Speedrunner for Riders Tournament Edition here, thank you so much for checking out the mod! Our community is constantly growing, so the more who know the better! :)
Former DX and TE dev here. I enjoyed this! Thank you for highlighting what makes DX and TE unique. I think both mods gracefully expand on what makes Riders such a untapped niche of eSport, with DX having more focused balancing, and TE having more engaging gameplay mechanics. Both mods are certainly a winner in their own right and the communities have been built from the ground up by passionate players. Also to mention, ExGL does also offer a Zero Gravity mod, known as Regravitified. I pushed for the idea originally, but all the credit for that project goes to Yacker and Xithyl, as they are the ones that brought it to life, so be sure to check out that project as well.
Thanks for your work. And not to worry, my Zero Gravity video is coming tomorrow. And most of it is spent talking about how Regravitified saves the game.
Greetings, director and producer of Sonic Riders Tournement Edition here. I want to thank you for covering us. I've been involved with the competitive community since it's inception in late 2016, and in the past two years, we've been seeing a lot of great coverage on the scene and this video is no different. We are grateful. We hope to continue to provide content and create valuable memories to folks like you. Hope you have yourself a good one, bless up.✌
Glad you've finally come around to review the objectively best Sonic game ever made. Also small detail, but you forgot to mention that if you get hit by an attack, you loose all your rings and levels, and the stat bonuses that go along with them. A bit too punitive for my taste, but at least you get to keep the enhanced fuel meter. It's true that Sonic Team really made their game a disservice by hiding the tutorial (and a pretty crappy one at that) deep indide a menu no one is gonna check on their first playthroughs. I already had completed both story modes before knowing it even exists. I think the game would have gotten a more positive look if the first track was kinda like the 8-track in Mario Kart DS, where it's just two turns and two straight lines, and the only "complex" mechanics were drifting and boosting. No types involved, no spinning, no other complex stuff, it would have been a simplistic track but a very effective one to teach about the game. Actually, I would have almost never played Sonic Riders past the first race, if it wasn't for my brother clearing it for me so that I could play the next track (which is IMO easier than the first). The game, while very rewarding if you play well, is VERY punishing if you fail. The catch-up mechanics are not good at all, there's very few items to help you regain speed, and while it makes the game more skill-based, if you're second place and you play against someone who plays very well, good luck trying to catchup and win, it's almost impossible. But that aside, the game is still to this day a very refreshing take on the kart racing genre, when all racing games up to that point (even the mort modern ones), just play safe and recycle the same mechanics every game. Sonic Riders is a very unique racing game, and a very unique Sonic game if you ask me in terms of visuals and identity, and it's honestly one of the few games I still have to rediscover and master after 15 years of playing it.
Grew up playing Zero Gravity and enjoyed it a ton as a kid. This does get me interested in trying out its predecessor though. Overly complicated mechanics are always so satisfying to master. Great content as always by the way, your insights are super fascinating and really well presented! Edit: Forget what I said. I was so excited to play as the best character of all time, Zavok. What a dealbreaker.
Zero Gravity is fun for it's spectacle, but it very much simplified the gameplay, so it would be easier to understand. it ends up making it so Riders 1 has more replayability because more skill is involved. so it's kind of 'somewhat' Hard to Learn - hard to master vs Easy to learn - Easy to Master
ZG is a much improved, streamlined game imo, which makes it much more fun in singleplayer or with some buddies on the couch, but the original being more complex and having more mechanics to master makes it excellent for speedrunning and competitive play, both are great. Free Riders is Free Riders
Honestly I didn't find Riders all that confusing. I figured out how to play through just playing the game for a bit. Maybe I was a bit more patient as a kid. But I was always more amazed to discover more and more depths over time.
Same here, most of the mechanics are something you can learn by just pressing the buttons or discovering through gameplay so it isn't really hard to learn, just takes a while to get into.
Sonic has this ‘curse’ whenever it releases a game, being at the ‘wrong’ time. Yes the learning curve is steep, but had this came out at a later time, people would’ve given it more of chance to explore this game’s contents.
Then Sonic team forgot what made first game fun, and dumbed down the sequels. Too please critics complaints about the steap learning curve. Which is sad yeah I agree if game came out later people would've been more open minded towards it. I wanted this game to get ported for forever, but Sega too stubborn they look at review scores a lot, so highly unlikely were ever see Riders series return.
