP release: 23rd February 2006
EU release: 17th March 2006
Developer: Sonic Team, Now Production
Publisher: Sega
NGC Magazine Score: 75%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

A Sonic Racing game that decides it didn’t want to do the most obvious thing with a kart racer (although Sonic would then go on to have some great kart racers). Instead, it focuses on trick-based racing and refrains from having items, relying more on skill and getting to grips with the game’s mechanics, which is harder said and done.

It sounds like it should be simple, but, despite playing the game multiple times, I just can’t get to grips with it. You perform tricks (which get ranked), which turns into “air” (what the game calls boost), which lets you go faster. You have to combine this with turning and cornering, with sharp tuns that, despite the game telling you what buttons to press (covering up far too much of the game), don’t seem to always work.

With no items in the game, Sonic Riders has its own unique catch up mechanic. A large stream of air comes off the leading players, creating a half-pipe. This gives everyone behind more chance to perform tricks for boosts, as well as making corners really easy. The game does contently tell you to zig-zag on these airpipes, with another distracting icon.

One unique mechanic I really like is the start of the race. You can walk backwards and forwards with a timer counting down to the start of the race. The aim is to run up to top speed and cross the line very quickly after it reaches zero. Get there earlier and you hit a wall of electricity. It’s a lot better than the usual boost starts.

I also have to call out the two Sega Carnival levels, both of which are unlockable and not part of the main story. These have small sections made up from different Sega games, and even have unique mechanics form them, with the Crazy Taxi section having an arrow for direction and the Chu Chu one having panels that push you around.

There are also three kind of racers: Speed, Fly and Power. These have unique shortcuts in levels, with speeds character being able to grind on rails, fly characters being able to fly through rings and power characters being able to smash through walls – although any non-power character behind them can then also use their shortcuts.

While they don’t always seem to work, it’s great to see some unique ideas in a racing spin-off of a platformer game. I do think this needed fine tuning and figuring out how to implement these mechanics in a better way, but some elements were just dropped in later games. Even if you don’t get to grips with how everything works, it’s still an enjoyable racer.

Fun

But no matter how generous Sonic Riders is, and how occasionally, breathtakingly thrilling it can be, there are simple too many problems and frustrations present to allow the game to be the 3D Sonic we’ve all been waiting for.
Martin Kitts, NGC Magazine #118

Remake or remaster?

While a re-release of the previous games (including a non-Kinectified Free Riders) would be nice, I’d love to see a new attempt using the mechanics of the first.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Sonic Riders.