Did anyone else play and love some Sonic racing games back in the day? Out of all of the different Sonic the Hedgehog spin-off series, Sonic Riders and the Sonic & All-Stars racing games were Sega racing at its peak. If you haven't played either series, I'd highly recommend them.
I played the absolute crap out of these games as a kid with my friends. Great stuff
I played Sonic Riders and the sequel, Sonic Riders Zero Gravity on my GameCube back in the day. The idea of Sonic characters racing on hoverboards was so fascinating and so cool! BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE! You can even use hover skates or a hoverbike! The first game was pretty cool, but Zero Gravity was where it gets really fucking good. You had more vehicle options, more Sega crossover characters, and the tracks were bonkers.
In high school I would have some friends stay for the weekend and we'd play video games non-stop. Zero Gravity was one of our top favorites in our rotation of games because of how insanely fun it was to play and discover new shortcuts, unlock new characters, and to even play as a team against the high level CPU players.
There was a third game, Sonic Free Riders, on the Xbox 360. But that game requires the Kinect. I wasn't big on the Kinect at the time, so I didn't even pay attention to that game.
Eventually Sega decided to 86 the hovercrafts and just go back to cars; like with Sonic R. In my opinion, this was the best possible direction for Sonic racing games at this point in time. Mario Kart wouldn't see its 7th entry for another year, and everyone was itching for a new kart racing game.
I had first heard about Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing on a radio ad for something that I cannot for the life of me remember. It was very unusual to have people talking about video games on the radio in Iowa. After hearing about the game, I knew right away that I needed to have it. So my brother and I headed to GameStop right away and bought a copy for Xbox 360.
I've always wondered why Xbox 360 games have that weird blur on one side of the cover image on new Xbox consoles.
While All-Stars Racing wasn't perfect, it was a very good game. You had so many different Sega characters to choose from, so many awesome tracks based on different Sega games, some pretty wacky power-ups that you could pick-up during races, and LOADS of unlockables. My friends and I had a total blast with that game. So much so that I unlocked every single achievement for it! As an added bonus, the Xbox 360 version had Banjo and Kazooie and exclusive playable characters.
Then came the sequel - Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. This game blew the first out of the water. Even more cool characters, sweeter unlockables, a mod system for changing vehicle stats, more awesome tracks from other cool Sega properties, and a really cool single player mode made this one of the best kart racing games that I have ever played. The Xbox Series X enhancements push it even further, making it almost rival Mario Kart 8 in terms of graphical fidelity and frame rate. On top of all of that, each character's vehicles would transform depending on the whether they're driving on land, water, or the air; a-la Diddy Kong Racing. Since each character had a completely different vehicle, that allowed for some really cool and diverse transformations. My main man, Amigo (Samba de Amigo series) drove a choo-choo train that would transform into a steamboat on water and a biplane in the air. Ugh, this game is amazing.
Amigo was my main for both of the Sonic & All-Stars Racing games. I've always been a big fan of the "high acceleration, high handling" playstyles in racing games.
Sega, please bring back the Sonic and All-Stars Racing games. Sonic Team Racing just doesn't scratch that itch for me. I CRAVE the Sega crossovers! Give me some Shin Megami Tensei/ Persona characters, Kiryu or Ichiban from Yakuza, a blocky fighter from Virtua Fighter, or HECK, even Altered Beast! Just give us something, please. These games were so insanely fun to play whether you were playing with friends, alone, and even online. The replayability was off-the-rails with how many cool unlockables there were and how many shortcuts there were to find. If a new game came out in this series I would buy it immediately. I miss them so much.
PEACE OUT.
