Experimental Kart Racers - Sonic, Kirby, Snowboard Kids & More 

Quick corrections on CTTR: 6:00 - The CPU can actually boot you but it happens very rarely. 6:25 - There actually is drifting. It's not super useful and feels more like sliding, but you CAN do it.

"Kirby Air Ride" is a prime example of how Sakurai mastered the idea of "less is more". It is outstanding. Such underrated game.

The original Sonic Riders is criminally underrated in my opinion. It also brings a lot to the table: air management, manual boosting, leveling up with rings, character specific short cuts, fleshed out track design, and quirky vehicles, etc.

Sakurai is the king of making games that are a pond in size and an ocean deep. Exactly the type of game I love.

Holy shit an Atlus Persona 5 Snowboarding game is everything I didn’t know I needed :o

Kirby Air Ride is not only a great Kart Racer, but also an amazing Battle Royale game. A sequel with online support would be _the_ best Battle Royale.

I’m so glad to see Snowboard Kids getting some love. That was my jam back in the day.

I've mentioned elsewhere, but 3D foot racers are so severaly underused in the racing genre. Sonic R was cool from a conceptual perspective, as it played with Sonic and friends' individual abilities for some varied track traversal. Meanwhile, Bomberman Fantasy Race utilized a sprinting mechanic, wall kicks, and bomb boosting, which all made for some nice risk/reward to close in or break away from the pack. I'd really love to see either IP (or a new one) to give it an earnest shot someday.

I'm slightly dismayed at the lack of mention to Sonic Riders (the game cube one). Its arguably the most creative and experimental Kart racers out there. While technically there are only two items in the random pick up sense and neither of them are actively usable, it still retains all elements of a kart racer while bringing in a slew of new mechanics. Typical boosts and attacks from items are replaced by the Boost ability which well... boosts and allows you to attack an opponent unfortunate enough to be in your way. The trade-off is that every board (except for crazy taxi and super sonic) require Air to operate and boosting uses up a good sum of air. Once you're out of air, you have to walk until you can find some. The balance between boosting for speed and maintaining air levels forces the player to think twice, even while ahead. If you are running out of air, there are plenty of opportunities to get more. Air is obtained by performing trick strings off of jumps, getting air capsules (which are somewhat uncommon), levelling up, stopping at an air station, stick spinning in transitions that occur in every stage, or using the characters type ability. The biggest problem is that the most widely available way of gaining air, tricks, is also based on speed. A slow jump will not allow you to perform as many tricks as a fast jump (it actually physically slows the player down) and fewer tricks mean less air. Backpedaling a bit, I mentioned type abilites. There are 3 types in sonic riders, Speed, Flying and Power. Speed types get access to grind rails that mostly follow the path of the course, but increase your speed significantly. Flying types get acess to... flight but only at certain times. There are flight ramps that will allow the character to fly somewhat freely in the air. This is usually directed by flight rings that give the player a small boost and skip over certain areas of the course. Power types are able to punch stuff. This includes obstacles that slow other players down and breakable walls that reveal paths that can skip parts of the stage. I also mentioned leveling. In sonic riders, there are rings scattered everywhere through out the stage. Collect 30 of these and you level up, Leveling up increases stats (including air limit) and upgrades your boost. At levels one and two, boost attacks will take away a lot of speed from the player that was attacked, but at level three, they are stopped in their tracks for about a second. Leveling is super important to staying relevant in a race and clutch level ups can fully restore your air. On the other hand, levels are incredibly fragile. If you fall off the course or are hit by any player, you lose all of your rings and all of your levels. Additionally, your ring count at the end of the race, like in snowboard kids, translates to usable currency for buying different boards, of which there are tons. Similar to Kirby Airride, all of the boards play on these mechanics in various ways. Some just have varied stats, but others modify the mechanics entirely. The Legend always executes a perfect jump, Omnipotence grants every type ability to the rider, The Crazy runs on rings and removes leveling, The Beserker will automatically perform boost attacks even when out of air, and the Super Hang-On plays a song from the game Super Hang-On. These are just a few from the roster of boards, but the variety is clear. This is actually not all of the mechanics in the game, believe it or not. Despite the reputation of its successors, Sonic Riders is a pretty great racer and still holds up well. The real shame is that for whatever reason Sega didn't put a tutorial in the game and instead has pop up icons that you cant disable. They're easy to ignore but its still very dumb.

