Between Metal Knuckles and Metal Sonic's "cheating bastard" A.I. in Sonic the Fighters, Eggman really had a knack for his evil robot knockoffs of being difficult to defeat during Sonic's Saturn era. :v:
The idea of a foot-racing Sonic game makes too much sense, it's that Sega just didn't know how to properly put this idea into execution. There's this old MMORPG called Tales Runner, which was an online 8 - 30 player racing game that was so much fun, yet so god damn difficult and took serious dedication to get any enjoyment from it. (That was unfortunately taken down in 2012 I believe, and is only available in Korea and Thailand) Take a minute and look at this video so you can get the just of it (and hopefully excuse the crappy music) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcL--QeEMnQ Wouldn't you like to see this sort of gameplay with Sonic characters? Just using character based skills and high speed to get to the finish? I would think a game like this could spiritually success Sonic R much better than the crappy game we got back then.
I don't get how it makes much "sense" at all- if we're starting to determine the gameplay by "sense", then we must realise Sonic should be some 10 times faster than 95% of the remaining cast, not making for much of an interesting racing game beyond "The Sonic, Shadow, Metal and Blaze-if-you-want-to-lose Game"
The characters control the way they do in Sonic R because the game's design calls for it. Speed management is part of the challenge, and changes in velocity have to be gradual. If you gave it Sonic Adventure controls the races would become more chaotic and unpredictable. I mean, it'd be a fun game, but not one you could balance for a general audience. Hell, Sonic R was unbalanced as it was, just trying to keep Sonic somewhat true to his 'being faster than everyone' nature. How balanced do you think the game would be if you could spinjump over the stage, run upside down across something nobody even knew about during playtesting, and clip through a wall near the finishline from behind? In fact, if you read the instructions and know about the l/r leaning, you have more than enough turning ability to navigate any part of the game. Yes, I know 'Sonic shouldn't control like a car'. But Sonic would decimate everyone in a footrace 'normally'. Some affordances had to be made for players who weren't Sonic. That being said, the only problem with Sonic R is the number of tracks. There should have been twice as many at the very least.
What do we actually know about the development of Sonic R? The Wiki is lacking significantly. Considering it's the first full-fledged polygonal 3D Sonic game to see release (Not counting Jam's Sonic World or Christmas NiGHTS), you think it would garner more attention. You would think it would be easier to get in touch with Traveller's Tales than Sega nowadays as well.
Sonic R is my most HATED Sonic game ever. Like ever, seriously, despise it to bits. Despite that though, the idea of an on-foot Sonic racer isn't a bad one and it isn't something I would mind them revisiting. And plus, the idea of a Sonic racer on foot makes a bit more sense than him in a car. And I get the whole "He puts himself in a car to restrict himself" argument, but the idea of Sonic being in a car race just sorta seems irrelevant to the character. He's faster on foot, so why would Sonic ever even need a car in the first place, and why would he need to prove himself with one? I'm getting off topic, yeah, Sonic R-2 would be nice.
Taking Riders' opening cutscene into account, Sonic seems to like to prove himself to be the fastest thing alive, in every possible way, he probably sees it as a challenge. I would totally go for an R-2 myself though, bump up the visuals and add more courses and you're pretty much on your way really, the core mechanics worked well once you had the hang of it, and as has been said previously, the shortcuts and the method of emerald collecting kept things fresh, at least until you had everything :v:
A foot racing Sonic game makes a lot of sense as far as spinoffs go, with everyone crying about Riders and All Stars Racing being board/vehicle based. You can stretch how canonically fast Sonic and the gang are like you can in the 2D games and Rivals, but something that may be hard to do is nail a control scheme down. Normal gameplay in a typical game does involve characters going fast in some capacity. If you make the game more traditionally race track based you might run the risk of the characters controlling like cars. Right now Sonic Team doesn't have a clear 3D control direction anymore in the first place, let along adding multiplayer into the mix.
Can you feel the sunshine? Does it brighten up your day? Don't you feel that sometimes, you just need to run away? In the face of Sonic R, I do feel like I need to run away
Honestly I love Sonic R, but it is a pretty bad game. It's very corny and by today's standards it does not hold up all that well. At the time though it was pretty impressive. I actually enjoy the soundtrack as well, although I can see why vocals may seem off putting to some.
Maybe it's not bad per se (at least in my opinion), but definitelly have some impossible/hard to forgive sins, like little amount of levels. And adding to this fact that you can dislike some of these levels (and naturally, avoid) - it's making situation even worse. Although I appreciate the fact that it was trying to do something a bit different than "kart games" (crossing 3D platform with racing game), and this thing (aside from other aspects) was performed in decent way. But eventually - it's one of these games which is sentenced for fading away and being forgotten. Quite nifty idea, partially good, partially mediocre and partially bad performance (what a mix!), and one-shot title, which don't have any successor. Quite a shame, I like in some (twisted and wicked :P) way Sonic R and would definitelly play in R-2, if it could be released.
Funny. I've always thought the Unleashed to Generations games controlled like Mario Kart, plus jumping. Make a track based racer built off that engine, add other characters with unique abilities, maybe like Sonic Riders did, restrict the boost so it's not a constant, and you might have something here.
Is it possible for people to still play network with this game? I never had the chance to play it with someone.
As far as I remember, it doesn't have any sort of multiplayer through Internet or LAN* (only local). Speaking of which - there wasn't too many Sonic games with online multiplayer, as far as I know. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more fan-made games with such possibility :P *I've read once upon a time that with Hamachi you can play via Internet even if there is only LAN multiplayer, but I've never tested it though on any game (I was going to do it with Sledgehammer, but I never made it).
There was a patch for the original PC version (1998) allowing multiplayer over a network, but I would imagine it would be quite a pain to get working on modern computers, as the fix for the crash on startup doesn't exist for the patch. But yes, if someone got this patch working on modern computers (or simply played it on one old enough to not be affected by the bug), Sonic R would be playable online through something like Hamachi or Evolve Client.
That's interesting info, I wasn't aware of it earlier. What a shame that it's for 1998 version, I've got both (1998 and 2004), and I can tell, that the later one is definitelly less troublesome in my case (I've installed both on Windows 7 (32 bit version), and 2004 didn't cause in my case any issues - and I didn't need any patches or something like that).
Same with the PC port of "Sonic 3D Blast". I never had to use any special software for it. I just install it and runs smoothly (even on W10). Music and all. Although, don't have any bluetooth connected to it or else it'll mess up.
I've honestly always been curious of how Sonic R could perform outside of being a racer. Don't get me wrong, Sonic Unleashed has set a precedent for a proper modern experience, but somehow, Sonic R was more engaging because there was more of a weight to the characters. And everyone in Sonic R functions equally well enough that they could exist in an environment that tests more than how fast they can go. With rings and the like, the only things Sonic R lacks would be enemies to give rings more purpose. As for a sequel, I could enjoy that. Characters like Opa-Opa in All-Stars Racing show that there can't be that much of a gap for that style. Even then, the Sonic universe has enough fucking characters to make a sequel possible, even if there has to be a reliance on tiers and only causes reskins on the same stats. Even a simple re-release like with the Model 2 collection would be just fine. I'd buy it... On a sale.
YES, I want a sonic R 2, more over a Sonic R reboot . I wanted one so bad that I was once looking all over for a unity coder to help make fan game reboot_ but no luck. All I have now are idea and game docs. with some models
