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Video Game / Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart

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Race with Sonic and friends, and more you can imagine!

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers
Hang up your sneakers, because Dr. Robotnik and his ex-enemies are going go-karting!
Use the untapped potential of rings to super-charge your vehicle across more than 200 crazy courses.
With over 20 unique items and some of the hottest moves on this side of the Floating Island...
This is racing at the NEXT LEVEL!
Release promo for Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers

Sonic Robo Blast 2 is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan game built using the 3D Doom Legacy engine and is regarded as one of the finer Sonic fan games to have ever hit an official release... And then someone wondered what would happen if you programmed a kart racer using Sonic Robo Blast 2's code base as a foundation.

The result is the aptly titled Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: A Doom engine-powered kart racer starring Sonic and his friends, his enemies, and numerous Sega guest stars racing and battling it out on 100 maps. Or at least, only Sonic and his friends and only 100 maps to start with, as the game was designed with game mods in mind and even starts every player with some bonus characters to show off what can be done. The game allows for up to 4 players to play offline or go online for up to 16 player online matches, though it currently lacks any form of AI racers (well, not officially). It was officially released on November 16th 2018.

A sequel to Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, titled Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers, was released on April 24th 2024. Originally planned as a big update for the game, Kart Krew decided to change various mechanics of the game, to revamp some of the tracks, to emphasize on the Sonic content and to put away references to other companies, and to add some new content to the game, to the point that it ended as a completely different thing from the original, and so they changed the long name of the game (which can seem cryptic to those who never played SRB2) for a totally different one.

The game starts on a long tutorial where Dr. Robotnik and Tails apparently became friends while trying to repair Metal Sonic (the player sees the former two with his visors), and after the reparation is finally complete, both test a new vehicle which uses Rings' energy as fuel: the Ring Racers. After a series of tests where both geniuses switch places as test subjects and analysts, the game finally starts: you can chose between one of the 9 default pilots, do the 5 tracks of the Ring Cup, and after that, either try to unlock the 7 cups the game has to offerspoiler, try your hand at the various Time Attack modes, or challenge players online.

    open/close all folders 

Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart content

    Playable Characters 
  • Default: Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Dr. Eggman, Metal Sonic
  • Bonus:

    Available courses and arenas 

Race

Ring Cup

  1. Green Hills Zone
  2. Dark Race
  3. Northern District Zone
  4. Darkvile Garden Zone
  5. Daytona Speedway Zone

Sneaker Cup

  1. Egg Zeppelin Zone
  2. Sonic Speedway
  3. Hill Top Zone
  4. Misty Maze Zone
  5. Grand Metropolis

Water Cup

  1. Sunbeam Paradise
  2. Diamond Square Zone
  3. Midnight Meadow Zone
  4. Twinkle Cart
  5. Pleasure Castle

Lightning Cup

  1. Paradise Hill Zone
  2. Sub-Zero Peak Zone
  3. Sapphire Coast Zone
  4. Sand Valley Zone
  5. Megablock Castle Zone

Fire Cup

  1. Canyon Rush Zone
  2. Casino Resort Zone
  3. Silvercloud Island Zone
  4. Blue Mountain Zone
  5. Petroleum Refinery Zone

Invincible Cup

  1. Desert Palace Zone
  2. Aurora Atoll Zone
  3. Barren Badlands Zone
  4. Red Barrage Area
  5. Midnight Channel

Emerald Cup

  1. Vanilla Hotel Zone
  2. Toxic Palace Zone
  3. Ancient Tomb Zone
  4. Cloud Cradle Zone K
  5. Volcanic Valley Zone

Egg Cup

  1. Kodachrome Void Zone
  2. Boiling Bedrock Zone
  3. Egg Quarters
  4. Virtual Highway Zone
  5. Eggman's Nightclub Zone

Chao Cup

  1. KKR Ganbare Dochu 2
  2. CK Chao Circuit 1
  3. CK Chao Circuit 2
  4. CK Cloud Tops 2
  5. CK Regal Raceway

Swap Cup

  1. SD2 Balloon Park
  2. SM Special Stage 3
  3. MKSC Sky Garden
  4. MKDS Peach Gardens
  5. MKSC Rainbow Road

SMK Cup

  1. SMK Donut Plains 1
  2. SMK Mario Circuit 2
  3. SMK Ghost Valley 2
  4. SMK Bowser's Castle 3
  5. SMK Vanilla Lake 2

Community Cupinvoked

  1. Lake Margorite (by MK)
  2. Coastal Temple (by TG)
  3. Kart Airlines (by V.R.T.)
  4. Opulence (by Ivo)
  5. Crimson Core (by Ninferno)

Battle Courses

  1. Municipal Meadow Zone
  2. Tricircle Marina Zone
  3. Tinkerer's Arena Zone
  4. Clucky Farms Zone
  5. Techno Hill Zone
  6. Marble Zone
  7. Colosseum Zone
  8. Dried Battledune Zone
  9. Eerie Grove Zone
  10. Rusty Rig Zone
  11. Fantastic Tabernacle Zone
  12. Bad Taste Aquarium
  13. Spotlight Syndicate Zone
  14. City Skyline Zone
  15. Fakery Way
  16. Bumper Carts
  17. Death Egg's Eye
  18. Power Plant Zone
  19. Tails' Lab
  20. Armored Armadillo
  21. Trigger Happy Havoc
  22. Mementos
  23. CD Special Stage 1
  24. SMK Battle Course 1
  25. SMK Battle Course 2
  26. SMK Battle Course 3
  27. SMK Battle Course 4
  28. MK64 Block Fort
  29. MK64 Double Deck

    Map Hell Courses and Scrapped Courses (SPOILERS UNMARKED) 