Snowboard kids and Kirby air ride are two of my favourite racing games it was great to see you talk about and analyse them. A Persona Snowboarding game that played like SBK would be beyond amazing!

Omg ModNation Racers was such a surprise to see in the opening montage. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it, but not because it's a good racer (which it is) but because it has an amazing in depth custom track creation mode. I dumped hours upon hours into it as a kid! It has a sequel that I don't know anything about, so I can only attest to the first one

*Teases me with Modnation racers footage at the start* “They had us in the first half,Not gonna lie.” ALSO WHO ELSE WANTS A MODNATION RACERS 2?

Persona racing sounds amazing!!!! Makoto bike all the way

.....You can drift in Crash Tag Team Racing. It's not all that useful, but you sure can drift. I also would like to draw attention to the rad game known as Bomberman Fantasy Race. Real fun and odd game, wall jumps are super rad in my racers.

Holy God, I love so much Snowboad Kids until today and as said in the video it is still an amazing game. The secrets tracks, boards and charachter with a lovely and silly history brings something as well out of others kart games. For me, Snowboard Kid is so much fun, the only thing that was missing was a battle mode (even if it is really hard to think to do as Mario Kart) or other modes to play. I am glad to see this hidden gem here in this channel!

I love Snowboard Kids, such a awesome series. Both the first and second games have great characters, a rewarding money/trick/item system, and they go beyong the obvious theme of "snowy mountain". Want to snowboard a grass field? A desert? A castle? SPACE!? These games have it all! It's a shame Plus didn't leave Japan, or that DS messed everything up. Another racing game worth mentioning (although it doesn't actually have regular items, so it might not count as a kart racer) is ExciteBots: Trick Racing. The racing elements are a bit basic, but every track is full of minigames to be played DURING the race. Spin around bars, hit a homerun, play the tambourine, rescue butterflies, make a sandwich, crash your enemies, crash yourself... everything will earn you points, which is the ultimate goal (finishing in first just gives you bonus points, but is a good bonus). It may sound like a mess of a game, but all the minigames are integrated really well in each track, so it all flows naturally, and keeps thing interesting the whole race. 12:43 What? No, gives us Snowboard Kids 3! Do it, do it, DO IT!!! Persona has enough games already, let the Kids hit the slopes one more time =P

That little bit of footage of Blur made me so unbelievably happy. Blur is hands down my contest my personal favorite kart racer. it doesn't do anything that unique or new, but what it does do is refine everything already has to make it stand out from the rest. The best part is probably how every single offensive item has some sort of counter-play to them that lets you avoid almost all damage through driving skill alone.

SBK Music always gets me man... my heart

I express my thanks for commenting on the Snowboard Kids series, as those games are my favorite for life. This is an interesting discussion, and I sadly was not aware of Kirby Air Ride before this video.

Along with great design, kirby air ride also has THE best ost ever

For TSR’s Team Ultimate, when you have your Team Ultimate gauge fully filled up, one of your team mates will state to use the Team Ultimate. That’s the timing you need to look out for to maximise your Team Ultimate Boost.

Pleasantly surprised by the analysis in this video. Made me find a new appreciation for Snowboard kids. Surprised you did´t at least mention Sonic Riders when talking about that, even if just for a quick comparison. As much as I like the Sega Racing games, it´s a shame that Sonic Kart racers never got the appreciation they deserve until they started going the Mario Kart route when we had two perfectly valid and ORIGINAL racers (I say two instead of three because the Kinect one doesn´t count)

Snowboard kids is one of my absolute favorite games on the n64 and actually any console. Thanks for taking so much time to talk about it, I agree on all positions. I also find the map design very good.

Oh God I miss Snowboard Kids SO MUCH!! I never liked racing games that much but Snowboard Kids 1 & 2 were the most fun I had with racing games.

Just wait up until Bloodborne Kart comes out

1:33 I remember when I went to an arcade over the summer and played co op on Mario kart they had there; it was kind of confusing what activated it but I found it really fun to turn into a tank and either kill everything while my brother drives or watch the destruction while driving. Wouldn't work in a retail game, but for a short and chaotic sort of game it's cool.

I lost my mind at "Persona 5: Shredding All Morning"

I've never played any of the sonic kart racers, but Team Racing looks really fun. The tracks look like a blast. And I had never heard of snowboard kids, but it looks really good! I really enjoyed your breakdown of it. Great video!

