Guest Feature: Sonic R

This column is a guest author feature, written by a friend of the site whose work I am thrilled to host at Retro XP. This entry is from Kerry Brunskill of Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

It's no secret that Sonic had a difficult time after Sonic 3 & Knuckles wowed everyone with its nigh-magical lock-on cartridge and the extended adventure contained within. Colorful mascot characters looked a bit passé in an era of licensed dance music, survival horror, and sexy heroines, and the few that survived had to be reimagined in 3D, as the '90s wouldn't accept anything less. 

The trouble is, 3D games with Sonic's extraordinary level of interactivity — jumping, swimming, climbing, interactions with slopes and slides, etc. — tended to be slow and methodical on 32-bit hardware out of sheer necessity. Tomb Raider. Soul Reaver. Heck, even Metal Gear Solid. There's a reason why so many characters had a thing for casual jogging back then. 

The idea of seeing Sega's blue blur sprinting through Saturn-generated polygonal zones at speed seemed to be an impossible dream, especially after so long and one protracted high profile failure.

And then Sonic R turned up.

There are stone pillars and carved statues. An entire stage made out of transparent crystals. A city with its own enormous Sonic-themed pinball table.

And I'm not merely allowed to race past these objects at top speed either, all of the really interesting bits reserved for the sides of the track. I'm expected to roll and skid and leap amongst them, thanks to the game's bold decision to allow the cast to use their own two feet to get around — same as always.

Sonic can double-jump. Tails can fly. Knuckles can glide and climb. Even Amy and Robotnik's hover-capable vehicles are small and quirky enough to feel like an extension of their bodies.

Being able to explore these places in a more direct manner makes a huge difference. Seeing toes point downwards during a spring-enhanced leap and arms stretch out to glide conveys something more interesting than mere speed; there's personality, physical effort, and skill in these motions. 

I'm not just going fast when I'm playing well, I'm athletic.

And I've got plenty of good reasons to hone my skills too, seeing as every stage is filled with unlockable doors, helpful shortcuts, (optional) poppable balloons, and hidden character-unlocking collectibles — collectibles I have to find and gather while racing, and then make sure I finish in at least the top three if I want to keep them. 

The stages containing these features are a brilliantly balanced mix of the familiar and the fresh. Resort Island certainly has that "Sonic starting stage" look to it, all pleasant greens, bright blue waters, and large, ring-filled loops, but it's definitely not Green Hill. It's not Emerald, Turquoise, or any other color of Hill I've already visited either. The fences, tilted curves, mountains, and odd mix of palm and pine trees are all its own.

The other stages run along similar lines. Reactive Factory for example has giant glass tubes filled with blue chemicals and lots of grey contrasting with black and yellow warning stripes — it's all a bit Chemical Plant…. but only a bit. There are also multiple submarines hanging around in the water, and the bright sun hanging in the sky above distant mountains gives it a brighter mood than the intense urban backdrop of the well-known Mega Drive stage.

It's trying to move forwards without severing its ties to the past, and show off exactly what the Saturn can do while it's at it.

This game is a technical marvel packed with clever tricks. The title screen boasts a spinning 3D R so shiny it's reflective — fancy stuff for the '90s, right? But the really special part only happens if I absent-mindedly fiddle with the controller. The R tilts, twists, and even changes color as I prod buttons, confirming that this isn't smoke and mirrors, some clever animation timed to produce a convincing fake — this is all being handled by the console itself in real-time.

It's a neat effect that's used again on the loading screen (a plain Sonic head transformed into a metallic mirror this time) and then a race begins — and it's clear that the game can still show off even when it's displaying more than blank screens and static backgrounds.

When Sonic R came out, there were three common ways to handle the far edges of 3D environments: 

1. Don't. Everything pops up at the acceptable furthest distance, as defined by the engine/programmers behind it. It's raw and blocky, but it's also crisp and clear.

2. Fog. Silent Hill famously took this idea and ran with it. Tenchu painted it black and made me believe I was sneaking around at night. A lot of other games just looked a bit weird and fuzzy.

3. Really tiny rooms. Also long corridors with conspicuous bends in the right places.

Sonic R chooses to instead flex its technical muscles and gradually fade everything in instead, polygons becoming more solid the closer they are to the camera. 

It looks amazing, and for Saturn fans, remains an inarguable counterpoint to all of those "the Saturn can't do transparencies" arguments that have never quite gone away. When presented this way the restricted view comes across as tasteful, deliberate — an artistic choice, rather than a necessary fudging of a technical limitation. 

As fast as it is and as fancy as it looks, I sadly can't pretend that it's a well-balanced game. Some easily accessed alternative routes are just better than others, character abilities may be lore-accurate but they sure as heck aren't created equal, and as such if two semi-decent players are going up against each other then whoever picks Sonic will win unless the other person picks Super Sonic, in which case they'll win.

But these are easily ignored concerns in the face of all the good in here. I'm Tails, flying through a city at night. I'm Sonic, spinning through a loop at high speed and collecting rings as I go. Like the 8-bit Sonic games I love returning to, I know Chaos Emeralds are tucked away in awkward spots, waiting to be discovered. And like the Mega CD Sonic I so desperately coveted in my youth, a race against Metal Sonic is there for the winning.

It's 3D Sonic in every way my heart ever wanted, and I adore this bold, ambitious, and unique amalgam of the classic series' strengths.

Kerry Brunskill's childhood was spent playing European computer games, an interest which has blossomed into a love of the unusual, an adoration for the underdog, and an appreciation for the imperfect. What this means in practice is their social media feed is a jumble of everything and they sometimes stub their toe on a box full of arcade PCBs. You can find the online equivalent of this chaotic experience at Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster

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