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"SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL: AN OUT-OF-CONTROL HEDGEHOG AND FRIENDS, ALL LIVING IN THE CITY AND FEELING THE SUNSHINE JUST FINE"

When Next Generation magazine (issue 21) named the Sonic series the 20th best videogame of all time, they said that "attitude" is the result of confident gameplay and not an artist's imagination in designing the character. All that is true, but when confident gameplay AND a great visual concept are married together then you have a potential franchise at your disposal. Alucard, Mario and Ryu are just three characters that symbolize the game that backs their star status in the current 32-bit age, even though they started in the 8-bit era. Sonic on the other hand really peaked with his 16-bit releases, and has currently faded into a supporting role in the world of corporate mascots for videogame companies.

Don't get me wrong: I like Sonic, his world, his cast of characters and the amazing art direction that goes into creating them (check the Museums in "Sonic Jam" for further proof of that). But for a young toddler growing up in today's games, characters like Crash Bandicoot, Fox McCloud and Jill Valentine are the memorable one's because they were able to control them on three kick-ass games for their platforms. Because Sonic has yet to make an appearance on a glorious 32-bit Saturn game ("Sonic 3D Blast" and "Sonic Jam" rely too much on their Genesis heritage to be considered Saturn-enhanced), there is a very real chance that this generation of Sega gamers could forget just what made the blue one cool in the first place: attitude (gameplay AND character)! Enter Sega's big holiday title for 1997, "Sonic R", an attempt to put a Sonic perspective on a genre currently dominated by Nintendo ("Super Mario Kart" for the SNES and "Mario Kart 64" for the N64) and Rare (the platinium-selling "Diddy Kong Racing").

It's a shame that both "Sonic R" and "Diddy Kong Racing" are jumping ahead of themselves by releasing a wacky driving game with cartoon characters before the main action game featuring those same characters. Where's the big 32-bit Sonic title that features the quality gameplay first seen on the 3D World of "Sonic Jam"? Where's "Conker's Quest" and "Banjo K." for the N64, and why should a gamer care to control an unknown character from a game they haven't played? Take it from someone who played "Super Mario 64" and "Mario Kart 64": by releasing the big action game first and the wacky racer later, the experience's level of enjoyment is increased ten-fold. Sega shouldn't be flagged for going the way it did with "Sonic R" though, because by now the vision and familiarity of Sonic's whereabouts is well-known to the Sega faithful. The franchise is strong enough to veer into this type of genre, and I'm here to tell you that, although flawed, the game lives up to the standards of the series (somewhat) and leaves you waiting for the blue one's next foray into a 3D world (hopefully without racing limitations).

In a nutshell: "Sonic R" features five Courses (four open, one hidden) with multiple paths and shortcuts in which five well-known characters from the Sonic universe (plus their robotic alter-egos, which are hidden) race against one another, hoping to get first-place, collect all the hidden esmeralds/coins/rings, and beat the different alternatives to the Grand Prix (Time Trial, Tag, Balloon collecting, etc.). The graphics are some of the best Saturn has ever done, and the music (lyrics and all) is simply incredible; the gameplay/fun factor suffers though because of an accumulation of small little flaws. If patience is a virtue, then this game demands truckloads of virtuosity from those that dare walk through the golden arches of "Sonic R".

GRAPHICS/VISUALS: A-
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Pop-up is a side-effect that racing games have to live with until the consoles get their processors powerful enough to conceal the 3D view deep into the horizon; "Dayotna CCE", "Manx TT" and "Diddy Kong Racing" all have it, but the gameplay is polished-enough to keep the gamer happily pretending they don't see that huge mountain suddenly appear out of nowhere. "Sonic R" fades the incoming scenery rather than just popping-up the structures at the last minute, an effect that minimizes the fact that the scenery a player can see is still only a handful of yards in front. Only "BladeForce" (an obscure shooter developed by Studio 3DO for the now-defunct system) attempted this type of fading technique before, but while that game was all brown and dark textures, "Sonic R" gives the fading textures solid exteriors and an eye-piercing rainbow of colors. On the one-player mode, the racing is unimpeded by the appearing track; on two-player mode though, the slit-screen racing takes it's toll on the Hitachi processors and brings the fading of the separate tracks WAY TOO CLOSE TO THE PLAYER'S FACE...both gamers will literally only be able to see a few feet ahead of them. Memorization of the track minimizes the fading (you'll know where to go rather than look for where to turn), and the frame-rate isn't affected at all by the split-screen (both one-player and two-player modes move at the same blistering frame-rate). Considering the 32-bit limits, "Sonic R" moves as good as "Diddy Kong Racing" with half-the-power hardware. Shove this!