I would just like to say, my siblings and I loved playing Crash Tag Team Racing together. I recognize its flaws now, but since we could be up to 6 years apart in age, the combining mechanic really leveled the playing field. The adventure mode was beyond easy, but at least we could race together while going through it, and you CAN choose not to uncombine at the finish line and tie you know.... Another flaw with CTTR's core game mechanic is that some guns were absolutely broken compared to others. It seemed best to team up once highly powered weapon like NGins and high accuracy with large ammo capacity like Coco. The rest of a character's assets didn't seem to be necessary, especially since you unlocked multiple kart types for each character

Thank you for talking about snowboard kids

You should of talked about Sonic Riders. That's a much more experimental and unusual racing game than Team Sonic Racing...

Excitebots was a fun game I can confidently say that even though I only played it once when I was over at my friends house

As platformers mixed with Kart Racing, there's also Sonic R, Sonic 2 and Sonic & Knuckles Multiplayer and also Rayman M (or Rayman Arena in the US).

Thank you Blockbuster for introducing me to the Snowboard Kids series

The slingshot in Team Sonic Racing is really what makes it special. It really is amazing how this game gives the people behind an advantage without making it seem unfair.

Have you ever herd of a fanmade kart racer called Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, or SRB2 Kart for short? It's kind of this odd nesting doll situation of a chain of mods that ultimately results in one of the finest Kart racers I've ever played. It takes a good look at what kart racers like Mario Kart does and refines the mechanics. It's equivalent of the Blue Shell is one of the best you'l ever see in a kart racer.

It's really a shame that the thing that caught on with most people about Kirby Air Ride was that "It's a baby mode racer that you can win without pushing any buttons", because it's a shockingly deep game that a lot of people won't get to experience.

Snowboard Kids, I love those games

aw man, glad to see people still remember and appreciate Snowboard Kids, those games made up an important part of my childhood

Kirby air ride was a Gem and needs to come back. Nitro Fueled style.

Speedrunners is so fun with friends. I fell in love with it the moment I played it

I remember always being last in snowboard kids 2 because no one told me I had to jump after I stopped moving

I'm glad too see that Snowboard kids is even getting talked about, I love both of the games in the series (Besides the DS one, again we don't speak of that) and their OST's Are amazing Also I liked how you used the board shop theme for the end card, nice touch.

Oh, and the clash/fusion mechanic got perfected in Mario Kart Arcade GP DX. Your duo only gets fused for a set amount of time.

Kirby Air Ride is amazing, especially in 1v1 races with damage enabled

Wow, it's always a great experience when you see something outside your boxed perspective. I definitely want to give Speedracers a try!

Woah! I thought I had never seen that snowboard game before, but seeing it brought out the vague memory of having played it at a friends house nearly two decades ago! Memory is weird.

I totally forgot Snowboard Kids was a thing! Loved these as a kid!

i absolutely loved snowboard kids and always got ridiculed for it. thanks for the redemption

Kirby Air Ride is such an amazing and fantastic game. Freaking had hundreds of hundreds of hours into that game. And yeah, its so damn easy to learn... but extremely hard to master... and its all one button. lol.

I’m really happy you brought up Sbowboard Kids. The characters, the scenery, and the MUSIC is top notch and I really wish they could bring this franchise back ❤️ thanks man.

So glad to actually hear someone praise Team Sonic Racing (it is a great game)

Split/Second is worth mentioning for its novel approach to "items". Basically instead of picking them up, you built up meter and then spent it to activate obstacles on the track. These could range from triggering a barrel to explode when an opponent drives by it, to making a section of road collapse to create a shortcut, to making a wrecking ball swing across the track and smash anyone in its way. The tradeoff, of course, being that more obstacles for the other racers also meant more obstacles for you. But the big selling point was that if you had a full meter and were in the right place, you could activate huge spectacles that would drastically alter the track for the rest of the race, like making an airplane crash into the track or a skyscraper collapse or a dam explode. And these are honestly still pretty impressive for a game from 2010. It's like a Roland Emmerich disaster movie made into a racing game.

One underrated game inspired by kart racing that I keep remembering is a 2009 game called Split/Second. Its premise revolves around a fictional reality TV show that functions as an excuse for competing racers to build up a meter that allows parts of the track to explode, allowing the brief elimination of racers or even changing the track layout entirely mid-lap.

