Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart

[Tracker_TD]

I sure do like kart racing!

Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart is a mod for Sonic Robo Blast 2, which is a mod for DOOM. However, it's standalone from either of these - you just need one installer, and you're off!

So what is it?

 

SRB2Kart is a fairly standard kart racing game starring all of your favourite Sonic characters and worlds. Sort of.

The base game only has five characters:

Amy is planned to join the roster in the next major release of the game, but that's a ways off yet.

You might be thinking to yourself, "hang on a minute, how is this a big deal with such a tiny roster?" Well let me introduce you to the power of mods! 

As it's a DOOM mod, the game supports .wad and .pk3 files for adding all manner of custom characters, tracks, modes, and so forth. The game actually comes with a mod pack included, featuring characters such as Shadow, Blaze, Arle Nadja from Puyo Puyo, and many more. But beyond that, there's a bustling community putting out new characters and such at pretty staggering rate. As it's a DOOM mod, you can also change the colour of the characters to your pleasing (or just hit backspace on the colour selection to get their default colour). 

Want to play as Klonoa in a look lovingly informed by his original Playstation debut? There's a mod for that! Want to play as Mega Man? There's a mod for that! Want to play as the Hornet from Daytona USA... driving a kart? THERE IS A MOD FOR THAT. And if you don't fancy having to load up the addons you want every time you start the game, you can make a "kartexec.cfg" file to do it for you! 

The game comes pre-loaded with 100 tracks, and as with characters the community is feverishly working away on new ones. It sees updates from time to time that tweak item distribution, fix issues with tracks, add new characters to the bonus character pack, and so forth. Items range from fairly standard projectiles such as Orbinaut spike balls, to the game's Blue Shell - The Self Propelled Bomb (which it turns out, is actually an extremely deep cut to Sonic 3's Competition Mode).

The game also supports online racing. Hosting a server can be a bit of a hassle (it requires port forwarding which can be a pain in the ass), but fortunately there's plenty of 24/7 dedicated servers online. The game also has a Discord lobby for organising netgames, showing off mods, and so forth.  There's a Battle Mode too, for those so inclined! 

(Shameless Plug: I also stream the game a fair bit. The VoDs are here, in case you want to see the game in action.)

How do I get it?

The latest version of the game (1.03) is available here. It doesn't require the regular version of Sonic Robo Blast 2 or anything, just one installer and you're off! Be sure to read the ingame manual for tips and tricks.

As for the game itself - I've found myself really impressed by it. The drifting definitely takes some getting used to, as it's fairly different to Mario Kart, but the sense of speed it allows you once you get good at it is amazing. I also really love the modding community, as the range of characters now available for the game gives it a fairly widespread appeal - if you want it to be, it can essentially be MUGEN Kart at this point. The track design is also fairly good - they're not all winners and there's a fair amount of imports from other games (as well as the dreaded Map Hell section) but on the whole it makes for a great time in Multiplayer (which supports up to 16 players).

Perhaps the main sticking point is Single Player, which is unfortunately restricted to racing Staff Ghosts in Time Attack right now. To make up for it, there's actually unlockables tied to besting the staff ghosts - including the lucrative final unlockable, Encore Mode.

Even if it doesn't click with you in the long run, it's a game I'd recommend checking out. I never tend to spend too long on fangames, but I've put a frightening amount of hours into this game (and even made some mods for it). It's a labour of love through and through, with an artstyle I find quite close to my beloved SEGA Saturn stuff (and even moreso if you switch on OpenGL mode, which supports 3D models for the racers!). 

[Polkadi~☆]

Wow, we didn't have a topic for this yet? Good on you, Tracker, for making one at last!

Yes, I would highly recommend Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart (what a mouthful) as a racing game to play! The multiplayer is the main sticking point of the game, but singleplayer is still fun, as you can happily play against the times of the people behind the mod.

The best way I could describe the drifting is like Crash Team Racing. The kart will slide off, and you are fighting to pull it in the direction you want. Chain together these slides to get a huge speed bonus, as the longer each slide is, the more boost power you store.

And thanks to the power of DOOM modding, you can create your own tracks for this game! Fire away, and see what you make! And Sonic Mania's third Special Stage is a track in this game, and I love it.

I would love to play this game with you all one day, Sonic Stadium~!!

[Tornado]

6 hours ago, Tracker_TD said:

So what is it?

The Sonic kart racer that doesn't look like garbage.

