Back when the guys at Sega were making consoles and had to compete with Nintendo, Sonic the Hedgehog was their ace-in-the-hole. Nintendo had Mario, so Sega needed a kick-butt mascot also, and Sonic was the most kick-butt you could get -- He was well-designed, he had an attitude, and above all, he was fast. Sonic was the coolest mascot of the time, and had a few games that were quite arguably better than some of Mario's offerings. When the Sega Saturn came around, however, the Sonic franchise hit a dry spot. The console never got a true, new entry in the series, as Sonic X-Treme never saw the light of day. Sonic 3D Blast was simultaneously released on both the Saturn and the Genesis, so that didn't really count in the eyes of the fans, either (although the Saturn version was far superior, if only for the different Special Stages). But there was one Sonic game on the Saturn that, while most people would love to forget it, I have very fond memories of, and that game is Sonic R.

I want to say that Sonic R was probably an attempt at countering Nintendo's hugely popular Mario Kart 64, since they both came out around the same time. Sonic R, however, did not live up to the competition -- It had fewer stages to race in and a complete lack of a battle mode of any kind, so the points for variety instantly went to Mario. But Sonic R had a lot of charm, especially if you were a die-hard Sonic fan like I was. While none of the stages were taken directly from any previous Sonic games, they were all very similar, even including the famous loop-the-loops. There were speed pads you could spend rings on to get an extra boost, springs, shortcut doors, the works. The stages had multiple paths to take to get to the finish line as well -- They were very well designed, in my opinion. Although there were only five of them, you could race differently every time you started the game up. I remember playing the game so much that I could almost literally play through the stages with my eyes closed. I still know where every single nook and cranny will take you.

There was definitely one thing that Sonic R had over the Mario Kart games, and that was the required skill level. If you wanted to collect everything in the game, it wasn't just a matter of completing the stages in single player mode -- You had to find items throughout the stages as you raced, and then finish in first place on top of that. The first type of item you could find was the Sonic Token, of which there were five hidden throughout each stage. After collecting all five and finishing the race within the top three spots, you got to race one of four secret characters -- Metal Sonic, Metal Knuckles, the dreaded Tails Doll, or EggRobo. If you beat them one-on-one, you unlocked them as playable racers. They weren't terribly different from their living counterparts, but they did add a bit of variety to the roster.



The second special item you could collect as you races was, of course, the Chaos Emerald. All seven Emeralds returned in Sonic R, and by collecting each one, you could race as Super Sonic, and without any Ring limitations, either. There were two Emeralds in each stage (except for one in the first stage), and you had to finish the race in first place in order to keep them. All of the Emeralds required you to pay a "toll" of sorts to get to them as well, meaning you had to collect a bunch of rings on the way. To find all of these hidden items in just three laps was daunting at times, to say the least -- My favorite self-made challenge was finding all the Sonic Tokens and Chaos Emeralds in the stage, finishing in first place, beating the secret racer, and getting to keep the Emeralds I had collected on top of all that. Victory was sweet.

Like I said before, there wasn't any kind of battle mode in Sonic R, but there were two interesting multiplayer modes other than just racing -- Balloon Race and Tag. In Balloon Race, there were balloons scattered all over the racing stages, and the first person to collect five of them would be the winner. Not overly deep or anything, but still pretty fun nonetheless. The only problem was that once you knew where the balloons always popped up, it wasn't much of a challenge anymore -- Their positions were never randomized. If you played the game often, you could just run to the locations of the balloons while new players would be left in the dust without even getting the chance to find a single one. Tag was just what it sounds like -- A game of tag. Players and CPUs ran all around while one person tried to run into all of them, at which point they'd freeze in their tracks. This turned into a time trial sort of game, as the main goal was to beat the times of everyone else who had played. Since the rival characters never went to the same places, this mode had a much longer life than the Balloon Race mode did. The coolest thing about these modes, though, was the fact that it basically turned the game into somewhat of a free-roaming adventure, and you could even explore and find all the shortcuts so you'd be ready for your next race. There was no time limit, so you could goof off for as long as you wanted to.

Although the Balloon Race was quite limited on the Saturn, the PC port of the game (which showed up a year later, and is available on the Sonic Gems Collection,) randomized the balloon locations, and it was surprisingly fun. I remember playing Balloon Race with my brother for hours at a time, and it never got old, since we were on equal ground playing it on the PC. This version of the game had a few more things going for it over the Saturn version -- Enhanced graphics, greater draw distance, and randomized weather patterns. If randomized weather was enabled, you'd never be able to tell what playing a stage would be like. Clear day and night just changed the backdrops, fog made it hard to see, rain made all the racers slide all over, and snow not only made the ground slippery in certain spots, but it also froze all the water in the stage, so all the lakes became huge shortcuts. It's a shame that the Saturn version never had these features -- After playing the PC version, I could never go back.



There's one final aspect of Sonic R that always gets brought up, and that's the soundtrack. People love to make fun of the soundtrack in this game. Each stage had a vocal musical number (two for the last stage, depending on whether or not you played as Super Sonic), as did the title screen and ending credits. Written by Richard Jacques and sung by TJ Davis, I personally found them to be quite catchy. No, they weren't the greatest songs written for a video game of all time, but they stuck in my head. And you know what really rocked? You could just throw the Saturn disc into a music CD player and play the songs like any old music CD. A game and a soundtrack in one? Sonic R is undoubtedly the greatest video game ever created by humans.

Sonic's recent games have been quite a bit under par, and his outings on the Sega Saturn weren't that great, either. But Sonic R, as much as people seem to hate it, has a special spot in the gaming part of my heart that can't be replaced. I don't know if I'd take it over something like Mario Kart Wii, but I still prefer it over most of the racing games I've played. It's nice to have the Gems Collection (and, in turn, this game) just to be able to occasionally relive one of my favorite games for the short-lived Sega Saturn.