The eye-candy is all over this game, with sites that only a PSX zealot could hate. There are colors everywhere, and the polygons are handled smoothly by the Saturn; an occassional warped texture or clipping bug will appear, but the courses Sonic and pals race on look solid and well-designed. Art direction insures that there are always more than one way to reach the finish line, or tag the competing characters as they escape your approach. Amy, Dr. Robotnik, Tails, Knuckles and Sonic look stellar but a bit lifeless, since the animation or facial expressions common in sprite-based games is missing with these polygons. Slowdown will occassionally appear when two or more characters are on-screen and rings are being collected left and right. Almost every conceivable level design from the Sonic universe makes a cameo in "Sonic R", like the pinball section in Radical city or the industrial structures in Reactive Factory. The Saturn's being pushed real hard by Traveller's Tales, but I'm giving it an A- because there is still a chance for better graphics to appear on Saturn ("Dead or Alive"?, "Burning Rangers"?, "Sonic X-treme"?). Later lavels are almost maze-like in ther complexity, and the little map on the lower right corner helps sometimes; good luck finding anything remotely like this game on Saturn (you can shop import stores for Ubi Soft's European version of "Speed Racer"...but do you really want to?).

MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS: A+
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I LOVE THIS SONGS; THEY MAKE ME HAPPY (so sue me :-)!

We all had an idea of what Sonic music sounded like from our experience with the Genesis and Sega CD games; the tune in Marble Zone (from the original "Sonic The Hedgehog") is one of my all-time favorites, and it's proof that Sonic Team's composers were good enough to compensate for the notoriously weak audio chip in the Genesis. But on the Saturn, with CD space to fill, the music has been a mixed bag: "Sonic Jam" had the same Genesis music (duh!), but "Sonic 3D Blast" had an eclectic mix of alternative music that contrasted sharply with Sonic's child-like atmosphere. Remember the level with foggy graphics that had monk-like chants on the background? I loved it as much as I hated the boss music when Sonic faced Robotnik; a mixed bag at best!

Since "Sonic R" is handled once again by Traveller's Tales, the music selections are once again in their hands. They decided to go all-out with light pop music that could have ended up being just trashy, forgettable filler. Boy, were they possesed or what! Richard Jacques (music producer) and T.J.Davis (singer and guest-anouncer) have come up with a bubble-gum mix of tunes that border on the insanely-happy and the drug-induced; it feels like they love "Sonic R" to the point of no return and are singing their hearts out to the game. My favorites are the musical tracks in Resort Island and Radical City, which are the most enjoyable and hummable tunes in a videogame that I've ever heard this side of "NiGHTS" or "Parappa The Rapper". The lyrics on the other tracks tend to be too fluffy and sweet for their own good, but a visit on the option menu can have you racing the tracks with the instrumental versions of the songs. Also keep in mind that most of the songs last a good four to five minutes, which means that most racers will only hear a small portion of the song as they race the tracks. Resort Island, for example, has a cool mambo-like deviation from the main theme toward the end of the song that would never be heard when playing the main game, because it's the easiest track to just rush by without noticing. Either with or without lyrics, this is one hell of an ass-kicking videogame soundtrack.