Race

  1. Crystal Abyss Zone
  2. Peach's Castle
  3. Arid Sands
  4. Volcanic Valley Classic
  5. Chemical Facility Zone
  6. 3 Color Drive
  7. CK Cloud Tops
  8. CK Dungeon Maze
  9. Diamond Square Classic
  10. PWR Retro Maze
  11. SRB2 Frozen Night
  12. Black Bliss
  13. FZ Silence
  14. SMK Rainbow Road
  15. Blue Mountain Classic

Battle

  1. SRB2 Meadow Match
  2. battal BOWL
  3. Peach's Castle B

Scrapped

  1. Honeybee Industry (by fickle) (Originally the fourth track in the Community Cup)
  2. Septic Quarry Zone (Originally part of Map Hell)
  3. CK Death Town (Originally part of Map Hell)
  4. CNR Townsville Raceway (Originally part of Map Hell)

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers content

    Playable characters 
  • Default: Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, Miles "Tails" Prower, Metal Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rosenote , Mighty the Armadillo, Motobug, Fang the Sniper
  • Unlockable:
    • Classic Era: Flicky, Caterkiller, Ray the Flying Squirrel, Espio the Chameleon, Redznote 
    • Dreamcast Era: Chao, Chaos 0, Shadow the Hedgehog, Rouge the Bat, Cream the Rabbit, Big the Cat, Tikal the Echidna, Maria Robotnik, Emerl, Jet the Hawk
    • Modern Era: Blaze the Cat, Silver the Hedgehog
    • IDW Comic Series: Whisper the Wolf, Surge the Tenrec
    • Guests: Wonder Boy (Lizard-Man), Arle, NiGHTS, Sakura Shinguji, AiAi, Aigis, Jack Frost, Ecco, Headdy, Vectorman, Orta, Rappy, ChuChu, Gum, Billy Hatcher, Carol Tea, Azusa Miura, Mail, Zipp[[note]]From Astropede/Segapede, a cancelled Sega Technical Institute game with ties to Sonic 2]], Pulseman
    • Original: Ring the Racer
  • Companions: Various kinds of Flickies and Chaos, and many types of Badniks

    Available courses and arenas 

Race Courses

Ring Cup

  1. Robotnik Coaster
  2. Northern District
  3. Panic City (from Sonic Utopia)
  4. Sonic Speedway
  5. Green Hills

Sneaker Cup

  1. Emerald Coast
  2. Storm Rig
  3. Lucid Pass
  4. Autumn Ring
  5. Withering Chateau

Spring Cup

  1. Popcorn Workshop
  2. Sundae Drive
  3. Cadillac Cascade
  4. Rumble Ridge
  5. Opulence

Barrier Cup

  1. Angel Island
  2. Roasted Ruins
  3. Obsidian Oasis
  4. Mirage Saloon
  5. Regal Ruin

Invincible Cup

  1. Isolated Island
  2. Gigapolis
  3. Darkvile Castle 1
  4. Bronze Lake
  5. Collision Chaos

Emerald Cup

  1. Emerald Hill
  2. Azure City
  3. Gust Planet (from Sonic 1: The Next Level)
  4. Mystic Cave
  5. Joypolis

Extra Cup

  1. Hill Top
  2. Marble Garden
  3. Silvercloud Island
  4. Sub-Zero Peak
  5. Launch Base

S.P.B. Cup

  1. Azure Lake
  2. Balloon Park
  3. Chrome Gadget
  4. Desert Palace
  5. Endless Mine 1

Rocket Cup

  1. Hard-Boiled Stadium
  2. Hardhat Havoc
  3. Press Garden
  4. Pico Park
  5. City Escape

Aqua Cup

  1. Palmtree Panic
  2. Darkvile Castle 2
  3. Scarlet Gardens
  4. Motobug Motorway
  5. Star Light

Lightning Cup

  1. Metropolis
  2. Frozen Production
  3. Aqueduct Crystal
  4. Nova Shore
  5. Hydrocity

Flame Cup

  1. Trap Tower
  2. Diamond Dust
  3. Blue Mountain 1
  4. Blue Mountain 2
  5. Speed Highway

Super Cup

  1. Carnival Night
  2. Virtual Highway
  3. Dark Fortress
  4. Spring Yard
  5. Labyrinth

Egg Cup

  1. Hot Shelter
  2. Sky Sanctuary
  3. Lost Colony
  4. Death Egg

Goggles Cup

  1. 765 Stadium
  2. Skyscraper Leaps
  3. Green Triangle
  4. Zoned City
  5. Sunset Hill

Timer Cup

  1. Savannah Citadel
  2. Umbrella Rushwinds
  3. Avant Garden
  4. Bigtime Breakdown
  5. Vantablack Violet

Grow Cup

  1. Chaos Chute
  2. Dimension Disaster (from SUGOI 3)
  3. Aurora Atoll
  4. Daytona Speedway
  5. Turquoise Hill

Chao Cup

  1. Weiss Waterway
  2. Ice Paradise
  3. Sunsplashed Getaway
  4. Fae Falls
  5. Azure Axiom

Wing Cup

  1. Hanagumi Hall
  2. Aerial Highlands
  3. Crispy Canyon
  4. Technology Tundra
  5. Operator's Overspace

Mega Cup

  1. Mega Green Hill
  2. Mega Bridge
  3. Mega Lava Reef
  4. Mega Ice Cap
  5. Mega Scrap Brain

Phantom Cup

  1. Wavecrash Dimension 1
  2. Nightfall Dimension 2
  3. Voiddance Dimension 3
  4. Cloudtop Dimension 4
  5. Gravtech Dimension 5

