YMMV / Sonic R

• Accidental Innuendo: The lyric "You're the one that makes me feel so high..." in the "Diamond in the Sky" song. Amusingly, the music composer for Sonic Gems Collection caught on to this, and supplied a bonus "Acid Remix" of the "Can You Feel the Sunshine?" song as an extra for the collection's museum.
• Awesome Music: The entire soundtrack. And for those who cannot stand the lyrics, the instrumental version of each song is still pretty good:
  • "Can You Feel the Sunshine?" is one of the most integral parts about Sonic R, to the point that it got an official Special Remix.
  • "Livin' in the City" is classic '90s techno-pop that sounds like something straight out of Bubblegum Crisis or Dirty Pair Flash.
  • "Back in Time" was so beloved that a remixed version was made for the second half of Sanctuary Falls' theme in Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed. The flute music sample was also used for the Jungle Joyride stage in Sonic Unleashed.
  • "Super Sonic Racing", which — fittingly enough — plays on Radiant Emerald when you're playing as Super Sonic. Perfectly encapsulates the high-energy, high-adrenaline feeling of zooming through the course with the near-unmatched speed of the Fastest Thing Alive, to the point that it's just as recognizable as "Can You Feel the Sunshine?" (if not more so) and is often first in line if any song from Sonic R is going to be rearranged in a future title.
  • The credits theme, "Number One". It manages to mix the Europop theme, romantic lyrics that manage to come off as mostly genuine rather than cheesy with a swinging horn section to make a track that's both incredibly triumphant and surprisingly sincere.
• Common Knowledge: Many people think that Sonic Team were the main developers behind Sonic R. They weren't, because they were busy with Sonic Adventure, so Sonic R was handled by third-party dev team Traveller's Tales. However, the game's issues are largely due to Sonic Team — they rushed TT to get it out in six months, and their only direct involvement was providing the character models and map designs, explaining the game's brevity.
• Discredited Meme: Most fans these days are thoroughly sick and tired of anything relating to the Tails Doll, especially the psychopathic Creepypasta versions.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Tails Doll's popularity in the intervening years since the game's release couldn't possibly be overstated, with many a Creepypasta and Urban Legend of Zelda surrounding his nature. His reputation has noticeably diminished with time, but his rare cameos and references in other Sonic works (most notably his Archie incarnation, which canonizes the idea that he's more monstrous than he appears) remain a testament to the influence his fanbase generated.
  • Metal Knuckles is a surprisingly popular villain for someone who only appeared once in the entire series; due to his cool design, being the strongest character in the game next to Super Sonic (as elaborated on below), and his sheer potential for being elaborated upon story-wise. To the delight of fans, he eventually made a surprise return to the games in Sonic Superstars.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Tails Doll's existence as, well, an evil doll rather than a proper robot. Unlike Sonic and Knuckles, who Eggman has actual grudges with, he likely considers Tails Just a Kid who he only really opposes because he's Sonic's sidekick.
  • All four main tracks being surrounded by water hazards make perfect sense with the manual's story revealing the grand prix was a trap for Sonic set by Dr Eggman. Even more so that all his robots are designed to hover over water.
• Game-Breaker: With his perfect-across-the-board stats, Super Sonic is capable of winning any race with ease once unlocked. Metal Knuckles comes a close second in this regard: being very fast yet controllable, capable of moving on water, and having a wicked glide that puts the original Knuckles' to shame.
• Genius Programming: Say what you will about the quality of the gameplay, but the visuals of this game are spectacular for the platform. It features full 3D graphics, something that was very difficult to achieve on the Saturn, along with several graphical effects that were thought to be flat-out impossible on the hardware (due to the Saturn lacking hardware acceleration for said features). One of the game's developers has a YouTube channel called GameHut where he details how this was achieved, with several effects achieved through clever use of the Saturn's many sub-processor chips, some careful juggling of color palettes to create a fading render effect to prevent crude polygonal pop-up, and the careful use of mirrored textures to produce the shiny metallic effect in Radiant Emerald.