This type of music isn't for everyone, but those of us under its spell can't get enough of it and will be chasing import copies of the soundtrack CD the moment they hit American shores. When combined with the excellent and crystal-clear sound effects associated with the Sonic universe (the rings, the jumps, the incidental sound of waterfalls and chipping birds, the metallic hump of the structures, etc.), "Sonic R" excels in the department I least expected it to make a memorable impact. Sega gambled big time by attempting this unusual musical experiment with their big holiday game of 1997, but came across a winner in my book; Sonic Team knows their music!

GAMEPLAY/FUN FACTOR: C
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A deceiving rating, since I'm having a real blast playing the game over and over again, mastering my techniques and still uncovering secret characters that just ellude my by tenths-of-a-second. Your character can take shortcuts by collecting rings, which are all over the track; some are worth 20, 50 or "X" amount of rings in order to open the doors that lead to those shortcuts. Unlike the braindead and rely-on-luck technique of "Mario Kart 64", you must face strategic decisions as you race that could affect your position in the race. You could try to just outrun your competitors, but venturing off the regular path will usually yield results. You could try to make a run for the Esmerald, but that requires lots of rings that could be used in Accelerators (mechanisms that cash your rings for a cool-looking but momentary boost of speed); and since you need to finish first in the race in order to keep an Esmerald you collect, the number of rings a player must collect has to be planned and not wasted in an unnecessary Accelerator boost. By the same token, you must finish in the top four spots when collecting the five coins in order to face that course's secret character, which isn't easy since some of those coins are well-off the most travelled paths.

In an homage to "Mario Kart 64", "Sonic R" features Item Panels (which are the icon used in the 16-bit Sonic games at the end of a level) that randomly give the player a game-enhancing bonus; it could be rings (5, 10 or 20), or a bubble (blue allows you to walk over water once, while the coveted yellow acts like a ring-attracting magnet), or the coveted red shoes that'll make you run even faster. And the selection of character does affect the way you maneuver around the levels. Sonic can run faster but he's tough around sharp corners or steep inclines (a big deal in a level like Regal Ruin, which has both); Amy's car can navigate over water hazards (which slow down the likes of Sonic) and handles better than the foot racers, but it's too slow when not boosted by a turbo button, and can't tackle such cool shortcuts like the ramp in Radical City. All the characters balance each other out, and combined with the complicated five tracks (plus their backward alternative) it guarantees there's plenty of challenge for those who seek it. You want to beat Resort Island with the slow but bomb-throwing Dr. Robotnik? Can Amy win a head-to-head race against Knuckles in Radical City? The challenge is there, and waiting for the player to make it happen. "Diddy Kong Racing" this ain't, but on Saturn it is the only ticket in town (PSX? Forget about it!).

As good as the things in "Sonic R" are, there are truckloads of small details that weren't ironed out when the game was released in time for the holidays, which makes me think the game was rushed to meet the profitable December deadline. Oh dear God (:-P), where to start?

*Controls: what control might that be? The analog control is a joke, and it isn't anywhere near the intuitive and responsive method of navigation I've come to expect from the company that made "NiGHTS" and "TouringCar Championship". Digital works considerably better, but you'll never forget you're controlling the character because you will miss key turns, unnecessarily bang against a wall and fall off ledges when you didn't want to. What irks me is that slower characters like Amy handle considerably better that Knuckles and Sonic, which means that the control is flawed by design in order to keep the player from blasting through the game at ease, and that's shoddy game design. People on chatrooms have commented that I should approach the racers as cars and handle them accordingly; well, if "Sonic R" were a racing game I'd be bitching about how flawed the control of the cars is. Combining the L & R shift buttons reminds me of the flawed control scheme used by Activision in their PSX racer "Grand Tour Racing", in that it's not intuitive enough for a player used to a brake and gas scheme. Say what you will about Nintendo and their bad habit of delaying games; their quality control would have never let a game with this shoddy a control out their warehouse without major tweaking. I used to make fun of the losers who wouldn't have the patience to put down a controller when faced with frustrating games, but AFTER BREAKING A SATURN CONTROLLER IN HALF AT THE SHEAR FRUSTRATION OF TRYING TO NAVIGATE a character in "Sonic R", I won't be making fun of no one no more; rent or buy from a store with a return-policy folks, because until you get used to it (countless races will be lost trying), this game's control is a dog.