Flash Cup

  1. Espresso Lane
  2. Melty Manor
  3. Leaf Storm
  4. Lake Margorite
  5. Endless Mine 2

Swap Cup

  1. Cyan Belltower
  2. Quartz Quadrant
  3. Aqua Tunnel
  4. Water Palace
  5. Final Fall (from Sonic XG)

Shrink Cup

  1. Haunted Ship
  2. Robotnik Winter
  3. Dragonspire Sewer 1
  4. Abyss Garden
  5. Blizzard Peaks

Bomb Cup

  1. Vermilion Vessel
  2. Dragonspire Sewer 2
  3. Chemical Facility
  4. Coastal Temple
  5. Monkey Mall

Power Cup

  1. Ramp Park
  2. Advent Angel
  3. Pestilence
  4. Crimson Core
  5. Las Vegas

Genesis Cup

  1. Mega Collision Chaos
  2. Mega Star Light
  3. Mega Sandopolis
  4. Mega Aqua Lake
  5. Mega Flying Battery

Skate Cup

  1. Sky Babylon
  2. Kodachrome Void
  3. Lavender Shrine
  4. Thunder Piston
  5. Dead Line

Recycle A Cup

  1. SRB2 Frozen Night
  2. Barren Badlands
  3. Shuffle Square
  4. Blue Mountain Classic
  5. Angel Arrow Classic

Recycle B Cup

  1. Cadillac Canyon Classic
  2. Diamond Dust Classic
  3. Blizzard Peaks Classic
  4. Launch Base Classic
  5. Lavender Shrine Classic

Lost & Found

  1. Test Map
  2. Test Track
  3. Hidden Palace

Prisons / Battle Arenas

Ring Cup

  1. Municipal Meadow
  2. CD Special Stage 1

Sneaker Cup

  1. Tinkerer's Arena
  2. Tricircle Marina

Spring Cup

  1. Mystery Gate
  2. Rusty Rig

Barrier Cup

  1. Marble Foyer
  2. Rock World

Invincible Cup

  1. World 1 Map (from Sonic Crackers)
  2. CD Special Stage 8

Emerald Cup

  1. Sega Saturn
  2. Electra Clacker (from Sonic Crackers)

Extra Cup

  1. Thunder Top
  2. Tree Ring

S.P.B. Cup

  1. Frigid Cove
  2. Gizmo Bastion

Rocket Cup

  1. Carbon Crucible
  2. Security Hall

Aqua Cup

  1. Gems Museum
  2. Media Studio

Lightning Cup

  1. Honeycomb Hollow
  2. Wood

Flame Cup

  1. Brawl Fort
  2. Crystal Island

Super Cup

  1. Cyber Arena
  2. Neon Resort

Egg Cup

  1. Meteor Herd
  2. Death Egg's Eye

Goggles Cup

  1. Tails' Lab
  2. Power Plant

Timer Cup

  1. City Skyline
  2. Vantablack Atrium

Grow Cup

  1. Dead Simple
  2. Martian Matrix

Chao Cup

  1. Dark Chao Garden
  2. Hero Chao Garden

Wing Cup

  1. Whirl Waters
  2. Deluged Metroplex

Mega Cup

  1. Mega Emerald Beach
  2. Mega Labyrinth

Phantom Cup

  1. Fungal Dimension
  2. Astral Dimension

Flash Cup

  1. Chaos Seraph
  2. Toy Kingdom

Swap Cup

  1. Aquatic Cathedral 1
  2. Aquatic Cathedral 2

Shrink Cup

  1. Frosty Courtyard
  2. Abyss Gate

Bomb Cup

  1. Sonic's Schoolhouse
  2. Record Attack

Power Cup

  1. Peanut Palace
  2. Hydro Plant

Genesis Cup

  1. Mega Metropolis
  2. Mega Marble

Skate Cup

  1. Thunder Lab
  2. Malign Eggshrine

Recycle A Cup

  1. SRB2 Meadow Match
  2. Armored Armadillo

Recycle B Cup

  1. Clucky Farms
  2. Dried Battledune

    UFO Catcher Stages and other secret levels (SPOILERS UNMARKED) 

Chaos Emeralds

  1. Balconies (Ring Cup)
  2. Villa (Sneaker Cup)
  3. Courtyard (Spring Cup)
  4. Church (Barrier Cup)
  5. Venice (Invincible Cup)
  6. Spikes (Emerald Cup)
  7. Fountain (Extra Cup)

Super Emeralds

  1. Gallery (S.P.B. Cup)
  2. Alley (Rocket Cup)
  3. Steeple (Aqua Cup)
  4. Rooftops (Lightning Cup)
  5. Roulette (Flame Cup)
  6. Towers (Super Cup)
  7. Atlantis (Egg Cup)

Lost & Found (Secret Encounters)

  1. Blend Eye (Espresso Lane Boss Fight)[[note]]Cited as "Adventure Example" in the Special Stage Select menu

This game contains examples of the following tropes:

