Trivia / Sonic R

• Accent Depundent: "Can You Feel the Sunshine?" rhymes "rain" with "again". Although this rhymes in an English accent (composer Richard Jacques and singer TJ Davis are both British), it's sung in an American accent where the two words don't rhyme.
• Christmas Rushed: When Sonic Xtreme was cancelled in 1997, Sega asked Traveller's Tales to rush in an alternative to give the Saturn a Killer App by Christmas. The hastened development is noticeable as while there aren't a lot of obvious glitches, there are only five race courses, unusual controls and physics borrowed from a Formula 1 prototype, and the racers are poorly balanced.
• Dolled-Up Installment: The game was originally a Formula 1 game, but due to the cancelation of Sonic X-treme, the engine was retooled into a Sonic game. By the developers' own admission, this is why the controls feel more like you're driving a car than racing on foot.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: This game is the only game from Gems Collection that hasn't had a re-release on digital platforms. Since the Gems Collection port is based on the PC version, the original Saturn version has also never seen any kind of re-release. Used copies of the Saturn version tend to fetch a pretty hefty price tag.
• Kids' Meal Toy: In the UK, Burger King released pull-back racers of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Robotnik, as well as a mini pinball game of Sonic and a water ring toss game of Robotnik in 1998.
• Uncredited Role: Sonic R's director Kats Sato went uncredited in the original release due to an argument he had with Yuji Naka during development.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: One version of the Tails Doll summoning ritual evokes this. Supposedly, helping Tails Doll tag Super Sonic lets him absorb the Chaos Emeralds and attack the real world. The Urban Legend kicks in when you realize tagging Super Sonic with Tails Doll is really frickin' hard to do.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The head of Traveller's Tales released several videos of early builds of the game. The 0.1 build shows an unused city level that bears some resemblance to Radical City.
  • Further snippets by Jon Burton reveal development plans such as:
    • A couple of ditched modes including a Relay Mode (using different racers per lap) and a Mirror Mode (reversing the display of the track). Both were ditched due to time and hardware constraints.
    • Originally, the game was an unrelated Formula 1 racer. A new Sonic title was needed after Sonic X-treme was cancelled, so Traveler's Tales reused the engine for a Sonic racer instead.
    • The Flame Shield was cut for being too similar to the Thunder Shield.
    • Resort Island originally took place at sunset. This was changed because the theme to the level is all about sunshine.
    • An older box art was changed because it spoiled Metal Sonic.
    • Originally, many of the game's textures (such as the grass textures) resembled Sonic 3D. This was changed later in development.
  • The models Sonic Team originally gave to Traveller's Tales were more accurate, but had to be simplified for optimization purposes. For example, Tails' Tuft of Head Fur and whiskers were removed, as were the orange stripes on Knuckles' shoes. The unmodified models are used in the ending images.
  • Amy had a saw-blade attached to her car early in development to act as an attack.
  • Eggman originally had a bomb, not a cannon.
• Working Title: The game's original title was to be Sonic TT, possibly to tie-in to the SEGA MANX TT game series.