"Sonic tries to do a Mario. Does he succeed?"

It's a sign of the times in the videogame industry when all the mascots copy each other. Nintendo first brought up the ''fun mascot kart with weapons'' genre with the classic Mario Kart on the SNES, a game which cannot fail to be mentioned in any review of a karting game. Since then many have tried to better it, and all have failed, including arguably the subsequent Mario Karts. Crash has tried, Konami tried with loads of their mascots, even Shrek and Wacky Races have been made into Kart games.

The Sonic series has always been a stiff competitor for the Mario series, and that didn't change with the Karting. The original Sonic Drift came out shortly after Mario Kart, on the Game Gear. It did so badly that it wasn't released outside Japan. Sonic Drift 2, also on the Game Gear, did though. Both were pretty awful compared to Mario Kart. But with the Saturn, Sonic Team allowed Traveller's Tales to have a stab at a Sonic Karting game.

And it's not all that bad to be honest, just rather short. It has most of the Sonic trademarks - loops, chaos emeralds, rings, power-ups (that unfortunately aren't in boxes here), a pinball table, springs, and boosts. Unfortunately they just don't come together very well.

At the start of the game you are presented with a four characters and four tracks, although by finishing first on these four tracks uncovers the final one, finishing that in first gets the fifth character, and collecting subsequent medals and chaos emeralds hidden around the tracks gets more characters up. Overall there are ten characters and five tracks, which unfortunately (track-wise) isn't that much.

However, the tracks are pretty large and this isn't much of a racing game, more of a free-roaming 3rd person game. You just have to complete laps. The exploration is emphasized with the amount of routes you can take around the tracks, the short cuts (intentional ones and dodgy ones, such as jumping over a wall) and the secrets you have to open with certain amounts of rings. The track design is really something special at times, and it has a familiar Sonic feel to the tracks and the choice of them which comes straight out of the traditional Sonic games.

The graphics themselves are pretty good for a Saturn. All the characters are nicely reproduced, and it uses fogging effects to draw the track into the distance (except on the last track which features many, many trasparencies). This looks decent enough in 1-player, but when in split screen 2-player it can look quite awful, as you fight through a thick-as-soup fog to see the track 10 metres ahead of you.

Sound-wise, the game is both good and bad. The music is good and the tunes are good, but the singing really is a mixed bag - some will like it, some will loathe it. Fortuately, there's an option to turn the singing on or off. The sound effects are taken straight out of the Sonic games of old, so no real problem there.

The characters themselves are rather good, and provide a good amount of variety. Sonic, as always, is fast but doesn't have a lot of grip, can rev up, roll, and double jump. Tails is not as fast as Sonic, has better grip, can rev up, roll, and fly (though you can't change his height in-flight and gets tired). Knuckles is slower than Tails, has damn good grip, can rev up, roll and glide (the manual claims he can climb, but is lying). Amy in her car just drives around, but can go over water and get a speed boost which makes her speed unbeatable but makes her practically impossible to control. Robotik hovers around, can hover over water (naturally), and has a missile that does nothin better than make his opponents jump. Ooo, scary... Other than that, the other characters (Metal Sonic from Sonic CD, Metal Tails, Metal Knuckles, Metal Robotnik from Sonic and Knuckles, and Super Sonic) are just faster and more powerful forms than the others.

Control is a bit of an issue in this game, as it is possible to control movement with only the d-pad (analogue pad works well enough). But this leads to problems as you can't really do all that well with this. The B-button though works well enough for acceleration, and the L and R triggers also act as brakes for each foot. If you use both the d-pad and L&R triggers for turning it really makes you make tighter turns.

The thing is the game isn't really all that big. You can complete it fully within an hour. But there is something that makes you want to come back and play, so it's not all that bad. There are other modes as well, such as finding hidden balloons around the tracks and playing tag, which works well in conveying the sense of freedom the game has.

So let's weigh it up =

Pros +
++++++
+ Excellent track design
+ Many shortcuts to find
+ Good number and variety of characters (well, hidden characters aren't all that good)
+ Music
+ Graphics in 1-player
+ Nice amount of modes

Cons -
------
- Only five tracks
- The robot characters are a bit of a joke
- Some music/singing will annoy
- Fogging is quite a hinderance in 2-player
- Short for skilled players

Overall =
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Overall, I'd say Sonic R is good, but nothing great. A nice little karting blast, but unfortunately only little (not may people are gonna want to find the balloons or play tag). If you see it cheap, I'd recommend it, because you'll keep coming back from time to time.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/31/02, Updated 03/31/02