Sonic Drift Two-Player Versus Mode (Sonic Adventure DX - GameCube)

This is a capture of me and a friend playing the Versus Mode of Sonic Drift for the Sega Game Gear via Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut for the GameCube. I'm playing the game in progressive scan mode using an actual GameCube (not the Wii). I'm player one (Sonic, left screen) and Drew is player two (Tails, right screen).

I picked up Sonic Adventure DX for the GameCube last month in order to play through the Game Gear version of Sonic Chaos, which is one of the 12 unlockable Game Gear games in this title. However, I noticed that once I unlocked and tried playing the various Game Gear games, a few of them gave me a prompt on screen to press start on controller two. Upon doing that, the screen split in two in order to simulate two Game Gear systems competing head-to-head in two-player mode.

This built-in two-player feature is easily the most impressive functionality I have ever seen in any sort of official emulation because it is duplicating two handheld systems on a single console. To my knowledge, even Nintendo has never bothered to implement two-player functionality for its handheld emulation.

After I posted my Sonic Chaos playthrough, I decided I would have to record and post some two-player footage of the other Game Gear games as soon as possible. Luckily, Drew once again helped me out with that.

Sonic Drift is one of the unlockable Game Gear games in Sonic Adventure DX and its inclusion is particularly interesting because the game was originally released in 1994 only in Japan. The sequel, Sonic Drift 2, was released a year later in the U.S. and kept its numbering even though the first game wasn’t released here.

This is a kart racing game that seems to be ripping off Nintendo’s idea with Super Mario Kart, though due to hardware limitations, the game can’t do Mode 7-style graphics and instead has to rely on traditional racing game designs like Out Run, Rad Racer, or F-1 Race, if you want a Game Boy comparison. This means that the game isn’t as fun as one of the Mario Kart title. It’s also a bit odd to see Sonic in a car when he’s pretty much depicted as being fast enough to outrun one.

In the versus mode you simply compete against another person by doing three laps on whatever course you choose. You can also choose your character, though Drew and I didn’t do that and the game defaulted us to Sonic and Tails. As the game’s title suggests, you can drift around turns by tapping the brake, but if you hold it too long, you’ll spin out. This happened to Drew a few times before he figured out the drifting mechanic. Crashing into obstacles and other racers also spins you out.

You can also use your character’s special power by pressing up on the D-pad whenever you have at least two rings, but Drew and I forgot to do this. I think we’ll remember if we play Sonic Drift 2.

Drew and I raced on four different courses just to show how the mode works, but you can select any of the 18 available tracks. However, the course selection method is really confusing. You have specifically select “course” from the menu, then press A for the specific zone, and tap left or right to highlight the specific track and go back to the main menu. At that point you can select “battle,” which starts the race on the last course you selected. It’s not exactly intuitive. It took me a while after the first race to figure this out, so I edited out some of the section after the first race where I was figuring out how to change tracks.

For a competitive racing game, Sonic Drift is rather mediocre, though I admit the graphics are fairly good.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and the GameCube's component cables at 60 frames per second.