One of the first games I remember playing as a kid, I must have been about 4 years old. For a Game Gear game, it's reasonable, I've played worse racing games in newer systems. But don't fool yourself: It's still a very poorly aged game.

For what it is, it does a decent job. There are better 8-bit racing games, but this one's not that bad, I'd rather play this than Kartrider: Drift.

SCORE: 5.5/10

[played on Sonic Origins Plus for the Switch]

After playing the original Sonic Drift last year and finding it serviceable enough, I thought I'd add the sequel to my backlog and eventually give it a go. And now, over six months later, I finally decided to play the game and actually liked it far more than I expected!

Whilst the original leaned hard into the Power Drift influence, Sonic Drift 2 tries to be a lot closer to Mario Kart, which ends up resulting in a much stronger game. The tracks are more varied with their hazards and themes, and it's a whole lot more challenging thanks to a higher emphasis on the items and power-ups, as well as much tougher CPUs. This made the gameplay feel far more engaging, and genuinely quite fun! Drifting around corners and blocking the CPUs before they could pass me never got old, with the creativity of some of the course ideas giving me even more of a reason to see it through the end. (Special shoutouts would have to go to the cave tracks, Emerald Ocean and Milky Way, they're really cool concepts that were executed about as well as they could've been on the hardware!)

More than anything, Sonic Drift 2's a game that has tons of potential. If it was released on 16-bit hardware as a genuine Mario Kart competitor, it could've been something truly special. But as it stands, the game's a decent little 8-bit kart racer!

sei que isso aqui é um mario kart piorado, com menos recursos, em um console mt fraco, com um som bem fraco tbm, mas esse jogo me marcou demais, essa rewiew vai além da minha subjetividade e chega até saudosismo puro, eu viajava olhando os cenários da praia ( sempre com poucos pixels), olhava o horizonte e ficava imaginando coisas, era quase um cenário que estimulava minha imaginação, eu adorava o menu de colocação onde os personagens usavam reações a cada posição, e amava a fase de gelo com a parede de fundo, contudo sei que a sega fez isso no maior fodase, mas sem intenção fez crianças brasileiras como eu que tinha um tectoy muito felizes

Sonic Drift 2 is an improvement over the original game, one that actually got an original western release, and it's competent as an 8 bit racer.

There's a few more characters, way more track variety and an attempt at a more dynamic presentation. But still, there isn't much to this game, the racing mechanics are bare and the control is poor.

You can play this 2 player with Sonic Origins Plus, which adds some more value, but why would you go back to this now. Its aged graphically and the music is forgettable.

SD2 is only really something you play for the sake of completing the collection, and nothing more. Better than 1, but not by much.

While the first Sonic Drift was extremely brand, this one is immensely better. The control feels smoother and it has an increased sense of speed, but by far the biggest change is the levels.

There are a lot more level themes this time around, and levels can have their own gimmicks. A few levels take place in tunnels, with the second one subject to earthquakes which causes rocks to fall down. One has jumps which need to be hit straight on, otherwise you’ll collide with the side of it. One takes place on water, and if you slow down you’ll sink. They levels feel imaginative and make such a big difference to the overall feel of the game.

Sonic Drift 2 is a pretty good kart racing game, and somehow manages to look way better than a Game Gear game should do.

Played as part of the Sonic Gems Collection for the Nintendo GameCube.

How do you improve upon a game whose most notable quality is that it's a surprisingly competent arcade racer on bad hardware? By making the sequel Mario Kart, baby! Sonic can no longer simply drift his way to victory, he must throw bombs and take dudes out. Look at Dr. Robotnik over there getting Rusty Wallaced - he will never recover from that!

Sonic Drift 2 still controls like the first game, even though you must now concern yourself with picking up bombs, boosts and springs to get ahead of your rivals, and while I can definitely understand the inclusion of Mario Kart styled power-ups as being a negative to those who may prefer the purity of an arcade racer, I personally found it added more character. This stronger emphasis on kart combat does fall apart somewhat with the inclusion of character-specific abilities, which can be activated by spending a few power rings... Unless you're the computer, who does not need to abide by such a rule and can spam them freely. Tails' ability allows him to hop turns and this makes him a monster. I would also prefer it if Drift 2 didn't take inspiration from Mario Kart's rubberbanding but, oh well.

As frustrating as the AI's blatant cheating may be, the inclusion of abilities does help diversify the roster beyond simple metrics like handling and acceleration, and the addition of Knuckles, Nack and Metal Sonic as well as a significant increase to the overall number of tracks gives Drift 2 far more variety than its predecessor. There are also a bunch of tracks that are more conceptual in nature. Rainy Savannah takes place during a thunderstorm that occasionally flashes the screen to obstruct your view of the course, Quake Cave is set in a tunnel that is being shaken apart, and Ice Cap features half-pipe turns that let you grab air to leap over your opponents. My personal favorite, Emerald Ocean, finds an especially goofy compromise to making whole new sprites of the cast in boats by instead dropping their carts directly on top of the ocean and having them drive so fast that they don't get pulled underwater. If you slow down even a little bit you wipe out. It's so stupid, I kinda love it.

I also have to compliment Drift 2's performance. It plays pretty damn good. Sprite scrolling is buttery smooth, which makes it easy to negotiate turns and creates a satisfying sense of speed and distance. I've already made it abundantly clear that I don't think highly of the Game Gear, so "it's a miracle this game is so readable" is a bit of a back-handed compliment, I know, but it is nonetheless a good thing that botched turns and collisions felt like a me problem and not a consequence of the game running poorly.

Sonic Triple Trouble might be the best Sonic game on the platform that's actually trying to be a proper Sonic game, but insofar as games with the Sonic branding, I gotta go with Drift 2. Also, shoutouts to Amy's podium sprite which makes her look like she's just seen a dead body.