Clicked this video just for Snowboard Kids. Gave it a like for mentioning Iggy's Rekin Balls. Loved those games to absolute death and no one has ever heard of them. I'm kinda upset you didn't mention Extreme G either. It's a more gritty style of kart racer, where rather than just using items found along the map, each bike has a primary weapon at all times, that has limited ammo that not only slows down other players, but (in the sequel) can even *kill* them to remove them from the race completely.

One game series that I never hear talked about in racers is the old Lego Racers games. I mean they were not at all the best racers around, but they brought some really cool ideas to the table! The best example is Lego Racers 2, the worse of the 2. Their powerup system focused on making every powerup you got have 2 uses. Options! One of them was a "slow" moving drill that would hit any racers in its path. But, if you hold doen the fire button rather than a quick press, you hold on to the drill and get a speed boost! The tricky part: if you held on too long the drill would explode! Its basically the "cooked grenade" for racing games. But all their powerups were done like this, which was really cool! Also their hub worlds were collect-a-thons so that was really cool! Racers 1 had a different system that made you constantly asking if you wanted to use a powerup now or wait to get a better one. Rather than a random power, you got a specific power depending on the color you got. If you collect neautral white lego blocks the power levels up and has an entirely new power! So you will get a red piece and have a cannon ball, hard to use but good in a pinch, or you can wait just a little bit and get the triple rockets!!! It was a really fun give and take. Sucks the rest of the games were.... let's just say poorly designed and buggy.

I would have liked to see you discuss Sonic Riders, I think that was a very unique kind of Kart Racer that utilized Air as a means of gas for their boards.

Kart racers have always been one of my favorite genres so this was definitely a fun watch.

You're just a joy to listen to. Thanks.

I'm SO happy you talked about Snowboard Kids! Definitely one of the most painfully underrated games of all time, I would say. I thought about it the other day and the music is INSANE! So awesome. Wish they would do like a nice remake of it.

Bomberman Fantasy Race is one of my favorite racing games. When you get the hang out of the "bomb boost" it feels really great, also the music is fantastic

Kingdom Karts is a dream I will always hope to come true.

Everyone knows the ultimate kart racer was Star Wars Super Bombad Racing. Mario who?

The Sonic racing games by Sumo Digital are my favorite cart racing games of all time

What about *MUPPET RACEMANIA*, its such a fun, unique and complete game that i was just baffled to discover its not popular at all.

Here's an idea. Instead of a Persona racing game that features characters from prior games in the Persona series, it's a different sort of SMT spin-off where all the "karts" are demons/deities/mythical creatures/etc. associated with speed, or giving rides. So stuff like Garuda or Sleipnir would be examples. Also, I wonder if there could be a neat kart racing game that can also introduce players to various principles of motorsport? Like instead of power-ups, there can be DRS/KERS zones, for once idea.

I used to have Snowboard Kids 2 growing up and I played it just as much as Mario Kart 64. It was a lot of fun for me, so seeing it highlighted in this video reminded me how much I loved it!

OMG thanks for bringing light to speedrunners

I did not know Kirby Air Ride was that deep. Now I wanna go play it.

Damn man those are some solid looking games! Even the Crash one looked like it had a cool idea.

Holy, you talked about Snowboard Kids! I love you!!!

Great video; love its attention to different control schemes in Snowboard Kids and Air Ride and how they effect the player's approach to play. For potential future entries in this video series, I hope you'll look at the LEGO Racers games. Aside from the create-a-kart function (which has varying effects on gameplay) they first entry has a very interesting take on the power-up system (literally "building" stronger power-ups from various bricks). The second lacks this, but has a mechanic where you can visibly knock bricks off your opponents' carts and force them into a pit-stop, as well as re-using the same environment across multiple tracks to let the player leverage knowledge from one to find shortcuts in another. Both are such unique takes on the kart-racer genre that, while they have their problems, they're very much worth examining in the same way that you're doing here.

Snowboard Kids. I still play those games today on my Nintendo 64. The stages, items, and characters all felt perfectly balanced. Played the two games so much that I have always wanted to be the creative director for Snowboard Kids 3.