• Good Bad Bugs: Due to poor collision on a few walls on the tracks, it can be possible to easily clip through them by simply running through them at a fast speed, particularly with Amy's Turbo Boost. These can be used to go out of bounds and finish laps in under five seconds, making it a commonly used speedrun tactic.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Sonic R has a song called "Livin' in the City". In 2001, Sonic Adventure 2 would have a song called "Escape from the City" for the City Escape level.
  • Radiant Emerald's theme is "Diamond in the Sky". In 2012, Rihanna would release "Diamonds", which has the lyric "diamonds in the sky."
  • The back of the game's UK PC box◊ has a joke wondering about what the "R" could stand for in Sonic R. Two of the suggestions are Rush and Racing, which actually would become Sonic games in the future.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Most of the poor reviews the game received were not due to the gameplay, which seemed effective enough, but with only five quick courses, you could cap the game off in less than an hour... and that's having found and unlocked everything there is.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Amy, Eggman, and Eggrobo are generally considered by most players to be the worst characters in the game due to having overall poor stats, mostly-useless special abilities and being unable to jump in a platform-based racing game. Their only redeeming factor is being able to drive on the surface of water... which becomes a moot point when all of the other Secret Characters can do that anyway while still retaining the ability to jump and use their other mobility options. Many have commented that Amy in particular would have worked far better simply racing on foot, instead of chugging around in her slow, clunky jalopy.^note That being said, however, Amy's Turbo Boost comes with the advantage in speedrunning of being able to clip out of bounds and lap around a small area to complete laps in mere seconds. It relies on a very particular method to do, though, so you typically won't see her used outside of those kinds of runs.
• Memetic Psychopath: For some strange reason, the Tails Doll has gotten this reputation in media outside of this game and fanfiction. Most cases depict it as an Eldritch Abomination in disguise at worst.
• Moment of Awesome: Doing the final race — Radiant Emerald — as Super Sonic. There's just something so exhilarating about racing through the game's most beautiful course with its strongest character against its best opposition, with "Super Sonic Racing"^note which replaces "Diamond in the Sky" when you're Super Sonic triumphantly blasting all the while. If you're doing well, the pitch change syncs perfectly with the final lap. Better still, Metal Sonic is capable of catching up to you at the last few turns, often leading to a brief but very intense showdown to clutch out the victory. For many, it's the highlight and the most memorable part of the game.
• Narm:
  • Did the lyrics to "Super Sonic Racing" really need to use the word "everybody" 11 times in a row? And pronounce it very strangely the 11th time?
  • A bug makes the Metal Knuckles race a complete joke, as the robot, after hitting some walls, starts turning around at some point (can be seen in this video).
• Narm Charm: Many find the cheesiness of the soundtrack (including the repeated use and pronunciation of the word "everybody") to be why it's so endearing.
• Nightmare Fuel: Tails Doll. There's a reason why there are so many creepypastas about him.
• Polished Port: The PC and Gems Collection versions give characters less slippery movement, in addition to better resolution and different weather effects (including snow which invokes actual gameplay effects), and split-screen multiplayer now handling up to four players. There was a much rarer 2004 re-release of the PC version in select countries that sadly loses the online multiplayer features from the 1998 release and graphical options, but it has better compatibility on XP and later Windows system.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: You can spice up your playthrough by imposing yourself one or two of following challenges:
  • To complete the game at 100 percent, you have to get five tokens to unlock the robot characters, and 1 or 2 Chaos Emeralds per level to unlock Super Sonic. While you can do both quests separately, you can also do both at the same time, making races like Reactive Factory even more difficult.
  • No matter if you do the previous challenge or not, taking Amy to complete the game at 100% is a challenge by itself, as she needs to take a special road to get a token, which is only accessible by jumping on a spring. You can spice up the challenge even more by setting the weather on cold (as this player did), which freezes the water and makes the road slippery, stripping her from her rare advantages.
  • Setting the difficulty on Hard is a self-imposed challenge by itself, as all NPCs seem to be unstoppable.