    Tropes common to both versions 
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • This game's version of the dreaded Blue Shell, the Self-Propelled Bomb, doesn't necessarily mean certain doom for the racer targeted by it — skilled players can easily outrun it, so much so that they can even complete the race without being hit by it. However, slow down below your character's normal top speed and you are toast (see Do Well, But Not Perfect below).
    • Players who drag items behind them are slowed down a bit, meaning that they can't just hold onto them to use as a cover against incoming attacks without risking their speed. Items are also dragged behind/orbit the player by default, meaning they can't just not place the item out to circumvent the speed decrease. (This swings both ways though, as the speed decrease is not significant to the point that players will simply want to just place their items the second they get them.)
  • Art Shift: As the Bonus Characters pack contains characters made by various authors, some vary slightly in their art style. Beat, in an attempt to mimic his home series' Cel Shading, has sharper outlines and shading.
  • Breakout Mook Character:
    • In Super SRB2 Kart Z, Robo-Hood, one of Sonic Robo Blast 2's Badniks, could be added via the "misc characters" file that came with the game. Similarly, there was Crawla Honcho, a Crawla with a honcho getup that spoke in The Soldier's voice.
    • This role would eventually go to Motobug in SRB2Kart proper (later joined by Cluckoid in Ring Racers) while the aforementioned Robo-Hood and Crawla Honcho were scrapped from the playable roster and reduced to cameos throughout the various courses.note 
  • The Cameo: In addition to being one of the bonus characters, NiGHTS appears on a poster in the Dark Race and Twinkle Cart levels.
  • Character Customization: Players can select from a wide array of colors/palettes to help identify each other online, with a total of 90 selectable colors. Very useful as by default there are only 5 characters.
  • Chest Monster: The Eggman Monitor appears as one of the items. It resembles an item monitor (only with an Eggman logo instead of a star inside of it) but acts like a time bomb, blowing up the unfortunate sap who picked it up after a few seconds. However, the explosion can actually be used to the victim's advantage; it affects anyone else caught in the blast, possibly even the player who set the trap in the first place.
  • Competitive Balance:
    • The character select screen outlines the two mutually exclusive stat pairs for players: top speed vs acceleration and handling vs weight. These points are stressed with the bonus characters Gamma, Chao, Omega and Flicky (or Aigis before 1.0.2) who are each put in a different corner of the grid. This allows 81 combinations of speed and weight in total to be added to the roster.
    • Ring Racers keeps this chart and details it on the select screen: the 81 combinations are classified in 9 classes (from A to I, going from the slowest to the fastest, then from the lightest to the heaviest) which the default characters are the standards, and if you press the drift button, you can check the character's stats to determine your choice better.
  • Continuity Porn:
    • The roster of the game, especially Ring Racers, includes a large number of one-shot Sonic characters that had only one key appearance and never showed up again. This includes the robots Heavy and Bomb from Knuckles Chaotix, Tails Doll and Metal Knuckles of Sonic R fame, Honey the Cat from Sonic the Fighters, and Emerl from Sonic Battle.
    • The non-Sonic cast also gets a lot of love as both current and obscure Sega properties are represented- including most of the ones featured in Sega Superstars and then some.
  • Developer's Foresight:
    • In Desert Palace, there's a red button which temporarily removes the shortcut over a certain pit. When pressed, however, the button cannot reset itself until the player who activated it completes a lap; this stops potential Griefers from just camping at the button and using it to mess with other players.
    • In multiplayer, a Map Hell level is guaranteed if everyone chooses the "random" option in the voting menu. In the singleplayer Free Play mode, where the same vote window appears, choosing the aforementioned option instead loads a random regular level, thus you are forced to unlock the Map Hell cup for singleplayer the hard way. You can, however, play multiplayer matches privately with only one player active, finish a race, and trigger a Map Hell selection to race on them freely.
    • Several of these come up in the Ring Racers Tutorial:
      • The spraycan room in the tutorial is full of these - not only are there specific sets of dialogue for each spray can you acquire (most of them Mythology Gags), if you skip the tutorial and come back after collecting the first nine colours that are normally there, they'll be replaced by nine more colors, which Eggman is confused by. If you collect all the spray cans and return, there's no spray cans to collect, and Tails and Eggman will proceed to hang a massive lampshade on the whole thing.
      • Replaying the Rings section leads to Tails wondering if the doctor's trying to play the same trick twice, with Robotnik clarifying that it's a bug in the system this time. Tails also mentions that a bunch of spray cans really aren't worth the level of security imposed, and when he does return to the room, Robotnik clarifies that he got his robots to spread the others around the multiple courses.
      • In the Brakes section, if Tails steers around the trap instead of trying to go through it, he actually lampshades how something was meant to happen, and Robotnik congratulates him for evading the trap. Tails isn't too worried, though, considering the Respawn ability, though ponders if he should give it a go or play it smart and keep going. Should Tails go into the trap anyway, he'll be left speechless from the embarrassment while Robotnik teasingly states that the fox only has himself to blame.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Class G, H and I racers (7 to 9 weight) in general get this as they cannot turn as sharp as the lighter racers and must rely on drifting to get through tight turns or combine drifting with breaking to maintain control through even tighter turns. Your reward for choosing a heavyweight over a lightweight and drifting around corners optimally means you get a racer that can preform better in races than lightweights as they can obtain drift boosts faster and don't have to get worried about being knocked around the track by the bigger racers since they are the bigger racers.
