One doesn't relate to the other. Also, this is an ad that has Sonic using an iPhone to play a game exclusive to the Apple Arcade subscription service, boasts the service's 100+ new games and ends with the service's logo, slogan and details of how to get it. I wouldn't assume that Sega paid for it.
For anyone that hadn’t picked the full game up yet (like me), Steam have another of their Sonic sales on at the moment. Team Sonic Racing is 75% off on its own, but if you happen to own every other Sonic game on Steam, you can get it for around £2.20/$2.50 by buying the “Ultimate” collection: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/sonic_ultimate_sale/
This is late, but I want to say that I hope whoever decided to have Green Light Ride replace the course music in time attack is no longer working at Sega.
Oh that was an awful decision, agreed. With such a good soundtrack why they insist on a whole mode using one song is beyond me.
I played this again over the weekend, it's been a good 10 months since I last booted it up. Still an enjoyable game but i'm fully burned out by this game, the returning tracks, the broken online, the entire package felt like a rental release.
This game tries its best to be what TCR was, but lacks. While it is its own idea, you can see some similarities, like menus. Many of the missions are not fun at all, and the plot moves too fast in the career mode. Every character is like “hmmm is this guy... bad?” after 1-2. While sonic is fast, the plot moves faster, Online is dead as all shit, and playing it on steam is less viable than playing it on xbox, ps4 or switch. However, the gimmick of team racing is a fun, unique mechanic i feel is amazing for a racing game. But because we have an amazing gimmick that this game revolves around, it makes the normal races feel boring, knowing that many of the tracks not ported from sega all stars were meant for team racing. A fine quick game to play with friends or play when you’re bored, but not worth $40. Wait for it to be on sale if you want a sense of value.
I know this game isn't amazing, but would anyone on Retro want to group up to have a few games online of this ? I have it on Steam.
https://wrapup.playstation.com/ Playstation have released the annual "wrap-up-" that summarize your year and what games you played etc. What i find curious is that they also have stats for the most downloaded PS Plus games, was pleasantly surprised to see Team Sonic racing at the 4th place, right after Fifa and UFC Game is good, glad it got more players to play it -for free-, also shows how the movies really boasted the popularity of the Sonic franchise, good day for news about the health of this series, with this and Frontiers great sales, future is looking bright
I wonder if this increases the chances of another Sonic racing spin off in the near future? The fact that the game is doing so well now that it is free could actually mean the inverse… but post Movie/Mania/Frontiers with Sonic having a bigger audience and TSR now having a large instal base, Sega could ID a new racing game as potentially more successful in the future
TSR is a really, really good game. All of its problems come down to the fact that SEGA seemingly weren't very interested in the project from the outset, because it's so small by modern kart racer standards and compared to its predecessors. And its half made up of remastered levels from said predecessors too. Even though its not quite as innovative as ASRT and drops the SEGA branding in favour of being purely Sonic instead, the actual gameplay is seriously good. I was really disappointed by the way that SEGA handled this game from the outset. It deserved a much better shot. It's nice to see that it got a lot of support through PS+. Forces was similar back in the summer of 2020, where it became the second-most downloaded PS+ game ever. That's just the brand power of Sonic, I guess. The series isn't a blockbuster anymore, but the games are pretty evergreen. If they're available, there's almost always going to be an audience. The PS+ performance isn't going to change much on its own, unfortunately. SEGA put TSR out to die and it was dead within just a week of launching. I don't know if I ever got a single online match with a full lobby on PC or Switch. Sonic could always do with more spin-offs and side-games to bridge the gap between major new 3D entries from Sonic Team though. Another Sonic (and SEGA) racing would be more than welcome. Just give it a chance this time, please. Maybe they'll be more inclined to do so after the brand has been so successful in 2022.
Maybe I just never gelled with the team mechanic but I bought it, played about 3 hours of it, then never felt the urge to pick it up again. ASRT is a better game in practically every way, that in my mind is TSR's biggest issue.
