Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers is the best game ever made.
it's just. so fucking good. it's significantly more engaging than even a significantly-modded game of srb2kart. i remember being fucking terrified of it before it came out. srb2kart was really dear to me - i spent a not-insignificant period of some of the hardest months of my life playing constantly. i found some real community there. and the game itself is just sublime. the cleanest drifts, the purest systems
then, a few years later, they started showing these first looks at the update. the dreaded 2.0. srb2kart had moved from 1.3 to 1.6 while i had been playing, but none of these updates changed the core of the game. a few performance tweaks, a few map changes, an option to finally play above 35 fps without a modded client (thank fucking god)
but 2.0 was different. they were taking this pretty by-the-numbers kart racer and making it something new. and it was scary! because i didn't want to lose this thing that was precious to me. i didn't want this game that was precious to me to change into something unrecognizable. something i wouldn't care for. something that wouldn't have that SPARK the first one had
and so i kept on playing srb2kart 1.6. i found peace and excitement in playing a few hours of the same hundred-odd maps whenever i wanted to play something that felt Right. and the updates kept trickling in. and i was afraid. i half-hoped that it would never come. when the news finally dropped, my first reaction was an audible "oh, fuck"
the initial response wasn't helpful. there were a lot of new features added to this rework, enough for the (newly-added!) tutorial to turn away a signficiant percentage of players. i gave it a shot, knowing that its marketing as A Sequel meant the original would always be an option in my back pocket. a day or two after launch, i downloaded the new client and gave it a shot. and i liked it! i liked it quite a lot. i liked the polish, and i liked the graphics, and i liked quite a lot of the new mechanics. it really was a sequel.
everything they changed and added felt so natural, so *right*, that i didn't appreciate how much of a leap it was until a month or so later. i loaded up a game of srb2kart with the standard suite of mods and found myself with nothing to do. i was playing the same game i had loved for years. i had made the changes that turned it from something great into something perfect. and i had nothing to do. i would see a turn in the distance, or a jump, and i would sit and wait. maybe there was some finesse for an especially tight sequence. but there was just so much nothing in-between.
ring racers has next to no moments of nothing. it is hyper-engaging. it rivals the most frantic game of srb2kart in its quietest moments. it is pure kinetic energy. the rings mechanic does a lot for this aspect of the game on its own - every stretch of road begs you to spend what you must to keep tearing through at top speed. every interaction involves them somehow - every bump, every box, every fall, every hit, every recovery. it is a constant feed. nothing displays this more clearly than the decision to pick up a ring box in lieu of an item while further back from the pack - a string of jackpots can carry you further than the most powerful alternatives in the right circumstances. and the whole time you do so, you are not taking shortcuts to skip through the course or invincibly blasting through opponents. you are playing the track. you are your kart at its best. you are faster than everyone around you, if you can just play it right. you have all the speed you need, and nothing else. you need nothing else. it's just you and the road.
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