    • For a specific example: Metal Sonic (8 top speed and weight) is as fast as Sonic but trades handling for weight, making him harder to control but much more powerful with drift boosts. In the first game, Vector (7 top speed and 8 weight) and Omega (9 top speed and weight) take this even further by being opposites to Blaze and Flicky respectively, taking their Weight stats and "reversing" them for worse control in exchange for superior Weight and DSR. In the second, Metal Knuckles 7 top speed and 8 weight) and Mecha Sonic Mk. II (9 top speed and weight) are opposites to Jet and Bomb respectively.
  • Diminishing Returns for Balance: How the game's stat system works. Play a character with more speed and their acceleration suffers, play a heavier racer and their handling drops steadily. The player's Drift Spark Rate also increases the more Weight the racer has and further increases the lower the racer's Speed Stat gets.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: Subverted with the Self-Propelled Bomb. It targets the player who has a significant lead from everyone else, but unlike the Blue Shell of Mario Kart fame, it slows down once it reaches the race leader, match the racer's normal top speed, and will only catch the racer if they spin out or drive poorly, meaning that they should play perfect to keep it away as long as possible. Played straight in the way it's summoned: If the frontrunner is too far ahead, a SPB is immediately put into the hands of the second-place racer on the next Monitor they break to give the frontrunner more pressure and a chance for the other racers to catch up.
  • Expy: All of the items racers obtain from monitors are based on some form of item used in the Mario Kart series and several other kart racers:
    • Bananas are the only item shared between games, except the SRB2Kart variety slows down the user if dragged behind for too long.
    • Sneakers are pulled directly from Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, once again functioning like Mushrooms by granting a one-time speed boost. The Rocket Sneakers likewise are based on the Golden Mushroom used in the 3D Mario Kart games but on a fuel limit to encourage more strategic usage instead of Button Mashing.
    • Eggman Monitors are the stand-ins for Fake Item Boxes. Instead of blowing up on impact, they take a page from the TNT Crates of Crash Team Racing and place a ticking bomb on anyone unfortunate to collect one before exploding three seconds later. Unlike the Fake Item Box, players can use the delayed explosion to catch other drivers in the explosion (setting it off manually if they must), and unlike the TNT Crates, they cannot be shaken off. However, they can be passed on to another racer by bumping into them.
    • Mines are based on Bob-ombs, differing in that they cannot explode until after they activate, and the activation is delayed further if the bomb is placed down behind the user instead of thrown forwards. It also slows the user if dragged behind.
    • Orbinauts serve as the non-homing projectile item, similar to the Green Shell. The heat-seaking Jawz emulate the Red Shell but function more like the Homing Rockets from Diddy Kong Racing and the Missiles from Crash Team Racing (they only aim for the targeted driver and can be cut off by terrain if not fired close enough).
    • Invincibility and Grow serve as counterparts to the Star and Mega Mushroom respectively.
    • Shrink acts like the Lightning item, but instantly shrinks down all rival racers without causing a spinout instead of striking them with a bolt of thunder.
    • Hyudoros turn the user invisible, ala the Boo item, but also lets the user drive in off-road without losing traction or speed (a feature not every Mario Kart game that featured the Boo item has included).
    • The Pogo Spring is the Cape Feather, exclusive to Battle Mode just like the Feather was when it returned to the Mario Kart series in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
    • The Ballhog is based on the Mario Kart: Double Dash!! version of the Fireball item, lobbing forwards five bouncing orb-shaped projectiles at once.
    • The Self-Propelled Bomb mimics the legendary (Spiny) Blue Shell, targeting the racer in first place and stunning them for a prolonged period (as opposed to simply exploding) if it connects. Unlike the Blue Shell, the frontrunner can attempt to evade the SPB by driving well.
    • Thunder Shields are based on the Super Horn, triggering an Area of Effect attack as well as serving as the only force for stopping the frontrunner-targeting item (the Self-Propelled Bomb in SRB2Kart's case)
    • Fire Shields, introduced in V2, are based on the Bullet Bill item, differing in that it is manually controlled, giving the user great speed at the cost of handling. It is not an autopilot item ala the Bullet Bill and it has a limited, always consistent fuel gage instead of lasting different durations based on how much progress it has made.
    • The Water Shield, also introduced in Ring Racers, replicates the Bubble from Diddy Kong Racing, trapping the victim in a large bubble and preventing them from moving until they get out. Unlike the Diddy Kong Racing bubble, the player can use it on themselves as an offensive weapon instead of a trap.
  • Fragile Speedster: Class C characters (7 to 9 top speed and 1 to 3 weight) like Sonic (8 top speed and 2 weight), Blaze (7 top speed and 3 weight), Jet (7 top speed and 2 weight), Shadow (9 top speed and 2 weight), Flicky (8 top speed and 1 weight) and Bomb (9 top speed and 1 weight) are among the fastest characters and have very precise controls, but they’re as vulnerable to off-road as they endure heavier racers’ attacks.
  • Game Mod: SRB2Kart and it's sequel are open-source mods of an open-source mod of Doom Legacy. They also supports the option to add new characters, levels and even modified game modes, and the original Kart includes a few bonus characters as an example (though it is impossible to unload mods without restarting the game, as is the case with Sonic Robo Blast 2 itself). Adding in characters is also the only way to get certain stat combinations that don't exist among the main roster.
  • Glacier Waif:
    • While not that heavy, Miku is still rated 6 on the weight scale, making her the heaviest female racer in the base game, only slightly lighter than the likes of Vector.
    • Mighty also manages to be as heavy as Eggman despite being the same size as Sonic and lacking Metal Sonic's, well, metal excuse.
  • Glass Cannon: Class C, F and I characters (7 to 9 top speed) are some of the quickest racers in the game in the right hands, but their acceleration leaves a lot to be desired. One mistake or an incoming attack aimed right at them will send them much further back before they can catch up.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: Sonic and friends can go kart-racing with the villainous Dr. Eggman and Metal Sonic. Made more prominent in the sequel, where Dr. Eggman and Tails work together to make the Ring Racers used by the entire cast.
  • Guest Fighter:
