When I got the assignment to review Sonic Riders for Nintendo’s GameCube, I asked myself, "Will this finally be a game on par with Mario Kart Double Dash so I can stop endlessly racing the mustachioed one with my niece and nephew each time they visit? Is Sega at last going to give us another great Sonic game? Which door have I been propping open with that unused purple cube thing?" The answers turned out to be "no", "not really" and "dining room."

Sonic Riders, if you have not already guessed, is a racing game from Sega’s Sonic Team development house. No, you won’t be riding on Sonic the Hedgehog as the title might imply. You will be playing as him and some of the other cast of characters that have populated the Sonic universe over the past 15 years the franchise has been around. What you will be riding on is a hover board powered by air.

In the single-player story mode you’ll be competing in the EX World Grand Prix, a series of races engineered by the nefarious Dr. Eggman. You’ll be riding against the Babylon Rogues, a group of tough riders that have a reputation as some clever thieves that once … you really don’t want to know this, do you? The story is absolutely useless at motivating you to race. If you bought this game you probably expected racing. Enough said.

Once you play the game, you realize that Sonic Riders feels very much like a blending of games from the Mario Kart mascot racing and SSX snowboarding franchises. Blending may be too nice a word. It is more like they crashed into each other, and the resulting hybrid is not nearly as satisfying as when chocolate ran into peanut butter. It is by no means a disaster, but I’m not sure if this game is going to entirely satisfy anyone.

When I first started hearing about this game, I hoped that Sega was putting together a fun, easy-to-pick-up mascot racer in the vein of Mario Kart or even Crash Team Racing. Sadly, the game is not that. Initial success playing Sonic Riders is elusive, and it can take a few tries and a very concerted effort to win races against the AI-controlled opponents. This of course means younger and more casual gamers are going to get frustrated early. More hardcore gamers who stick to it and begin to have some success are going to find the controls a little too sluggish for their tastes and the AI being a bit cheap when it comes to racing. A single mistake can easily mean the difference between placing within the required finishing position and coming in dead last.

The vehicle you’ll be racing on is a hover board, known as "extreme gear," that is powered by air. In addition to simply powering the board, air also gives you boost and helps you take the really sharp corners in a slide. While just cruising, air is used at a moderate rate. While boosting and sliding the board around corners you use it up a lot faster. There are pit stops along many of the courses that can refill your air supply, but that means stopping and losing ground on your opponents. The more desirable way to replenish your air supply is either by picking up air items that may be scattered along the track or by stunting while you race.

The stunting is where Sonic Riders looks more like an SSX game than a racer. Coming off ramps and catching some air you’ll be able to do flips … but watch out, a bad landing will slow you down. There are also rails to grind on and shortcuts to take. That pretty much does it for the trick system. It’s not nearly as deep as the SSX games, but definitely reminiscent of them.

Sonic Team fortunately did put in several racing modes beyond the single-player story. The player can choose to Free Race against up to four other human players or computer-controlled characters. Time Attack is a race only against the clock. Mission mode has the player meeting certain pre-set conditions in a series of races. Tag mode is a team race for up to four that has two players working together with a single air supply between them. Survival mode challenges the player to be the last racer standing.

While the multiplayer modes add a bit of enjoyment to Sonic Riders, I found the individual screens overcrowded once you get up to four players on a TV. It also suffers from the stiffer learning curve when bringing in new players. Unlike a Mario Kart racer where you can hop in and at least feel you are doing pretty well as you lose to more experienced players, Sonic Riders can be rather off-putting to a novice player.

From a presentation point of view Sonic Riders is a lackluster, workman-like effort. The frame rate is solid but the detail of the graphics isn’t on par with its contemporaries. Even with the good frame rate, you never really get the rush of speed you should feel in a Sonic game. Sega’s little blue mascot actually seemed faster without the hover board. The music is okay but there is not a lot of variety here. The voice acting, though cheesy, does fit the tone of the game.