The learning curve is the steepest among all Sonic games, and even after re-watching the dev-made tutorial video on how to play the game over and over again, I still couldn't figure out how to win 1st place, until after tons of trial and error it just clicked, and became a relative breeze. The tutorial video was prominently featured on the now dead official website of the game before release, so contemporary fans of the Sonic series would be more aware of it than others. Sonic Riders is legit e-sports tier in terms of depth and spectacle, especially the survival mode.
I actually really enjoy learning about this game. Due to it's steep learning curve learning everything and finally put it all togerher in a first place feels so rewarding. It's the most fun I had ever playing a racing game
I only just recently learned how to get the 100 ringer on the first stage, and how to jump off that ledge before the two tunnels recently. but other then that I never had any issues with the game, there was just mastering the drift for the Babylon garden, which is really the only challenge is the game, and that is the big finale type thing so its makes sense, its the only hard part, it shouldn't be breezed thru, oh and I guess the boss thing was weird. but so I must ask, what was challenging about it, like what was hard/confusing? I ask because I simply don't get it and am making my own game inspired by it so I'm rather interested
@@jamiek8123 It's been almost 20 years since then, but the biggest example that I still remember is the controls required to achieve long jumps and high jumps off ramps. Other than that I can't point out any individual hardships, it was just a collection of many small things that all added up to me not being able to win at first, and which all gradually smoothed out until I could play masterfully. I apologize if it's not very useful feedback for your project.
@@Zejgar yeah not the most helpful, but that is one of the few places where I thought the struggle might be, it was way past my first playthrough that I realized that mechanic, so thanks for conforming that, and thank you for replying
I legit didn't know I could jump higher by pushing the analog back, I've played this game basically for my whole youth. That explains why I never got to the top of the Metal City tower.
I loved this game as a kid. By the time it released, Sonic Heroes and SSX Tricky were two of my favorite games, so the gameplay of Sonic Riders felt very natural to me right off the bat. Your video made me realize that I was completely unaware of most of these mechanics back then, I just played to look cool and do sweet tricks lol. I look forward to trying out these mods now that I'm older and can utilize the advanced game mechanics!
member of SRTE, and part of its event committee, and Tournament Staff here. thanks for checking out Tournament Edition! been watching your content for a while, and im glad to see a competitive community i reside in be represented in one of your videos. stay cool, dude!
This game has a story worth talking about. I appreciate Jet antagonizing Sonic out of rivalry and how Babylon is a new ancient civilization in Sonic. I had a LOT of fun with this game. I took the time across each campaign to learn how to play. Mostly adapting to tricking better and managing air during the tougher Bad Guys route.
10:10 The PC version has a hilarious glitch where the game expect you to press left and right to gain air, but if you hold both buttons at the same time, it just speed up both the speed at that section and air recovery to the max, taking the shortcuts on the PC version without mods, it's slower if you have an left and right minigame incoming :P
that was the best thing about the PC port in my mind cuz most tracks have these kinds of set pieces so basically you have to TRY to lose all of your air!
Really glad you enjoy the games, feel free to join a tourney or ask for more advice. Many would love to help you get even better, catch me in the dx server, if you can ;)
19:04 Believe it or not, I think that's a good thing for a game like Sonic Riders, and it actually benefits the game kinda... with the boards having a low impact in gameplay, that means they can easily be legal in competitive play, whereas the absurdly overpowered boards can be banned (or even nerfed if mods are allowed)... to be fair, I definitely prefer that to the min-maxing in Mario Kart 8 where every player is Waluigi on a very specific kart... even though luck is the main thing in Mario Kart games, with skill coming second.
I do agree that these mods are awesome. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say that either of them should replace the original game. Because both games feel more like fan games rather than an expansion of the actual game. So I still say one should play the original game first before checking out the mods.