    • Many of the game's base roster comes from other Sega properties and games they published, as detailed in the characters folder.note 
    • 1.1 added Doomguy as a bonus character; especially notable as he's the only bonus character not to have any proper ties to Sega whatsoever, more likely being included due to the mod being based on the Doom Engine.
    • In SRB2Kart's predecessor Super SRB2 Kart Z, Waluigi in his Brawl in the Family design was present in the bonus add-on file (misc.kart) bundled with the game, but to limit the influence of Mario content in SRB2Kart and since the skin was never updated to match the standards of the other characters for SRB2Kart, he was ultimately dropped.
  • Guide Dang It!: While the game's manual explains various advanced mechanics like slip-tiding, it does not cover everything:
    • Did you know you can cancel Grow while it's active, by holding the item button? Neither the manual or the game explains this mechanic proper. This is incredibly useful, as you can cancel it as you pass an item row to keep getting items to help you catch up.
    • The Drift Spark Rate mechanic which decreases the amount of drift needed to build boosts as slower and heavier drivers goes completely un-mentioned in the manual.
    • The Kitchen Sink has a lot of behaviors that are simply not explained, not to mention that the manual does not acknowledge its existence, perhaps because of its status as a Joke Item and an Easter Egg. Unlike the banana, it will not defend you from hits taken from behind, and it cannot be placed behind you, while still slowing you down if dragged. If you miss the throw, it will not stay on the ground, meaning you can only hit with it dead on. However, to compensate, it has two possible arcs, the default, wide banana-like arc (by simply pressing Item) or a more horizontal and powerful trajectory (by pressing forward and Item), and if you hit anyone with it, they are forced to respawn and lose a lot of time.
    • Rainbow boosts. While the manual bothers to explain that blue and red mini boosts exist, rainbow boosts are also possible by drifting for a significant amount of time, as it takes twice as long to build a rainbow boost after getting a red one. This gives heavier racers an edge over lighter ones, with a boost that rivals a Sneaker in duration.
    • Many of the unlockables in Ring Racers have quite complicated and cryptic unlock methods. One in particular is finding the entrance to a certain secret course via an out-of-the-way pit in another course. Then there's the titular Ring the Racer, who cannot be unlocked via password and must be found via a long process that the game only hints at with a riddle. One part of it is inputting the password "race as a ring" that is a community In-Joke not found within the game itself.
  • Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Bonus character Aiai stands out as being the only one of these.
  • Interface Spoiler:
    • The existence of CK Cloud Tops 2 should clue you into finding a CK Cloud Tops 1 buried within the Map Hell tracks.
    • The staff roll after clearing the Extra Cup in Ring Racers shows various tracks not seen before and yet to be unlocked characters in silhouette. A second set of cups is unlocked right afterwards.
  • Jack of All Stats: Class E characters (4 to 6 top speed and weight) like Knuckles (5 top speed and 5 weight), Rouge (4 top speed and 4 weight), Tikal (6 top speed and 4 weight), Honey (5 top speed and 6 weight), and Sakura Shinguji (5 top speed and 4 weight) are more or less perfectly balanced regarding top speed, acceleration, weight and handling.
  • Joke Item: Very rarely, the item monitors or the Hyudoros will grant you a kitchen sink. A successful hit with the sink will force the victim to respawn as if they fell into a pit, and announce to the server that the attacker landed the hit. However, the sink does nothing else and will simply despawn if it misses, thus having no benefit if the wielder can't aim a perfect throw.
  • Lethal Lava Land:
    • Volcanic Valley Zone, a level filled with volcanoes and erratic rocky terrain, with Lava Bubbles and small eruptions blocking the path. Unsurprisingly, this also applies to its Classic version in Map Hell.
    • Boiling Bedrock Zone, which isn't as close to volcanoes, but is still surrounded by lava, with steam and rings of fire appearing without warning.
    • Crimson Core Zone, a heated factory-like track with flames erupting from the pits.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Class I characters (7 to 9 top speed and weight) like Metal Sonic (8 top speed and weight), Metal Knuckles (7 top speed and 8 weight) and Mecha Sonic Mk. II (9 top speed and weight) can knock other racers around while also maintaining high speed, albeit at the cost of Acceleration and Handling.
  • Made of Explodium:
    • Last place simply explodes once everyone else crosses the finish line, F-Zero style. Anyone who doesn't cross the finish line before time runs out after over half of the racers had finished the race will explode as well.
    • Hitting the Toads in Arid Sands sends them flying a short distance before exploding spectacularly.
    • In Ring Racers:
      • Taking damage when -20 rings into Ring Debt causes your kart to tumble and explode upon hitting the ground. You respawn with 5 rings as pity shortly after.
      • Getting crushed, unlike Kart, makes your kart explode.
  • Marathon Level:
    • Sprint tracks, which are tracks so large that they forgo the typical looping track layout in favor of a drive to a definitive ending point, with laps simply indicating how far into the track the racer is. Sprint tracks in the base game include Twinkle Cart, Canyon Rush Zone, Ancient Tomb Zone, and Kart Airlines Zone.
    • Aside from sprint tracks, there's Crystal Abyss Zone, a two-lap track that takes about three minutes on average to complete. Its length is one of many reasons why it's the first track in Map Hell.
    • The final race of the Egg Cup in Ring Racers is Death Egg Zone, a course so long it's split into three laps of four sections each.
  • Mighty Glacier: Class G characters like Eggman (2 top speed and 8 weight), Chaos Zero (3 top speed and 8 weight) and Heavy (1 top speed and 9 weight) are among the heaviest (tied with Metal) and have impressive drift spark charge rate, but endure a very low top speed. Played With due to the fact that a low top speed also means a high acceleration and the ability to charge boosts faster while drifting, meaning they can reach said speeds faster and recover better than most other racers.
  • Mythology Gag: Several nods to both the Sonic franchise in general and Sonic Robo Blast 2 specifically are scattered throughout the game:
    • Most items available in Item Boxes are available in monitors from the official Sonic games as well. Aside from series mainstays such as Invincibility and the Eggman Monitor, several come from more obscure sources:
