Super Sonic Racing: Sonic R (Sega Saturn, 1997) Review

NOTE: This review is part 9 in a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective

Background and History

Last time in my Sonic 3D Blast review, I talked about the Sega Saturn, and it’s rocky launch. I will say I did get something slightly wrong though - I stated that the US launch caused some developers to drop support for the Saturn, which wasn’t necessarily the case. While there were retailers that didn’t support the Saturn or were at least put off by the surprise launch, I kind of gave the impression that some developers were working on Saturn games but ditched them after the surprise launch which… wasn’t actually the case. There was still a software drought at launch though, since there simply wasn’t enough Saturn games ready yet, but it wasn’t necessarily a case of developers outright dropping support for the Saturn.

But anyway, Sonic R. After finishing 3D Blast, Traveler’s Tales was approached by Sega to develop another Sonic game, this time being a racing game and Traveler’s Tales ultimately agreed to the project. They had been working on a 3D graphics engine prior to the game’s development and this Sonic racing game would be the first to utilize it. Development of the game started in February 1997 as a joint effort by both Traveler’s Tales and Sonic Team and it was released in November of that same year in the United States and Europe and in December in Japan.

At this time, the Sega Saturn… wasn’t exactly doing well. The poor launch was still a ripple effect on the system’s performance, and in addition it wasn’t helped by the infighting from both Sega of Japan and Sega of America and the Saturn’s library just not having much appeal to Western audiences. In 1997, the president of Sega of America, Bernie Stolar, declared that the “Saturn was not our future” and with development of the Dreamcast starting it’s safe to say that the Saturn didn’t have much ahead of it. In America and Europe anyway, it actually did turn out fairly successful in Japan.

And also, the Saturn still didn’t have it’s own major Sonic game. The closest thing it had was it’s port of Sonic 3D Blast, although in the same year of Sonic R’s release, the Saturn did get another minor Sonic release in the form of Sonic Jam - a compilation of Sonic 1, 2, 3 and Knuckles with a 3D “Sonic World” to explore, essentially acting as a demo of what was to come later on. When released, Sonic R got… mixed to somewhat positive reception, but as time has gone on, it’s reception has only seemed to decline.

Personal Experiences

I said in my Sonic 3D Blast review that when I was getting into retro games and collecting I did hold an interest in the Saturn largely because it seemed like such an interesting, niche system. And of course, I was a big Sonic fan, and had actually wanted to try out Sonic R. The things I heard about it weren’t exactly great and I’m pretty sure this was around the time JonTron’s review of the game was starting to become spread around (although it’s been deleted from his official channel for some reason) but I always found some charm from watching gameplay videos of it on Youtube. I liked the soundtrack, found the visuals charming and, well, liked how it actually had Sonic characters running on foot plus for some reason I was really into the Tails Doll creepypasta stuff… yeah I was a fucking weird 11 year old kid.

The first time I played it though was on the GameCube via Sonic Gems Collection. Speaking of that, I brought it up in my Game Gear games review but forgot to mention that it was also on the PS2 but only in Europe and Japan. But anyway, I did like the game. I pretty much 100%ed it within a day and considered the game to be underrated and overhated. But as time has gone on, it’s kind of fallen off my radar. It really isn’t a game I find myself going back to very often especially compared to some of the later Sonic racing games. But that begs the question, do I still think Sonic R is an underrated gem or do I have to side with the critics?

Story

This is where some may ask the question “this game has a story?” and to that I respond with… technically, yes. Sonic and Tails are on a vacation from their previous adventures when they find an advertisement for the World Grand Prix, which turns out to be a setup by Dr. Robotnik.

I mean this story… certainly exists. Honestly if I didn’t read the manuals in Gems Collection I wouldn’t have ever known there was even a story in this game, because frankly there’s nothing indicating a story in this game and it’s pretty easy to be under the impression that this is literally just a spin-off Sonic racing title. But yeah, there’s a story in it, it exists I guess.

Graphics

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I do like the look of PS1 and Sega Saturn-esque graphics largely due to the charm of what they were able to do at the time, and as far as this game goes I do like it’s visuals and for a Saturn game I do think it looks pretty good. The character models and environments generally look pretty bright and colorful. 

I mentioned in my 3D Blast review that the programmer of this game, Jon Burton, runs a Youtube channel called “GameHut” and has talked about the development of this game. Well, since Sonic R is another Traveler’s Tales game, he has also done videos on it, including describing some of the “impossible effects” like the reflectance and transparency that Sonic R managed to achieve on the Saturn. Those video seems to have been moved to his “Coding Secrets” channel, but regardless, it does seem like Sonic R was somewhat of a technical marvel that managed to achieve things that were thought to be impossible on the Saturn due to the way it processed polygons - particularly stuff like the environments “fading in” and the reflectance of the logo on the title screen and the “silver Sonic” loading screen was really hard to do on the Saturn, so the fact that this game pulled off is pretty cool.

One issue with the Saturn version’s visuals though is definitely the draw distance. For as cool as the fading effect is, the low draw distance really sticks out like a sore thumb. Fortunately, the PC and Gems Collection versions of the game are better in this regard plus appear to have anti-aliasing. These versions also have different weather effects that affect the actual gameplay in different ways which is also pretty neat.

Music

I’ll just say it, I love this game’s soundtrack. To be honest this was initially one of my biggest draws to this game, and while the lyrical songs aren’t exactly fitting for a Sonic racing game (except for Super Sonic Racing), they are all honestly pretty catchy and fun to listen to, and in a series known for having really good music, this honestly might be one of my favorite Sonic soundtracks. It all just has a really nice “90’s” feeling to it - Super Sonic Racing in particular has always given me Eurodance vibes. Not gonna lie, to this day I still find myself listening to “Can You Feel the Sunshine?” and “Super Sonic Racing” in particular every so often just on their own.