[blueblur98]

i really like this game, even though i'm pretty bad at it.

[Red Hot Jack]

Gave it another shot and quickly lost interest, OK as a fangame but it's just so frustrating and hardly accessible, guess I'll wait for Crash, I hope it's more fun than this (not too hard to accomplish).

[Fire-N-Space]

A Sonic Kart game that doesn't even have Amy as a playable character but Sonic Team gets call lazy for having 15 characters and way better graphics.    

[Heckboy]

16 minutes ago, Fire-N-Space said:

A Sonic Kart game that doesn't even have Amy as a playable character but Sonic Team gets call lazy for having 15 characters and way better graphics.    

This is a fan-game, lol. And you can get way more than 15 characters (including Amy) with mods.

[Fire-N-Space]

26 minutes ago, Heckboy said:

This is a fan-game, lol. And you can get way more than 15 characters (including Amy) with mods.

I know its a fan game but I don't get why some say Sonic Team is lazy when they can't even come close to accomplishing anything like it. I was only talking about 15 Sonic characters not any character. 

[Tracker_TD]

10 minutes ago, Fire-N-Space said:

I know its a fan game but I don't get why some say Sonic Team is lazy when they can't even come close to accomplishing anything like it. I was only talking about 15 Sonic characters not any character. 

Why can't a bunch of fans come close to accomplishing what a studio with a huge team of staff, millions of dollars in budget and... oh. Right. 

That and Amy is actually included as part of the bonuschars pack (again, included with the game), it's just that that's Modern Amy. The one they plan on adding in 2.0 is Classic Amy to be consistent with the rest of the base characters. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

9 minutes ago, Fire-N-Space said:

I know its a fan game but I don't get why some say Sonic Team is lazy when they can't even come close to accomplishing anything like it. I was only talking about 15 Sonic characters not any character. 

Maybe because one is a fully funded publishing house funding a well-known and well-experienced development team who has made racing games with double the roster in the same franchise and is selling for profit while the other is a fan creator who receives no funding for creating their game, releases it for free, and yet still gives tools to mod characters in.

[Fire-N-Space]

9 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Maybe because one is a fully funded publishing house funding a well-known and well-experienced development team who has made racing games with double the roster in the same franchise and is selling for profit while the other is a fan creator who receives no funding for creating their game, releases it for free, and yet still gives tools to mod characters in.

Sega didn't start off having a well known game,  well-experienced development team and fully funded on day 1 some don't understand what they been though to get to this point.

Also Team Sonic Racing has only Sonic characters they never made double the roster from the same franchise before. 

[Diogenes]

6 minutes ago, Fire-N-Space said:

Sega didn't start off having a well known game,  well-experienced development team and fully funded on day 1

You do realize it's not day 1, right? They're being judged on what they're doing now, with decades of experience under their belt, and it's not impressive.

[Tornado]

5 hours ago, Fire-N-Space said:

Sega didn't start off having a well known game,  well-experienced development team and fully funded on day 1 some don't understand what they been though to get to this point.

You mean with the Sonic series? Because the first game was one of Sega's highest development priorities of the time, with millions of dollars thrown at it and some of Sega's best people in the entire company working on it.

[Fire-N-Space]

20 minutes ago, Tornado said:

You mean with the Sonic series? Because the first game was one of Sega's highest development priorities of the time, with millions of dollars thrown at it and some of Sega's best people in the entire company working on it.

I mean with Sega not Sonic himself.

[Tornado]

Sega existed as a company for thirty years before they made any videogames. What you're arguing has no relevance.

[Blusolyn]

I'm enjoying this game. At times I would play online and I'm trying to collect more medals. Couldn't drift well at first but I've gotten better. Definitely spent many hours and played with some mods. 

[Pengi]

Has anyone made a Fang mod yet?

[Blusolyn]

11 hours ago, Pengi said:

Has anyone made a Fang mod yet?

Yeah someone have. https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=44534

[Pengi]

10 hours ago, ebongrey23 said:

Yeah someone have. https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=44534

That's good!

Looks like he has two fangs (teeth) though? How would I go about editing the sprites?

[Tracker_TD]

2 hours ago, Pengi said:

That's good!

Looks like he has two fangs (teeth) though? How would I go about editing the sprites?

I think it’s just that the sprites are mirrored depending on the angle. I think you can do asymmetrical sprites but it’s more difficult. As for editing the sprites you’d need something like SLADE, but I’d recommend asking the mod creator about it first.