The funny thing is that I played this in the same time period with Sonic Heroes , which is the opposite problem of really spoon feeding you all of its gimmicks and tricks to the point that I would have liked to “turn off” the hints 😂 and then riders had me searching left and right for a tutorial section somewhere somehow ! And ended up defaulting to RU-vid years later
I was obsessed with this game and also learned English thanks to it, it was easy to peak up and learn how it works to me, the surprise i got when i saw this was difficult to people and not that popular for the learning curve it had
I still remember getting this for Christmas and playing it till dawn. I am very much in agreement with you about how it's one of the best mascot racers as well as Sonic spinoffs. I actually would play this after Youth on Fridays and things got super intense. While I agree about the games' relative complexity is it's fatal issue, I actually disagree about the start being hard to figure out. Not only do i think the timer and visuals do enough imo, you can see the NPCs and how they behave in the scenario give you a great guideline. I actually disagree about the mission mode. To me at least, it's probably the closest thing to a half decent tutorial. Although I guess it's more intermediate. They teach you a lot about the levels and mechanics. Describing the Storymode as "throwing you into the deep end" is quite appropriate, although i feel it doesn't really crop up til the Babylon story. While, I like Tournament Edition and DX a lot, a lot of changes end up being things I just don't like or agree with, and just bugs the heck out of me as someone who played the original so throroughly. Also, if Riders was overly frontloaded in its complexity to its detriment, they just go off the goddamn depend with these mods lol. A lot of regular Vanilla's mechanics were more things that slapped you in the face that there was something you weren't getting. I also understand they are trying to make it more "competitive" but I feel a good deal of changes were at the expense of the more party game aspects that made the game more fun and made it less of a goimu game. (Spelling?) These mods add a bunch of stuff no one is ever gonna know about but have a massive impact that vary in terms of how much you even have to keep in mind a lot more frequently. It reminds me a lot if Project M in that respect, which I also have my gripes with. The main thing I apreciate them for is the online ans characters. ~~Also, I agree. Add Zavok~~
I guess I was looking at mission mode from the perspective of someone that already knows how to play. I do remember learning some of the more obtuse mechanics through it back in the day. I've never played Riders with others, but I imagine it's already quite a bad party game. The person who owns it gets to learn everything. And everyone else is clueless in a game where you can do so much to speed yourself up. They'd be left in the dust. I imagine Riders only works in a more competitive context where everyone already knows how to play. So the mods don't really change that about the game. They just push it further in that direction. And it's also a personal thing. The intricacies are where the fun comes from, for me. And part of the reason I make videos like this is to help people learn games that do a bad job of teaching the player. My hope is this can work as a decent primer for these mods. btw, did you watch my What Is It About Sonic video? Sometimes I just can't see some comments for whatever reason. I can't find a comment from you, and I was really interested in seeing your thoughts on it. We often have such great chats about those kinds of things.
@@Pariah6950 I think that's an overly black and white way of looking at the game. I'm not trying to paint Riders as a straight up Party game. I'm more saying that those mechanics helped balance the experience. Riders is less a game I would describe as "purely competitive" and more just poorly tutorialized. It doesn't help that it has the Sonic game problem of going against the grain of what people expect of a mascot racer, which is something the Sonic series in general suffers from in the landscape of mascot platformers really. I did see your "what is it about Sonic video" really REALLY enjoyed it. However I avoided commenting on it because -my comment got erased when my phone died while I was making it~- because I'm considering maybe just making a video myself on the topic since it goes into territory I really always wanted to speak out on in regards to the series and the fanbase's investment in it. Dunno when that would be since I really haven't gotten a good workflow for video making in a long time ever since my laptop got fried like 5 years ago. Needless to say, as always, while I don't agree with *everything* I found it to be thoroughly engaging and glad I watched it as well as the fact it exists and was made. As i feel it is stuff that not enough people touch on. :)
4:38 I honestly was able to figure the race start mechanic out by watching the other racers. At…I think I did? Zero Gravity was my very first Sonic game over a decade ago.
It's not too difficult to figure out. But a new player will definitely not know what to do first time and probably hit the electricity. Not a great first impression.
I've played most Sonic games by this points, but Riders has always been paet of the very small whole of what I missed. This and your following video has sold me on giving Riders and ZG (modded) a go pretty soon.
4:44 *remembers my first time playing it and by the third race on the story mode understanding how the beginning start works not mastering it yet* Hehehehe yeah sure the most complicated thing yeah...
I recently picked up Riders. Played the main story and instantly fell in love with the gameplay. Did most of the missions then I found out about DX. Such a good mod to play and now the original game feels too slow to play!
Recently got to play Sonic Riders again. It was like riding a bike. After the first lap, my dormant muscle memory shot back. I felt like I was 12 again, fucking amazing game.
I remember turbulence being very helpful as a new player because you can ride in it without using any air. So when you're new and bad at air management it's a much better option than going to an air station.
I started playing Riders after having fully read the manual, so for years, I never understood the widespread confusion over controls. Still, the fiasco having existed at all goes to show that Sonic Team really should've put the tutorial at the forefront, especially given Mario Kart's effective standardization of handling which no doubt contributed to the bad rep. Also, the Trap gear you reference at 22:13 already exists in the base game! Btw, I can't wait to try out DX! I wasn't aware there was anything other than Tournament Edition and X.
I remember playing this when i was 8 on the ps2. I remember struggling a lot on this game but i will agree that it’s still the best sonic racing spinoff and it’s a shame that sega has trashed this concept.
