YMMV / Sonic Rush

• Anvilicious: The game really shoves the "friendship" moral down your throat in the cutscene in the Last Story preceding the fight with the Eggmen.
• Awesome Bosses: The Egg Salamander stands out among the otherwise mediocre lineup of bosses in the game. Not only is it another spectacle-fueled Super Sonic fight with a badass music track, but you also get tag team with Burning Blaze against two Eggmen all throughout!
• Awesome Levels:
  • Leaf Storm is a simple, yet highly effective introduction to the Boost gameplay, with plenty of alternate paths and safe spaces to experiment with Sonic's new abilities.
  • Water Palace is the game's most widely-beloved level, and for good reason. Much like Hydrocity Zone, Water Palace prioritizes making Sonic move forward as fast as possible even underwater, without sacrificing some of the challenge of his Super Drowning Skills.
• Broken Base: This game was responsible for introducing the boost style of gameplay to the franchise. Even disregarding how contentious the style would become later on, there are those who love it in these games for its fast-paced and frantic nature and those who hated it since they claim it made the levels feel like all flair and no substance when it comes to actual level design.
• Cult Classic: When the game first came out, it was largely overlooked by the fanbase due to it both being on a portable system instead of a home console and being released on the same day as Shadow the Hedgehog, which was the more talked about of the two out of infamy. However, by the start of The New '20s, fans of Rush who played the game as kids started to become more vocal about their love for the game, citing its incredibly fun gameplay and Special Stages, the incredibly unique soundtrack courtesy of Jet Set Radio composer Hideki Naganuma, and introducing fan-favorite Blaze to the series. The vocal praising of it led to Sonic fans who never played the game to give it a shot, and be genuinely impressed with it in the process.
• Epileptic Trees: Thanks to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) introducing a completely different backstory for Blaze, several theories attempting to reconcile the two were born. A somewhat popular theory is that Blaze's world is the world she sealed herself in at the end of Silver's story, though this raises further questions (such as how exactly she came to be a princess and guardian of the Sol Emeralds upon arriving, or why the Cosmic Retcon didn't affect her despite it logically negating her dimension jump). Another popular idea is that her world is actually an alternate future, in the same vein as the split timeline in The Legend of Zelda. Word of God buzzsawed many of these when Takashi Iizuka clarified that Blaze was from another dimension, and not the future. He still didn't explain why she appeared to be from the future seen in the 2006 game, though. However, Sonic 06's writer, Shiro Maekawa, has heavily implied that the former (Blaze sealing herself into the Sol Dimension) was the original intent. By and large, though, fans generally have decided to not look that gift horse in the mouth and just throw Blaze's 06 subplot in the discontinuity bin entirely to save everyone the headache of thinking about it.
• Franchise Original Sin: Shares a page with the franchise here.
• Funny Moments: Seeing Amy chasing Sonic during his end credits.
• Goddamned Boss: Almost every boss is only being vulnerable for small windows of time separated by drawn-out attacks where you can't counterattack, especially the boss of Huge Crisis and how it loves to spam its missile attack.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • As seen here, the plot of Sonic Rush is nearly identical to that of the two-part pilot of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic; a purple-furred loner learns to accept help from others, which powers her magical gemstones.
  • The stage theme for Altitude Limit is called "Get Edgy". Sonic Rush was released on the same day as Shadow the Hedgehog, and years down the line, mocking the latter for its "edginess" had become a meme.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A fair number of fans are drawn to these games solely because of the ability to play as Blaze the Cat, who has become a fan favorite.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Vela-Nova (Part 2) ^Explanation Many nostalgic fans of Sonic Rush took to making edits based off of the second phase of Sonic vs. Blaze, which was infamous for its strict button mashing. A particularly popular edit is that of Jotaro vs. DIO.
  • "Have a nice fall, you stupid bitch!" ^Explanation An Gag Dub of the Duel Boss between Sonic and Blaze, that adds Sonic uttering the aforementioned phrase after knocking Blaze off the platform. It's become quite popular as a reaction video.
• Moment of Awesome: One of the stages is in the upper atmosphere. It turns out that Blaze acrophobic, but still does it anyway.
• Nightmare Fuel: The reason why Sonic and Blaze are even in this mess is due to how the dimensions of Sonic's Dimension and Blaze's Sol Dimension are on a collision course for each other from a tear in the fabric of the space-time continuum, and it is rapidly expanding, which would threaten to destroy both universes if it is allowed to expand further. Alongside this, the heatwaves from the gradual expansion taking hold can visibly be seen on the world map as the story progresses, with each zone completed adding to the intensity of the situation, feeding the idea that the two heroes are in a race against time to fix this before it is too late.
• Older Than They Think:
  • These aren't the first Sonic games to make use of sampling in the soundtrack — that was Sonic the Hedgehog CD. In addition, the repeated "Too strong" phrase said by Malcolm X, used in "Wrapped in Black," was earlier sampled for the notoriously terrible Bébé's Kids SNES game.
  • Rush is the first game to introduce the Boost mechanic, which would later become a staple of the series as of Sonic Unleashed.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The rockets in Dead Line move really fast, but handle really lousily and get destroyed upon touching a wall. Merely tapping the control pad can send it at a very wide angle. And there's one section where you actually have to use it to get over a bottomless pit.
• Spiritual Successor: These games are pretty similar to the Sonic Advance series. They in turn inspired the handheld versions of Sonic Colors and Generations, and the Boost mechanic would be adopted by the mainline 3D Sonic games starting with Sonic Unleashed.
• Stoic Woobie: It's pretty hard not to feel bad for Blaze given how hard her life has been and how she doesn't have any friends for fear of accidentally burning them. That said, she tends to lash out when ever anyone offers her sympathy or help. She gets better about this by the end of the first game.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The main motif heard in "Back 2 Back" is notably similar to The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie."
  • Some of the music in Rush sounds very similar to some Jet Set Radio and Jet Set Radio Future tracks, but that's because Hideki Naganuma did work on all of them. Of note is "Get Edgy", which many fans have noted sounds like "Let Mom Sleep".
  • "Wrapped in Black" sounds very reminiscent of the Fatboy Slim song "Right Here, Right Now".
• Tear Jerker: The ending; watching the video of Blaze returning to her home dimension was something indeed.
• That One Boss:
  • The Altitude Limit boss has an attack where it tries to blow you off the stage. If you fail to mash the A and B buttons quickly enough, you will be pushed off the stage for an instant death. The boss' other attacks are to strafe and shoot at you (which is VERY hard to dodge), try to stomp you from above, or quickly fly in from the side to try and peck you. The only times it becomes vulnerable are whenever it jumps or pecks, and it doesn't give you a lot of time either.
  • The Dead Line zone boss is the Duel Boss fight we've been waiting for all game: Sonic vs. Blaze. However, once you get your opponent (whoever they are) down to their last hit point, you have to try and push them off the other end of the platform to finish them. You do this by tapping the A and B buttons in alternating form at an insanely high speed to stop the incredibly strong A.I. from just slamming you off your end, forcing you to start over, and you have to keep it up for however long it takes to knock them off. Depending on how much the balance swings, this can be as long as five minutes of intense button-mashing quite probably far above the abilities of the target audience.
• That One Level:
  • Altitude Limit, with its insta-kill lasers and tricky gimmicks, and quite a long run before reaching the first checkpoint.
  • Night Carnival is the fourth level in Sonic's campaign, but the first level in Blaze's story. Its difficulty will catch any players who attempt her story first by surprise.

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