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Today on Game History Secrets, Liam talks about his journey uncovering the development of Sonic R, a Sonic game made by Traveller’s Tales and overseen by the usual developers of Sonic the Hedghog games, Sonic Team, for the Sega Saturn.
Liam Robertson is a video game researcher and archiver. In his spare time, Liam creates videos and articles for various outlets, and will also be contributing to the Did You Know Gaming channel.
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Sources/Further Reading:
https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_R/Development
https://www.youtube.com/@GameHut
https://hiddenpalace.org/Sonic_R_(Sep_10,_1997_prototype)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcil-d9DquY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlU5MS3hQWo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME7Dkpgd_-k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEl508T02qY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCvYTOxWcj4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA2qlE_zzA8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqeJdnp6ttk
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12904944
https://www.eurogamer.net/why-the-founder-of-travellers-tales-released-a-directors-cut-of-an-old-sonic-game-25-years-later
http://www.terredejeux.net/2020/05/interview-kats-sato-from-sega-of-japan.html
https://archive.org/details/cdrom-next-generation-1997-09
GameInformer Magazine issue #124, p113
SEGA Saturn Magazine (JP) – June 1997 issue, P40
SEGA Saturn Magazine (UK) – August 1997 issue, p19
SEGA Saturn Magazine (UK) – October 1997 issue, p21
Tips & Tricks Magazine – September 1997 issue (031), p47
Electronics Boutique Christmas 1997 Catalog, p85
#sonic #sonicr #sonicthehedgehog #sega
source
It’s a shame that we don’t have that demo track of Super Sonic Racing. Could it be considered lost media?
It's been forever since I've heard about Tips & Tricks. I loved that one! My favorite video game magazine. Great art and art direction, interesting info, and fun articles. The cover was always really nice too.
…and that was when the team ran into their first obstacle, making the game for the Sega Saturn.
Reasons why people played the game: 98% the soundtrack, and the other 2% is that it's a Sonic racing game.
This has strengthened my testimony of the Book of Abraham
One of my favorite games of all time, love learning more about its development here
I always found this game was underrated though I understand why people don't like it
Sonic Gems Collection was one of few games I had growing up along with Sonic Adventure DX Director's Cut, Adventure 2 Battle, Heroes and Riders so even I thought "Why would I play this when those other games play so much better?" for a while
Eventually I started to play Sonic R again and got used to the controls and started to enjoy the game and its soundtrack
I think I'm one of the few people that really loved this game. It wasn't perfect, but was a lot of fun
Jontron: "What was going on over at Sonic team headquarters at the time?"
This Video: Explains the development of the game
Try looking for
What Microsoft did as a game publisher before the XBOX era…
Atari consoles after the Videogame crash
Gaming in Europe and Japan in the 80's where the crash never affected
Apple computers were the default gaming device until Jobs decided otherwise.
The mighty Zeebo
Amazing that these were considered “detailed, high res graphics” back then.
I can imagine the difficulties the dev team faced back then. You are working on 3D gaming which was relatively new. You have to optimize it for a game console and it should be somehow related to the franchise. With not as many resources as we have today, I can't imagine how hard it was to develop it, while I think the game's concept of Sonic and his friends/rivals racing is not very amusing and it's clear it was a rip-off of Mario Kart.
Sonic R was my first sonic game, it is what actually made me a sonic fan. I also didn't have a memory dock thing so I had to restart the game from the begging everytime and never worked out how to unlock the hidden characters even after days of trying.
Man, young me was a fool lol, but still. loved this game
Fantastic work! I'm surprised to hear about Sato's involvement, as I only played the original release back in the day.
I never knew it was built on an F1 racing game engine. I feel like… using 3D platforming character controls would've been a better move overall. I loved sonic R but i always felt the controls felt nothing like running and i could not figure out why.
I had so much fun with that game when I was a teen. My younger brother had gotten a Saturn for Christmas because the system had just been cancelled and the hardware and games were all available for cheap. Sonic R was one of the games he got for it the same day. But as soon as gift opening was done we had to pack up and drive several states away to visit family. That was when we found out the game discs were also audio discs. And we discovered the wonderfully cheesy soundtrack. Like many Sonic fans of the 90s I wrote ridiculous fanfics about my original characters (do not steal) but always tried to work songs from this game into them. Usually mentioning lyrics someone would hear in the background.
I LOVE this game. The soundtrack is iconic, the janky gameplay is iconic, the mess it is is iconic. I wish they would port it to sonic origins or something I would love to play it today.
Love seeing Sonic R get some recognition. Loved this game growing up it honestly gets too much hate
Very interesting! Sonic R is such a vibe, the loss of that original 2D artwork for the title screen is such a loss. I don't understand why they didn't just remove Metal Sonic instead of redoing the art from scratch lol
But where did Tails Doll come from? Jon admitted that it appeared one day without anyone designing it.
I played sonic r on an emulator and was so moved by the soundtrack that I ordered a saturn