Riders DX and Regratifies rookie/intermediate Player here,both games are absolutely a blast. With DX they'll be adding more characters and skins and in general it's just amazing and a blast to play (Too bad that TE and DX can't work together,the mod they could make would be amazing) Dosent matter which mod you play,join their discord and play em! The more people we get to enjoy the game,the bigger chance Sega makes a game in 2023!
How did it take me this long to realize Sonic Riders is just Sega's F-ZERO? Like, Sega made F-ZERO GX, so it only makes sense they'd reuse the engine for one of their own IPs.
Alas, the wrath of Nintendo, Sega, Lego and some random Video Game organisation have removed this and most sonic, nintendo, lego and other popular games from probably the best site you could find them
This was a game I remember loving, but then I was exposed to the internet, and for the longest time they convinced me that it is trash, until I randomly picked it up again and realised, damn, it IS really good, people just tend to ditch this game real quick. Also, this is one of the games that got mocked for the dumbest of the reasons, A.K.A (WhY is SOnIc oN a HoVeRboArd???!!!).
Im going to be the weird guy here that says that i have never had a problem learning the mechanics of Sonic riders, not to say it was a walk in the park, no it kicked my 10 year old as hard, but i manage to take that on and learn it's mechanics, the last mechanic i learn out of all the mechanics i had to learn about this game was rail Grinding... Yeah, i learn how to not go through races losing my air meter manipulate it to expend it almost completely through a lap just before ramps against the CPU before i learn how to rail grind... Did i also mention my main was Shadow as an 10 year old?
Honestly I enjoyed the mission mode in this game. It gives you a lot of things to do which is good in a game that demands so much practice to get used to all the shit you can do
Bruh, there are no issues with turbulence. All your points about it were how you didn't like it but failed to point out any issues with it. It takes zero skill to use, helps you catch up to the person in front of you, and you don't even need to do tricks while using it. Plus, you don't consume air when riding them and it can lead you to secret areas for further help catching up with everyone else. There is literally no flaw in it. Plus, you actively need to force your way into the turbulence if you don't get on from the tail end
I got a perfect on every single mission in the game. The missions are there to show your mastery of the game and shouldn't really be attempted until you've beaten both of the story modes and gotten at least 15 to 20 hours in tge game
This game to me always seemed like a gimped Sonic game and an ever more gimped racer, maybe I should actually give it a shot though. And also I miss SSX so that's another reason. The art style of Riders was always one of the coolest things ever conceived though
Man! I realized that there are many Sonic games that were released in 2006. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of Sonic games that were released in the 2004-2008 period. This is the more reason why Sonic 06 should have been delayed by a year or two! Though to be fair if the release of Sonic 06 was delayed by a year or two, we wouldn't call it Sonic 06.
I am not good at racing games, so I struggled with Riders a lot! Wanted to like it, but I couldn't. I did beat the story mode, but I wasnt having fun. Even after unlocking Shadow, I still couldn't force myself to enjoy it enough to revisit the game after a while.
Man remembering back when I first played this game in 2012, I don't know how to grind on rail and just keep playing till I finished the game. That is until the TE version came out I found out I have to press the jump button twice to get on those rails. The game really did a bad job at explaining the mechanics in-game, aside from tutorial video which was easily missed by every new players when they started playing the game
Huh, I guess I'm nobody. I got the first Riders game second hand without a manual and when I first did a race I found the way races start to be really intuitive. Also IIRC Power Type characters had the worst type of shortcuts, I mean straight up disadvantage. Because unlike the other two types once they smashed open a shortcut any character can now take that path, while Power Types are stuck being unable to use the other two shortcut types. Also smashing stuff only refills air once cause those objects are just gone for the rest of the race. Meanwhile Speed and Fly types can grind rails and fly through boost rings as many times as they like and still gain the same amount of air each and every time.
18:30 I honestly find the mission mode really hard cause of the controls not being what I used to when collecting stuff in a racing game. Also the rails aren’t the easiest thing in the world too.
I played this before I bought F-zero GX, and again after completing F-zero GX. And I feel like Sonic Riders may have been a little inspired from F-zero, especially since some of Sega worked on both GX, and AX. Especially with the air meter and how that is effected by boosting and how routing is planed with gaining and losing air, a lot like the energy meter in the 3D F-zero games. Even drifting and attacking is kinda similar, but instead of a spin or side slam in F-zero, it's a tornado and boost. Both greatly disrupting or completely eliminating your competition.