Kirby Air Ride City Trial mode is some of the most fun I've had in gaming

Very nice. I've played a lot of speedrunners, but never made the connection to think of it as a sorta cart racer-esque thing. Also. I greatly appreciate that you DON'T do one of those groanworthy slick transitions into the sponsor segment. Whenever somebody does that, it always ends up souring my experience of the content, since it re-frames the video as an "advert for the advert". Cheers.

Team Losi RC Racer on PS1 did a neat thing where item pickups were coloured gates, and a particular combination of colours gave you a given item. Better items required more gates. It could be customized by the designers to each track, giving each track a "meta" of sorts.

Hahaha I had Snowboarding Kids 2 when I was little! SOOOO many memories!

Really interesting video, thanks!!

Atlus, the developers best known for their long JRPGs with incredibly dark themes, made a lighthearted snowboarding kart racer for the N64. Didnt know I needed this. Im hunting this game down now. Also Persona snowboarding would be dope.

As a child I often went to a local flea market with my dad. Every now and then I got home with a new game I saw on one of the retailer's tables. One day I saw Kirby AirRide and I never touched a Kirby game before so I really wanted that Kirby game. When we arrived home and I inserted the disc and I knew I didn't get the Kirby game I expected, but I enjoyed every minute of it and fell in love with the City game mode. It was so much fun to play with friends and test each others performance at the end of the City mode. So much simpler times back then, I loved it. PS: I didn't know Sakurai was the mind behind Kirby AirRide! Cool to know actually

You forgot to mention Rayman Arena! I love this trip down memory lane. I remember playing SNowboard Kids when I was a kid and right away fell in love. I love the graphic :P

Sekiro Kart Racing Vitality and Posture management determines how often you can boost and how well you manage attacks made against you. Items as complex as Prosthetic Tools would be sick. This also makes NO sense within the lore whatsoever.

I LOOOOOOVEEE Kirby Air Ride. The Karts are soo cool

I'm so glad to hear you like TSR! I haven't played it yet, But I REALLY want to

Snowboard Kids was a permanent rental in my house. Me and my brothers would race to where the game was to rent it first over the weekend. It was ours and we would only have to give it back on Monday =D

Snowboard Kids' powerups remind me of Jak X's powerups as Jak X uses 2 powerup pools too. One for attack, one for defence. Also I'm surprised Micro Machines V3 wasn't included. That's a kart racer that uses the edge of the screen thing that Speedrunners had and some fun use of track hazards and design. I still remember the track where everyone is forced onto a lilypad as it drifts across a pond and everyone is trying to ram each other off.

When you mentioned snowboard kids you literally unlocked memories i forgot I had

Jak X Combat Racing continues to not exist

Haha with Crash Tag Team Racing I Only every played multiplayer with a friend. He was great at the shooting and I was good at driving. When he ran out of ammo we would unclash and clash. It was very fun!

Blur and Jedi Pod Racer where two really fun games.

I never knew why snowboard kids was such a popular game... Now I understand. Many if the things you said sound amazing... I mean the ability to counter with good skill? Awesome

Snowboard kids was legit my favorite racer! I wish they came out with a proper sequel that plays just as well as the old ones! The little manual that came with the game was also super cute! I wish I still had the manual, all I have are the games

Idk why, but your most recent video on on rails shooters made me wanted to make a 3d spaceship kart racer, so I'm watching your old ones on kart racers. I think I'm gonna make each vehicle play differently. Spaceships that move the camera, planes that play more like a typical kart racer, and a Kirby's air ride like vehicle. Also, multiple different versions of each of those.

Have you ever played Beach Buggy Racing? The items, shortcuts and many different racing modes are really fun

This inspired me to play a couple Speedrunners races for old times' sake. I didn't realize I'd put 86 hours into that game.

I'm surprised you didn't talk about ModNation Racers on PS3

Crash team racing and the Sonic hover board racing were fun.

"TOP TEN TRACKS!" guy has gotten way more analytical. I love him now!

Few corrections/points: - Hitting people while doing a team ultimate in Team Sonic Racing also extends its duration. - There certainly is communication/voice chat during the game on 3/4 platforms, just not on the N.Switch which is obviously the version you referenced. _Oops_ . - Getting hit by items do not always bring you to a complete stop. Common misconception. It depends on certain things. That said, it's great that you were able to make a kart video including TSR, as it's a great kart racer. However, it sucks that you still neglected ModNation Racers!

Where has this channel been all my life