Honestly, I think the Riders series needs to return. As much as I love ASRT, the "Racing" games have always lent themselves to comparison with Mario Kart. ASRT certainly doesn't perform unfavourable in that comparison (despite arguably being the instalment that's most similar to its contemporary Mario Kart instalment), but part of the reason I didn't pick up TSR was because I already have MK8D and don't really need another kart racer in my life. Meanwhile, Riders has always been its own beast. Sure, the sequels are pretty naff, but I think there's a lot of value in a high skill ceiling, arcade racer version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. At the same time, there's a lot that can be taken from TSR. The team mechanic, Wisps, team manoeuvres can effectively function as a weaker version of Riders' wake mechanic, but I think it'd be in the series' best interests to revisit that well of technical gameplay that just hasn't really been emulated by anything else. Also, bringing back Riders' more dedicated story mode would be a great opportunity to bring in the extended universe characters such as the IDW OCs, giving them the Riders drip and letting them be trialled in a fairly low stakes environment, given the spinoff nature of these games.
As long as it's to the quality of at least Free Riders (Ideally to the quality of the first game) and stays as far away from Zero Gravity as possible (all games are good but Zero Gravity is the weakest).
Assuming it follows in the footsteps of the first game, I would absolutely not mind if Sonic Riders took the spot of the Racing series.
I never had Riders as a kid but I remember playing a tiny bit at a cousin’s house. I was a huge, HUGE fan of SSX so I guess I expected the game to play closer to that and sort of got a bad taste in my mouth when the controls and mechanics were so different. I didn’t really know how to play properly and just wrote the game off. Looking at all the retrospectives some people who took the time to learn it really makes me want to give it another go though. I really enjoy the styling as well. I think if they made another, it could do decently well with the prevalence of people actually showing you how to play on social media and YouTube. All Stars Racing and ASRT were great too, but as a fan of “true” Sega racers like Sega Rally, Daytona, and OutRun, I’d prefer Sega to make something more in line with those than another karting game. Overall, I just think the Riders has more potential to succeed on a major level if it’s presented properly. It’s distinct from Mario Kart so it will avoid the comparisons the All Stars Racing series inevitably receives and people who already own Mario Kart won’t feel like this will just be a lesser version with Sonic thrown in. If they also made the tricking system a bit less restrictive, they could also potentially pick up some neglected SSX fans who miss that kind of trick heavy, arcadey snowboard racing. Though I would want them to still retain the unique mechanics of the first Riders. And if we’re talking silly I’d also like a new Fighters Megamix while we’re at it. We’ve got a decently modern VF engine now, so pop in the Vipers cast and some characters from Sonic, SMT, Persona, Project Diva, Sakura Taisen, Shinobi, Shenmue, Streets of Rage, etc. One issue in my eyes would be visual consistency, so maybe giving the VF cast an anime-style redesign with cel-shading would solve it. There’d also be the problem of Sonic characters’ short heights. I don’t play many fighters outside of VF5 and DoA where everyone is pretty standard-sized so I’m not sure how this can be addressed. Also there has to be a funny way to allow Kiryu to fight. Maybe having him put on foam pads when facing women? Idk, but I can’t imagine a game like this succeeding without him but I also agree with their opposition to seeing him beat up girls. Anyway, this won’t happen as fighting games are too niche to succeed at the level it’d take for Sega to actually do this but a Sega nut can dream
I can only really imagine Riders coming back if it was some kind of mobile game. Other than that, it doesn't seem to make much sense to release today. Still don't really get what makes Transformed so great compared to TSR. Not a lot of the missions were any good, transforming into a plane is too different from the boat or car to be any fun, and the boat is just the car again but on water which doesn't really change as much about how you do things. You could say maybe the amount of characters but the extra franchises to pull from aren't really relevant since TSR is... a Sonic game.