Yeah as a 8 year old i dint undestarnd shit about this game but now i enjoy it a lot, Will try to convince the gang to play this instead of Mario Kart this holidays
I learned how to play Riders many years after the first time I tried it when I watched some RU-vid video. Damn, once you learn how to play it it's such a good game.
It's defintiively a looker and the mods seem to have made it better than when I played it back in the day. Still not really for me but nice to see people are giving it care.
I played Riders when it came out as an 11 year old and figured out the mechanics by myself no problem. Not sure what kind of baby gamer lacks the patience for this.
The games not complicated, I beat the game when I was 8… And there was a tutorial, people never go to them, just jump straight in and judge it without giving it a true go.
Imagine Sega finally decide to give Sonic Riders another chance, remake the first game while also importing tracks from Team Sonic Racing. Edit: Also, a necessity: Getting the DX or TE devs on board.
the vast majority of VODs for competitive games can be found in playlists on my RU-vid channel. Naturally the meta changed greatly between each version, but I do put the version being played in the title so you can tell the difference
At least in vanilla to do an S-rank trick, just do a trick 3 times in the same direction. Basically 3 right spins, or 3 front flips, ect. Hope this helps.
18:05 The tutorial is shown when you stay on the title screen for long enough. But again, you’ll never see that unless your intentionally staying on the title screen.
Question. Would the charge jump from this game work for a Sonic platformer? Not like the Secret Rings sliding charge jump (which I feel didn't work with its reaction-based level design). I wonder if it could work with open-ended level design that has more emphasis on *when* you jump instead of *where* you jump? It may seem unnecessary since jumping has always worked as is but I want to challenge that notion a bit. Just think of running around while charging a jump before a ledge. Maybe you could buffer a charge jump in mid-air Spider-Man PS4 style, doing tricks and bouncing from tree to tree like the Sonic CD intro. It may even feel more intuitive due to the tension and release of a button simulating the feeling of jumping IRL. What do you think?
It took me literal years to beat the first game. I couldn't beat the second stage, and then every stage after that was beaten by me with all the style and finesse of bashing your head against a wall until it breaks.I'm still not sure how, like, half of the mechanics work.
Love this game. Seems to me that Sonic Team has a way of creating cult classics by filtering audiences, not through difficulty like Dark Souls, but through bad onboarding or tutorialization. A good way to a dedicated fanbase, a bad way to critical success. One question, I don't think you explained why turbulence was a bad catchup mechanic? I've never played competitive and it's been a while so I'm unaware of anything meta. I'm assuming the saved air is a noob trap or something
18:49 And learn a bunch of stuff in the game, like i mention i learn Grinding on rails as the last skill i learn of this game, from where? Mission mode, Air management? Mission mode, seriously mission mode teaches you a lot... But if you don't learn the basics you are screw, and ironically... The story mode does a good job to basically beat you in the head with how hard it's until you learn the basics, it may not be everyones cup of tea... But damn that as a kid i enjoyed that.
I always sucked at this game to the point I could barely get to second last place lol, but I like the whole style of it. Maybe I'll give a try again and see if I can improve.
Bro I've played sonic riders for 10 years now and I did not know I could reach higher or far paths from ramps if I'm holding the stick forward or backwards. No wonder Sonic riders zero gravity simplified things and made an in depth tutorial to be more accessible. But still i prefer Og riders complex gameplay over Zero gravity simplicity.
Having had played Riders on console for a long time, there's two things that have always, always made me never want to play the game again when I _do_ try playing it. Those two big problems are the fact that you cannot shut up the announcer unless you just mute the game and how he's always screaming the obvious at you, almost mocking you in a sense when you fail, and that the game rubberbands the CPUs hard. You don't get the support from rubberbanding, hell you could be half a lap or more ahead, and then out of nowhere there comes your opponents, speeding by you like you're on foot. It's not fun to be doing well and then all of the sudden be passed up by the immaculate CPU players that got ahead even if you had a flawless lap. Then there's the fact that one race may make you retry again and again, then the next one ends up being too easy for its own good, and then the game goes back to busting your balls. I always regret going back to this game because of these two problems *every single time*. Honestly, the biggest redeeming quality of the game is the soundtrack. That's the only part of the game I can safely say that I love and wouldn't have any other way.
Man, everything in vanilla could've been dx or te, boost chaining is actually in vanilla its just only beneficial at level 1. Which just goes to show imo just how much of a shame it is that vanilla was rushed out. Man it sucks. Just imagine what if og kicked off well, makes me sad fr
