DJ Sacks weekly appreciation thread: Sonic R

[DJ Sack]

Common lets RACE! Every bodys super sonic racing, trying to keep our feet right on the ground...dodo do do dodo...

The only proper sonic game that was exclusive to the Saturn. Developed by travellers tales (of Sonic 3D fame) this really showed you the sort of graphics the saturn could do.

The graphics still look great today, using a fade in, in the distance to mask pop up, it works well, characters are detailed and the speed is fast. The landscapes are huge to, you may only have 5 tracks, but multiple routes, collecting coins and emeralds add to the longativity and each level is great fun to play and memorable.

But its the music that wins out each and every time, super sonic racing is the theme tune for the game and a damn catchy one at that.

The controls are a bit werid and could have done with an n64 style analogue stick but this is sonic in 3D for one of the first times and it really works well, you can play as amy, tails, knuckles etc who all have different abilities, sonic may be fast, but amy can go across water, tails can fly for a bit etc. And you will need to use them if you want the emeralds which are hidden depp within the levels.

Its such a shame so few people got a chance to play it, its such a hoot, emerald road with its transparent textures (they said the saturn cant do it) the great lighting, the characters and the levels which just scream sonic.

If you ever needed a reason to buy a saturn, heres one of many.

[Max M]

The screens don't work.

[DJ Sack]

Hmm they do for me...
Dont know why they aint showing as if you go to the url where they actually are, they can be seen, if you then go back to this one the images will show. How odd.

[Kubrick]

I can't see them either..

Sonic R does indeed look & sound great, but it's not worth buying a Saturn for. I found the actual gameplay to be average at best.

[Crisp_Rapper]

the music was ****ing awesome, that alone is a good enough reason to pick a copy up... and the fact you get an amusing game with it is all the better. used to love going round my mate's house and playing the Sonic version of tag/hide and seek, though you could cheat as certain characters could hide underwater whereas others (botnik and amy) hovered over it.

but the music...

[Leynos]

The controls are a bit werid and could have done with an n64 style analogue stick

I can't remember what the peculiarities were, but I always used the NiGHTS pad to play Sonic R with.

Later.

[df0notfound]

i actually found sonic r quite pathetic, only thing worse is sonic adventure because they had no excuse for that being as bad as it was

[Judge]

i actually found sonic r quite pathetic, only thing worse is sonic adventure because they had no excuse for that being as bad as it was

I'm seeing a trend here. You don't like Sonic, do you?

I really enjoyed R, although I'd rather have had a platformer. As everyone says, the music was great, and there was a fair amount of exploration in the levels, even if you could get all of the unlockables in a couple of days.

[Synbios]

It was actually quite controllable. If you didn't feel like holding Up to run, you could aid mavouevrability by holding B instead, letting your thumb relax a bit on the A-pad and concentrate more on going left or right.

The excellent transparent graphics, which looked like multitexturing to me, were sublime, and they still look excellent today. Along with Panzer Dragoon Saga, you have two games that seriously pushed the Saturn to its limits. Just a shame really that SonicR's PAL conversion was a tad ****. The music is still class though

And who could forget the reflective R on the title screen? Nice use of environment mapping there. I always set to the most metallic setting and had a good old fiddle

[df0notfound]

"I'm seeing a trend here. You don't like Sonic, do you?"

sonics allright, just a shame the developers havent a clue how to make a remotely sensible or playable 3d game involving him, you cant seriously say with a straight face that sonic adventure wasnt one of the most pathetic attempts at a 3d platform game ever (well excluding some of the real tripe you got on psx at times) post mario 64 this game is just shocking i mean about 60% of the time you dont even control it

[Streets Of Rage]

i loved this game, i got it with my saturn, and still think its a very enjoyable racing game, id still reccomend this to anyone and i also enjoyed sonic adventure

[Arctic Feather]

Not really exclusive to the saturn as it got a port to the PC..

I have both versions btw

Controls take a little bit of getting used to, and it's a bit short but fin nonetheless

But was there any point in including amy?

[Synbios]

So... what's the PC version like? Does it still use the transparency fade techniques? What's the framerate like? Any extra features?

[Arctic Feather]

I haven't played either version for ages (and i can't be bothered to install the PC version), but the PC has support for up to 4 players, but AFAIK the saturn version is only 2 players