• Signature Song: Two, which would go on to resurface in future games and were included on the CD that came with the Sonic the Hedgehog Birthday Pack, a Japan-only limited edition of Sonic Adventure 2 released in celebration of the series' 10th anniversary.
  • Be it for serving as the song many players will hear the most (being the first level BGM and all), being associated with the Tails Doll meme, or simply being emblematic of the game's atypical yet immensely catchy sound direction, "Can You Feel the Sunshine?" is fondly remembered.
  • "Super Sonic Racing" has become so heavily associated with the franchise that it's up there with Green Hill Zone as one of the most iconic Sonic tracks, going on to see use not only in other racing spin-offs like Sonic & All-Stars Racing and Team Sonic Racing, but Sonic Generations, the series' 20th anniversary celebration. It's even been used once or twice as a general anthem for Sonic and the Sonic series similarly to tracks like "Live and Learn" or "Reach for the Stars". All the more impressive considering it comes from a spin-off largely considered to be So Okay, It's Average at best.
• So Bad, It's Good: The lyrics to every single song. The music itself is also strangely unfitting given the racing theme of the game, and it's awesome.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus of the game. It's perfectly playable, has its moments, and can be fun, but the short length, clunky controls, and repetitiveness are the major flaws that can really detract from the overall experience.
• Special Effect Failure: Despite being Visual Effects of Awesome most of the time, there's one example of this to be found. The game is notable for being one of the few Sega Saturn games to have silky smooth fade-in draw distance rendering thanks to a special transparency algorithm. However, the final track of the game, Radiant Emerald (in the Saturn version) locks the draw distance algorithm to a certain point regardless of the actual distance in order to create a nifty transparency effect across the entire track. The end result is a stunning looking gem-like translucence... with distant chunks of the level simply popping into existence as they draw near because the fade-in effect to mask it is effectively broken.
• Sweetness Aversion: The lyrics to "Can You Feel the Sunshine?" come across as blissfully unaware to how obnoxiously saccharine they really are.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Metal Knuckles and Tails Doll haven't been seen in any important capacity since this game despite them and Metal Sonic forming a robotic trio to counter the core Team Sonic. Tails Doll did get a cameo in LEGO Dimensions, which funnily enough, was also developed by Traveller's Tales.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • The songs are goofy as hell, yet TJ Davis sings them with such passion and conviction that it is almost impossible to hate.
  • Traveller's Tales themselves considering all the programming and graphical wizardry that went into what ended up being a mediocre game.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The Europop soundtrack just screams The '90s.
• Vindicated by History: Not the game itself, which has always been considered So Okay, It's Average, but the soundtrack. Back in the 2000s, the music was infamous for how cheesy and screamingly '90s it was; "Can You Feel the Sunshine?" was the biggest target, being considered a punchline at best and a Madness Mantra associated with the Tails Doll creepypastas at worst. As time went on and its '90s synthpop sound had a nostalgic reappraisal, the soundtrack is now considered easily the best part of the game, due to its catchy melodies and TJ Davis's soulful performance. While the music doesn't really fit the gameplay at all, this is generally understood to be a problem unrelated to the music itself (or not a problem at all).
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • One of the few things everyone can agree on with this game. It rocks some of the best visuals seen for a 3D Sega Saturn title thanks to some pretty impressive draw distance done via a specially-calculated engine algorithm, detailed texture work, and bright colors, all at a solid 30 frame-per-second frame-rate. This is helped in no small part by lead programmer Jon Burton viewing the Saturn's complicated and developer-unfriendly hardware not as a limitation or handicap, but as a challenge to overcome, and he pulled no punches in making sure what he delivered was the best the platform could handle.
  • Radiant Emerald deserves a special mention. In the Saturn version, the entire track is translucent, which really sells the idea that the track is located within a Chaos Emerald. The PC version loses out on the translucent effect thanks to technical limitations, but more than makes up for it by bathing the entire track in so many rainbow lighting effects that the entire thing looks like a giant discothèque. In 2019, the modding community, however, managed to bring back the original translucent effects from the Saturn version back to the PC port while using its own rainbow lighting effects. It is essentially the Sonic version of Rainbow Road.

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