      • The Power Sneakers are among the most common power-ups in the series, but this game's implementation of them is specifically based on their appearance in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, being an item that gives you a short burst of speed and can come in a set of three.
      • The Banana and Self-Propelled Bomb items both come from the Competition Mode of Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
      • The Rocket Shoes and Pogo Springs only had two prior appearances: Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos and Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble.
      • The Grow and Shrink items were only ever seen in Knuckles Chaotix (though Shrink affected the player in that game, while the SRB2Kart version affects opponents).
      • The Mine is actually from one of Sonic's earliest racing endeavors, Sonic Drift.
    • The first track of the Invincible Cup is based on Desert Palace Zone, also from the Competition Mode of Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Ring Racers features an entire cup, the S.P.B. Cup based on the mode's levels; the aforementioned Desert Palace, Balloon Park, Endless Mine, Chrome Gadget and Azure Lake. Endless Mine gets a second track in another cup further along.
    • Numerous tracks are based on Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2. Notably, almost all Sonic Adventure 1 levels are named after the song that plays in the area they're inspired by, as opposed to the name of the level itself.
      • Dark Race, the second track in the Ring Cup, is inspired by the Chao Races from Sonic Adventure 2.
      • There are four levels based on Twinkle Park: two of them (Twinkle Cart and Pleasure Castle) appear as the final two tracks of the Water Cup, while the other two (Fakery Way and Bumper Carts) appear as battle courses.
      • Red Barrage Area, the penultimate track of the Invincible Cup, is based on E-102 Gamma's version of Hot Shelter.
      • Egg Quarters is the third track of the Egg Cup.
    • Among the tracks in the Swap Cup are Balloon Panic from Sonic Drift 2 (albeit with the random balloon effects replaced by simply launching the racer upward) and a repurposed Special Stage 3 from Sonic Mania. Ring Racers adds all seven of Mania's Special Stage courses in under the Phantom Cup, two of which are Battle/Prison Eggs stages.
    • One race track in Map Hell is based on Arid Sands. Ring Racers brings in Savannah Citadel from the same game as a track.
    • Among the many Battle Mode maps are Marble Zone, Death Egg's Eye, Power Plant, Colosseum, Tails' Lab, and the first special stage from Sonic CD, with the latter 3 courses lifting their layouts straight from their original games.
    • Badniks from Sonic Robo Blast 2 appear in the background of several tracks. One of the selectable palettes, "Robo-Hood", is even named after one.
    • Frozen Night from Robo Blast 2 appears as a Map Hell / Recycle A Cup race track, and Meadow Match appears as a Map Hell / Recycle A Cup battle course.
    • In the intro to Ring Racers, Tails mentions that his original character is "Nine Tails", a meaner version of himself who never met Sonic, implying that he's either aware of his Shatterverse counterpart or is aware that he could have turned out quite differently if he had never met Sonic.
  • Nitro Boost:
    • Ring Racers revolves around speeding up with the titular ring mechanic. You can collect up to 20 rings at once and you need to keep peppering yourself with them, particularly while driving up slopes since the kart can barely do it on its own. Running out of rings can be extremely punishing.
    • In Kart, a boost is given at the beginning of a race by holding down on the accelarator at the right time. In Ring Racers, you need to hit the forcefield that normally traps you for a foul after the countdown has ended, but before any other racer does..
    • Quite a few items have a boost effect, such as Power Sneakers, Rocket Sneakers that can be briefly spammed and Invincibility. In Ring Racers, one type of item will spin a roulette whose results will recharge your rings for certain amounts of time.
    • Dash pads boost whoever drives over them. Gust Planet in Ring Racers even has an unique launch tube gimmick that is taken from its source romhack. You need to hit a nearby dashpad and the tube back-to-back for the best effect.
  • No Fair Cheating:
    • Certain mods aren't allowed in Record Attack, as the staff ghosts were all designed with the default cast and systems in mind. As of 1.0.3, the only exceptions are custom characters who don't use lua and custom tracks that don't replace existing tracks in order to allow for players to try racers with stat combinations that go unused by the default cast in the case of the former.
    • It is possible for characters with low enough speed and high enough weight to perform the snaking tactic made infamous in Mario Kart DS. However, certain countermeasures are put in place to make it not viable for racing: Firstly, characters lose speed while drifting, meaning that while they can easily gain the speed back by firing off a blue mini-turbo, the offset between the loss in speed while drifting and the gain in speed while boosting means simply driving straight is faster overall. Secondly, many of the characters capable of snaking already have average to high acceleration (max acceleration in the case of Motobug and Gamma), so using a blue mini-turbo to recover is, under most circumstances, not preferable over simply using the racer's natural acceleration. Thirdly, Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart uses the automatic boost buildup from Mario Kart Wii onwards during drifts instead of the manual boost buildup from DS and the two console 3D entries (64 and Double Dash!!) that preceded it.
    • While there is a password to access Tournament Mode in Ring Racers that gives access to almost everything, the game can't be saved, and there is one achievement which is hidden when Tournament Mode is active which isn't unlocked — despite more passwords being added since the game's launch, the player must legitimately solve a riddle to acquire the final character.
  • Nonlethal Bottomless Pits: As usual for kart games, falling off course will send your kart flying back to the track via the ringed beam gimmick from Sonic & Knuckles' Death Egg Zone. Of particular note is that Mystic Cave Zone in Ring Racers is faithful to the mobile remake of Sonic 2 — a pit in the track will send you into Hidden Palace Zone.
  • Retraux: Both games were developed on the Doom Legacy port of Doom, so it obviously has an old-school design, a preference that is emphasized by the priority of sprites over 3D models for characters (models exist, but they require to configure the graphics on hardware, and the present configuration cuts out some visual effects).