Gameplay

Despite all my praise for the graphics and music however, I still gotta judge the game based on it’s gameplay. And I gotta be honest, after playing this game I unfortunately have to admit that I don’t think it’s a very good game.

I will say though that this game does have some pretty good ideas. For one thing it’s the only Sonic racing game where the characters race on foot, and considering the series’ emphasis on running fast and everything I’m kind of surprised Sega has never done anything like that since this game, I mean it just makes a lot of sense.

But I think the major thing to note here is this game’s approach to track design is very interesting. Oddly enough this game uses a similar approach to level design as the classic games - having alternate paths and routes that make each track more replayable and honestly really change up the gameplay. This is also factored in with a degree of exploration for Sonic tokens and emeralds that unlock other characters. If I had to make a comparison, it’s kind of like if every track was designed with the same philosophy of Yoshi’s Valley in Mario Kart 64. And I honestly really like this idea - it kind of fits in with the design philosophy of the classic games and what makes me enjoy Sonic games so much in particular. The game only has 5 tracks which is definitely an issue but I gotta admit the track design itself does make some potential for replay value especially with this game’s collectibles.

But while I like those ideas, this game has problems that honestly get in the way of what I would consider to be a good game. I mentioned the short length and the fact that the game only has 5 tracks in total, and while the game does have potential for replay value, that still doesn’t quite change the fact that this game has less content than even most other kart racers of the time.

But that’s not really my main issue with this game. I’ll just start by saying that the controls of this game just aren’t very good. The levels often sport sharp turns but the turning controls for this game aren’t very well suited for it. Turning in this game feels really tank-y and sluggish and the race tracks themselves just aren’t very well designed around this game’s controls. You can do a drift with the L and R button but to be perfectly honest whenever I tried using it, it barely felt better than the actual turn. The characters often just feel like bumper cars to me and the control just doesn’t really feel natural in this game.

And while the exploration aspect is pretty cool, I also don’t really feel like it’s implementation doesn’t really go that well with the core racing gameplay. Like I said, there are five Sonic tokens scattered throughout each track as well as one or two Chaos Emeralds. But you can’t just pick up these tokens and emeralds and finish the track - for the tokens you have to get third place or higher after you collect them and for the emeralds you have to get first place. But there were definitely cases where I felt this feature honestly just got in the way of the game rather than enhanced it. I already stated my issues with the controls in this game and I gotta say it was very easy for me to just miss getting a coin with how small they are, leaving me to have to try and get it on the next lap or restart the race. Not to mention even when you do get third place or higher with all the Sonic tokens in a race you still have to race the character that you’re intending to unlock after finishing the main race.

But the emeralds were more of a pain in the ass. For pretty much every emerald you have to collect a certain amount of rings and enter a door, which isn’t a bad idea, but there are multiple cases where you have to stop and wait for the emerald to appear, effectively slowing you down. I suppose a good strategy here would be to unlock the emerald on the first lap and get it on your second go but that really just depends if you have enough rings. There were also times where I needed to turn around to pick up an item and with what I said about this game’s turning, doing so really just put me at a disadvantage. And with issues like those, I gotta say that it made going for 100% more of a chore than anything. Frankly, it often just kind of slows the pace of the game and adds an extra layer of tedium. 

And another problem I have is that the game’s character roster feels extremely unbalanced. Before unlocking all the characters I honestly felt there wasn’t any reason to use any other character other than Tails and Knuckles. Sonic himself feels extremely slippery to control and Amy’s speed feels extremely slow and gimped. And after unlocking all the characters, honestly I don’t really find any reason to use any other character than Super Sonic - he’s literally just the best character in terms of speed and handling and he practically makes any other character irrelevant. The unlockable characters aren’t really too great either - I feel like Tails Doll is the worst character in the game balance-wise due to having a painfully slow turn and imprecise control, and the only real benefit Tails Doll has is the ability to be over water, which is an ability a bunch of other characters have. I mean fuck all those creepypastas the scariest thing about Tails Doll is trying to control him.

And again… this game doesn’t have much content going for regardless. Even when going for all the collectibles it takes about 30 minutes to an hour to complete and aside for the interesting track designs I guess I really just don’t feel there’s much of a reason to go back to this game. Once I’ve collected everything I feel like I’ve seen everything the game has to offer and don’t find myself returning to it.

Conclusion

Yeah… upon revisiting this game, I gotta say I don’t enjoy it as much as I did back then. This is definitely the kind of game I respect more on both a presentation and conceptual level - it does do some interesting things with the Saturn’s hardware and employs a unique level design philosophy. But as far as the gameplay and execution of those ideas go it just falls completely flat. The exploration just kind of gets in the way of the actual racing gameplay for the most part, the controls aren’t very good and the game has severe balance issues. Overall, it’s just not a game I find myself really enjoying and now that I really think about it I feel like I largely just enjoyed it more for the presentation as a kid than the actual gameplay, because I really didn’t return to this game very often looking back and playing it now I’m starting to see why that was.

If you want to play this game, I would honestly look for a copy of the PC version - it isn’t very expensive to find and there are mods to both make it work on modern hardware and to restore the lighting of the Saturn version. But… to be honest this isn’t really a Sonic game I would particularly recommend. I would probably consider the game to be better than either of the Sonic Drift titles, but as far as it’s succeeding Sonic racing games go, I would definitely much rather play Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed or Team Sonic Racing.