*Tracks: only five, and although they reverse and offer the nice additional tasks of Time Trial and Tag, the number of competing cartoony racers in this genre (16 in "Mario Kart 64", 20 in "Diddy Kong Racing") dwarfs Traveller's Tales offering. And some of the courses feature well-designed but wasted gaming potential in its courses. A good example is the pinball section in Radical City: you're racing against the clock and you have to just blow past that section in order to save time; if you ever hit those pinball bouncers, it's only to slow you down and you'll do your best to avoid that section. There are no hidden balloons in that section, and the other characters won't venture there when being persued by you in the Tag mode. So, unless you play without racing (for the heck of it) there is no way to enjoy what could have become an essential part of track. How about a course full of pinball shortcuts that must be navigated, instead of ignored? There are a dozen similar zones through the game, oozing potential gameplay that has to be ignored to beat the record and finish in time. This is further proof that a 3D go-anywhere Sonic-style kind of game shouldn't be restricted by the limitations of the cartoony racer genre. Speaking of which....

*Options: why can't the player set the number of laps in the Grand Prix or Time Trial modes? There must be an international treaty somewhere mandating that cartoony racers must limit their races to just three laps, probably because indulging in a 20 lap Grand Prix race in "Sonic R" will induce the same type of sickness and convulsion the "Pocket Monster" TV show caused to Japanese children a few days ago. Not even an option to just race around was included, which is stupid because it doesn't allow a player to hear the songs in their entirety as they race. It's the Music Sample selections, or nothing. "Mario Kart 64" also lacks the option to select number of laps, as well as an option to select what song you would like to hear while you race (like in "Ridge Racer Revolution"). Why can't I race Luigi on Wario's Stadium listening to the tune of Chocobo Mountain (my favorite "Mario Kart" song)? Why can't Knuckles race the Regal Ruin while "Living in the City" blasts off my TV's speakers (my favorite "Sonic R" song)? Shame on Nintendo and Sega for sticking to basics rather than expanding a gamer's control over his/her gaming environment.

*Characters: two-player mode is enjoyable because your opponent's decisions are intuitive and unpredictable, but because the graphics fade too close to the player, the one-player mode is where you'll spend most of your time racing. You'll notice though, that the Artificial Intelligence of the opponents is very basic and doesn't offer any surprises; assuming you race as either Sonic or Knuckles, Tails (3rd), Robotnik (4th) and Amy (5th) will always finish in the same order and follow their set pattern. You can increase/decrease the difficulty level, but at heart the computer offers little challenge. In Tag mode for example, the characters won't venture off the main track to escape your touch (they'll just turn around the same route they came from), which leaves all the course's secret twists and hidden locations empty. A waste!

Other small nitpicks include the inability for two players to race against the other three (one-on-one only), and the absence of a choice of what racers you'd rather face (you never get in a Gran Prix competition against the robot versions of the main characters, except when you face them once after getting the five coins). Small inconsistencies in design, and a lack of options to give the player the feel of control over the races keeps "Sonic R" bellow the still flawed but better-known alternatives on the N64. When limited to the CD-based 32-bit platforms though, "Sonic R" has no real competition as the cartoon racer of choice for the few Sega freaks still sticking around for Saturn's eulogy.

OVERALL: B
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The wait is still on for the "Mario 64" of Sonic games (weird analogy!), but until it appears as either a Saturn-farewell or a Dural/Katana-opening salvo, "Sonic R" is the most technologically-advanced and Saturn-worthy Sonic game Sega has released in years. A few years ago this could have ignited the sales charts and made the machine a contender, rather than the holiday treat it has become. Give it a rent if you can, or buy it fully aware that it follows the footsteps of Nintendo's "Mario Kart 64", warts and all. A harmless and controversy-free game that should give Sega a handful of Christmas bucks. Oh, that spirit!

"Quake" and "Croc" may brake my bones, but only "Sonic R"'s control is bad enough to injure my thumbs...Happy 1998!

NeXT!!!