The Sonic Rivals Series.

[JetTheHawk]

So who remembers these games ? I became a Sonic fan, after playing both of those games on my first handheld console the PSP.

They were both fun, replayable, underrated games in my opinion. The storylines for these games weren't too bad either, neither was the soundtrack. It would be nice if SEGA could make a third rivals game, altough it will never happen. One thing I would like to see is the series on the app store and google play store, so more people could play the games.

I'd even be happy with a mobile spirital successor to the PSP games.

[Haalyle]

No thanks.

From the little amount I played of Rivals 2 on a PSP emulator, I'd rather not have some kind of spiritual successor on anything.

The controls felt pretty clumsy, there was hardly any gameplay (seriously the races were just awful, and those other 'mini-games' weren't much better). And screw Silver. (The music was catchy though, I'll give it that.)

[FriendBot]

Rivals 2 was my first Sonic game ever and I still really like it, a lot!

The gameplay is pretty much a more polished 2D Sonic R so I guess, that's pretty nice I guess?

The levels looked really nice and the music is pretty decent, though i love Race to Win!

It's quite surprising that Takashi Iizuka was the one that wrote the stories for the Rivals series... and he's done a mighty good job, if I say so myself. Especially since he wrote Shadow's story and was credited for Free Riders' story.

The cast plays off well against each other and it brought one of the more interesting friendships that is of Silver and Espio, Shadow and Metal is a pretty close second but would've thought that a ninja chameleon would be friends with a psychic hedgehog from the future?

The Rivals games are not great but for what they are, they're pretty decent games to play.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

Only played Rivals 2, but eh

I don't think it's bad per say, I just did not find it really enjoyable either. You hold right to win a lot of the time for the races. The fights are boring, and the boss battles make me really want to destroy my PSP. I like a lot of it's extra aspects, such as card collecting, but I kinda think it would had benefited a lot more if your characters had a lot more variety of attacks. Not useful for races, but would make the fights at least less dreadful.

I have actually tried out it's multiplayer component, and found it pretty fun racing against friends tbh. While with friends, there's a nice competition up in the air, racing CPUs basically only restrict you from taking your time, and just keep going as fast as possible.

[Badnik Mechanic]

You know, once upon a time. 

People were asking for a side scrolling game in which you played as Sonic, in which was classic in nature, which was fast paced without the use of boost in which had original levels.

And we got it, twice, and everybody ignored it. 

The Rivals series is a criminally under-rated and underplayer series of games, they're great fun, probably not the best made, but for what they offer they're great. 

[Faseeh]

Wouldn't call Rivals classic. But man, Rivals and Rush were such good fun. 

I faintly remember the good times and my introduction with Silver. All those costumes and additions were actually pretty cool. Wouldn't mind seeing a minigame reminiscent of these games sometime.  

[Nepenthe]

I enjoyed the time I spent with Rivals 2. It was simple gameplay, offered some nice little gimmicks for attaining speed, could be challenging at times, and had some nice interplay between all of the characters, and had a lot of cool collectibles like costumes and character cards. It wasn't super-dee-duper great, but I don't feel like my time was wasted with it. If my PSP had a working battery I would probably still play it.

[MegasonicZX]

Really enjoyed rivals 2 even though I wish there was more to it. Its a game that I think if sega came back to and polished it up a bit, put it on a system that isn't dying and added a slight bit more mechanical depth to the gameplay it would be a pretty big hit.

[Big-C]

I remember those two games, and it's been years since I last played them. I always found them to be fun games with high replay value. The costumes looked pretty cool on the characters too.

[FireBird75]

Haven't played the Rivals games myself.  Not getting a PSP just to play two games.

That being said, I have seen playthroughs of each game (Thanks Great Clement ) and from what I saw, the Sonic Rivals are decent titles.  By which I mean they're on the good side of average. Also I agree with Soni, that I found Silver and Espio's collab to be awesome.

The fact that Takeshi Iizuka himself wrote the stories (and came up with the concept with) for these games is pretty interesting.  It's clear that he knows the characters and for the few who played the Rivals games after Sonic 06, it must have been quite satisfying seeing the Sonic cast act like themselves again.

The music of the games is fairly average but people seem to like Forest Falls (Rivals 1) and Race the Win (Rivals 2) but that's probably because those tracks were composed by Jun Senoue.  The rest of the music is done by Chris Rezanson, who I know nothing about.

On a final note, despite their relative obscurity, both games managed to obtain the "Greatest Hits" label.

 

[cjmoore25]

When I first got my Vita, the first two games I downloaded were the Rivals games. Not fantastic, but fun and accessible. About what I expected from a Sonic handheld. I gladly revisit them time to time.

[Aquaslash]

On 1/19/2016 at 9:56 PM, Hogfather said:

The Rivals series is a criminally under-rated and underplayer series of games, they're great fun, probably not the best made, but for what they offer they're great. 

Agreed 110%.  I'd still be playing them had my PSP not bricked forever ago.

 

Also Metal Sonic 3.0 is one of the best recolors ever. I'm just sayin!

[Lord Raptor]

Eh, Sonic R was better.

[MetalSkulkBane]

They harmless time killers, but nothing spectacular.

The only think I really liked is "race to win" song and story of second game. First was confusing mess (Knuckles part), and that made Nega even more confusing. But second was much more straightforward and had great character interactions, one of the best in entire series.

(Also, I love image of Silver as crazy chao kidnapper, who apparently carried hundreds of them somewhere though entire game)