Sonic Drift

Did You Know?

• Flicky was initially planned to be the fourth playable character, but was replaced with Amy Rose.
• The game was programmed by "Wa-Da" and "Shinchan", and the music was composed by Masayuki Nagao.
• Box art and manual illustrations were drawn by Yasushi Yamaguchi.

Gameplay

Sonic Drift marks the first time the Sonic franchise tried its hand at racing. Players pick from Sonic, Tails, Amy Rose, or Doctor Eggman, then compete to finish first across 18 tracks. These courses are built from zones in the original 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog, like Green Hill Zone. This game also gives Amy her first playable appearance. Three modes are on offer: Chaos GP, which is a grand prix with three colored cups (green, yellow, red) each holding six tracks and a points system; Free Run for practice; and Versus Mode for head-to-head play. Each character comes with trade-offs: Sonic accelerates fast but handles poorly, while Eggman is slow to speed up but reaches a high top speed. The screen shows the track map on top and the car on the bottom. Driving relies on drifting through turns. Hitting TV monitors scattered on the track grants power-ups like invincibility. Gold rings let you use a special move unique to each character—Sonic gets a speed boost, Tails can jump.

Release

Sega released Sonic Drift for the Game Gear in Japan on March 18, 1994, but never brought it to the West, worried it wasn't good enough. Instead, they put out a Game Gear version of Sonic Spinball. A sequel, Sonic Drift 2, did get a worldwide release in 1995. The original later returned as an unlockable bonus in Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut (2003), and appeared in the compilations Sonic Mega Collection Plus (2004) and Sonic Origins Plus (June 23, 2023). It also showed up as a playable minigame in the 2026 Sega title Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties.

Reception

Sonic Drift received mixed reviews upon release. Electronic Gaming Monthly previewed it positively, calling it fast-paced and enjoyable but noting that flashing, choppy scrolling hampered gameplay. They were more positive about graphics and sound. Ulf Schneider of Mega Fun stated the game lacked the quality of Super Mario Kart and criticized the inability to see corners before reaching them, but found it fun and easy to master even on Hard difficulty, with controls learnable within a few laps. Retrospective feedback has been negative. Chris Baker of GameSpy labeled it "almost unplayable," and Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer called it "a terrible, terrible racing game whose flickering madness actually made me physically sick. A 2012 Jeuxvideo.com reviewer compared it unfavorably to Super Mario Kart, calling it too simplistic and easy to finish, with a lack of content and poor presentation. USgamer staff identified the use of half the screen for the course map as an issue and called it "a poor man's Out Run. Jim McGrath of Hardcore Gaming 101 found the gameplay decent but lacking in content and variety, with boring track designs and purely cosmetic stage themes. GamesTM described it as a "lazy and cynical cash-in."