You earn points based on your placement (first gets 3, second 2, third 1, and fourth 0) and at the end of all the tournament the racer with the highest score wins overall.Īside from the grand prix mode you also have multiplayer (you’ll need a second game gear, copy of the game, and link cable) as well as a time attack mode. You drive three laps around the track to complete each race, and have five or so rounds per prix. Your basic mode of play is a grand prix against the three other other characters. That in and of itself is not a bad thing at all because the formula is fantastic. Everything from the behind the character 3D perspective to the on-screen map and power-ups is clearly borrowed. Sonic Drift is a pretty blatant rip-off of Mario Kart. It could easily have been double the size, and should at least have included two more characters. Regardless, the roster is very small and one of the most restricted I’ve seen in a mascot based kart racing game. The exclusion of Knuckles is a real headscratcher (especially when Eggman himself made the cut) but I’m willing to look past it. There are four playable characters from which you can choose here Sonic, Tails, Amy and Eggman.

Eggman (Robotnik to you and I) has stolen the chaos emeralds and it’s up to Sonic and crew to beat him in a number of different races to win them back. There’s really not much of a storyline to speak of. This is a kart racer, and a handheld game at that.

Here’s our review of Sonic Drift for the Game Gear! Today we’re going to take a look at this import exclusive kart racer.

It’s also a Sega Game Gear exclusive as well which limits the userbase even further. It turns out they did but it was never released outside of Japan so most people never had a chance to play it. I was always left wondering why Sega never copied Nintendo’s Mario Kart formula with their popular Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

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