Sonic Riders • Eurogamer.net

Story behind lost Sonic hoverboard game prototype unearthed

Sega passed on it, then released Sonic Riders.

Unseen64 has reported on Sonic The Hedgehog Extreme, a previously lost Sonic-themed hoverboard game prototype its developers believe sparked the creation of Sonic Riders.

VideoSonic: The Animated Fan Film preview

Project on hold pending funding.

Sonic Riders PC demo

Run for the (green) hills.

Even SEGA would probably agree that Sonic Riders isn't the most exciting PC release of the year (seeing as they also publish Football Manager and Medieval 2), but with a beige-box version due out this Christmas we now have a demo to help make our minds up.

Sonic Riders on PC

Hoverboards meet hard-drives.

Not content with its persistent whoring of the Sonic license on consoles, handhelds and mobiles, SEGA of America has announced the development of Sonic Riders, the hoverboard racer, on PC.

Sonic Riders

Which is also my band name idea for Winona.

Sonic Riders begins as if upside down. Instead of cleverly introducing all its ideas one by one on the race track and relegating its paper-thin storyline to the manual (which is obviously made of paper and therefore ideally suitable), it stupidly spends ages introducing its paper-thin plot and relegates to the manual all the important details, like what the hell all the things on the screen mean, and how to turn corners without smacking repeatedly into the wall. (Incidentally, neither game or manual explains why Tails is still alive.)

And of course, apart from a brilliant bit where a hawk-lady makes Tails the-stupid-fox-who-I-hate angry, the cut-scenes are full of unnatural, second-language dialogue acted out by the usual crowd of unquestioning voice actors, who by now must be used to delivering sentences like, "These players, they're hot, the best racers I could find!" with an array of inflections previously uncharted by humankind. (In fact that's probably why the actors keep coming back for more work.) Anyway, since the game doesn't bother to tell you, I might as well give you an idea of how to play it.

Sonic Riders is a hoverboard racing game. In other words, a range of Sonic the Hedgehog characters (including some birdy types called the Babylon Rogues - yes, their back-story is the sort of thing that makes you wish you were five again so that you could beat yourself around the head with a spiky piece of wood for 18 hours for being so stupidly tolerant of things like this) zoom along on gravity-defying snowboards, building up speed by riding each other's wakes, boosting and hitting boost pads. And collecting rings. And building up air. And using pitstops. And grinding. And doing tricks. And levelling up. So there's quite a lot and it's a bit messy.