"Is this game a drug? 'Cause this game "makes me feel so high"."

I was finally able to get a hold of this game for years, being held back by lack of financial...mumble-jumble...you know, I didn't have a job, and all. But I was finally able to buy a copy of this cool short racing game. But how good is it?

Story: 9/10=4/5
Sonic and friends must compete in a race by foot, to win the chaos emeralds before the evil Dr. Robotnik/Eggman takes the prize for himself. Maybe not the best story of today but this was like 1998 and not much was really expected from the blue blur.

Graphics: 8/10=4/5
Characters are pretty blocky, but small and cute, and not as high quality as "the Fighters". The race courses are your usual Sonic game setting; trees, water, sand, metals, pyramids, dark purple-colored caves. All ltracks very nice and colorful and un-flat and includes some 2D-3D graphics.

Sound: 10/10=5/5
Oh can you feel it? The sun shines on this game as if it were brand new! Well it was new back then. Anyway, the sfx are the same classic Sonic sounds, especially the ring bling and the Sonic jump sound. What I really love about the sound are the songs that play in the background. As in with actual singing, not small recording clips of ?Michael Jackson? mixed in like the boss themes in S3. Just hearing those beautiful, soothing, yet weirdly-written songs takes me back to my good old childhood days. And yes, some of the lyrics, are questionable and the whole soundtrack has this sort of "love" theme. I mean what's this about "survival"? The options menu does allow you to turn the vocals off if you have a difference of opinion. But me, I'm not picky when it comes to music, and the music just doesn't sound right without the singing.

Gameplay: 9/10=4/5
The game has 4 initial characters Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy, who instead of runs, drives an adorable red car/hovercar that runs by cheap gasoline. There are a handful of unlockables too. The tracks are usually surrounded by water traps, speed boosts, an item emblem and many loops, ramps, toll shortcuts, and hills to fit right with the Sonic program, another cool thing is the ability to choose weather conditons. The tracks also have some collectables like chaos emeralds and medallions, where if you collect them all, you unlock something.
The controls are almost similar to the later released Adventure series, forward is accelerate, side is for cornering, shoulder buttons for drifting, the view changing button and a jump/special button. The one problem though, is Down makes you crouch, the only way to reverse is to turn to the opposite direction and it's very slow that way. Also the game is pretty short, only 5 individual tracks and with Grand Prix as an option in the start menu, you'd expect cups of maybe 4 tracks per cup, but no. Some tracks are also very easy especially with Tails and his flying ability, and water turns to ice in winter adding more ground to run on.

Replayability: 7/10=3/5
You may definitely want to unlock the other characters trying to find where the heck those emeralds and medallions are, and some nice multiplayer features like "Collect all balloons" or the fun game of tag, my personal fave. Oh and the usual racing. The beautiful soundtrack and collecting shd keep you coming back for a little more.

Buy/Rent: Buy
Overall: 7/10=4/5
The game's a fun little keeper for the Sonic fan. But the Mario Kart /etc fan may not be satisfied. But if you want something more, you should instead buy it in a compiled set like the new Sonic Gems Collection for the GC, if you don't like short and maybe you do want fries with that shake. Or maybe the 9.99-19.99 PC version collections. Either one of those 2 still leave the game untouched.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/05