    • Like Sonic Robo Blast 2, who's more and more conceived as the Sonic game the Sega Saturn never got, SRB2 Kart is conceived as an evolution of Sonic Drift for this same system, and Ring Racers is almost the missing link between these and Sonic Riders. The mid-90s feeling is emphasized by the button mapping, which is thought to work for a Saturn controller (with or without the Analog Stick).
    • The main characters have their Classic Era designnote , and even the Dreamcast and Modern Era characters like Shadow or Blaze are redesigned in a rounder and cuter way to give the impression they were designed for a Dummied Out Saturn game.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The game contains quite a few nods to the original F-Zero: Sand Valley and Blue Mountain use the themes of Sand Ocean and White Land respectively, Silence appears as a Map Hell course, and if a driver fails to place, they explode like a F-Zero machine, complete with the same explosion sprites and camera movements.
    • Misty Maze Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog Megamix appears as a track, even using its remix of "Industrial District" from Columns III instead of the slower-paced original composition.
    • The final track of the Invincible Cup is the Midnight Channel. Its Encore Mode palette also gives it a Persona 5 red-and-black look as well.
    • One cup (aptly named the SMK Cup) exclusively features tracks from Super Mario Kart. The game's four Battle Courses are available in Battle Mode as well.
    • A few other levels from the Mario Kart franchise can also be found elsewhere in the game, including the Mario Kart: Super Circuit version of Rainbow Road and two battle maps from Mario Kart 64.
    • On top of the several Mario Kart racing tracks, Lava Bubbles appear as obstacles in Volcanic Valley Zone, and in the background of Boiling Bedrock Zone.
    • Peach's Castle is an original track found in Map Hell. Toads with sprites ripped from Super Mario All-Stars also appear in Arid Sands, using Toad's Mario Kart 64 scream when they're blowed over.
    • Ganbare Dochu 2 from Konami Krazy Racers appears as the first track in the Chao Cup.
    • Map Hell includes a few more race tracks from other games, namely Retro Maze from Pac-Man World Rally, Silence from F-Zero, and Rainbow Road from the original Super Mario Kart.
    • Among the battle courses are Armored Armadillo, Trigger Happy Havoc, and Mementos.
    • One Map Hell battle arena level features Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff as wall textures.
    • The "Plague" color available for use on characters is styled directly after Plague Knight's colors.
    • The sound for starting a race is taken from Diddy Kong Racing.
    • If you happen to throw a banana directly at another racer before it lands or hit someone with a banana at point blank, you'll hear a faint ping sound effect.
    • Community Cup's Opulence Zonenote  has various internal shout-outs to very popular community levels and authors as represented in paintings and hidden cameos, alongside references to other tracksnote  designed by IvoYaridovich.
  • Skill Gate Characters: Class A, B and C (all 1 to 3 weight) characters are lightweight, making them easy to control and good for newcomers who want to learn how to use drift power and to handle top speed respectively:
    • Class A characters (1 to 3 top speed) are to this game what characters like Peach and Toad are to Mario Kart: they have a great acceleration to recover from off-road and they're easy to control for newcomers, as they can take sharp turns without drifting, don't lose any when drifting, and benefit huge boosts at the exit, but otherwise, they're slow on straight lines, and they are vulnerable to heavier and / or faster racers' attacks. While Tails (2 top speed and weight) is the standard for this class, Silver (1 top speed 2 weight), Tails Doll (2 top speed and 1 weight) and Chao (1 top speed and weight) are more extreme examples.
    • Class C characters (7 to 9 top speed) like Sonic (8 top speed and 2 weight), Flicky (8 top speed and 1 weight), Shadow (9 top speed and 2 weight) and Bomb (9 top speed and 1 weight) are the best choice to benefit top speed when you start the game, as their lightweight allows them to take sharp turns without drifting, but if they do drift, they lose a lot of speed and their boosts are not as impressive as the class above, they endure hard times to recover from off-road, and they are still vulnerable to heavier karts.
    • Class B characters (4 to 6 in top speed) like Amy (5 top speed and 2 weight) and Cream (4 top speed and 1 weight) are also beginner-friendly, as they can take turns relatively easy without relying on drifting, not losing too much speed from turns and off-road, and being able to recover fairly easily. The biggest downside is, once again, their lightweight that makes them easy for heavier characters to drop out of the race (Cream especially, as she's among the lightest characters in the game, while Amy still has extra weight), and being balanced also means that they're not as efficient as fast characters on straight lines, nor as fluid as slow characters on sharp turns.
  • Skyscraper City: Grand Metropolis, a level taking place atop incredibly tall city buildings with no ground in sight.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Race tracks Sub-Zero Peak Zone, Blue Mountain Zone, and SMK Vanilla Lake 2 take place in icy areas with slippery terrain, as does SMK Battle Course 3. In Map Hell, there's also SRB2 Frozen Night and Blue Mountain Classic.
  • Stone Wall: Class A, D, and G characters (1 to 3 top speed) can use their high acceleration to quickly gain speed, recover from attacks, and correct driving errors much more quickly than faster racers. They also tend to have above average Drift Spark Rates for their weight class. Despite this, and true to their norm, they have lower top speeds overall and need to rely more greatly on drifting, boosting, and (for class D and G) knocking away other racers to overtake opponents and stay ahead.
  • Strong and Skilled:
    • Class C characters (7 to 9 top speed and 1 to 3 weight), as long as they stay on the road and avoid heavier characters, are the fastest on straight lines and take the sharpest corners with ease.
    • Class F characters (7 to 9 top speed and 4 to 6 weight) like Fang (8 top speed and 5 weight), Mail (8 top speed and 4 weight) and Espio (8 top speed and 6 weight) have the former category’s top speed and a good balance between smooth controls and a good weight to resist opponents’ attacks.
    • Despite being the exact opposite to the former, class G characters (1 to 3 top speed and 7 to 9 weight) fit this trope too considering they can push lighter characters and can spam powerful boosts as soon as you master their handling handicap. This is emphasized in Ring Racers, as the Rings mechanic allows them to catch up the most fastest racers.
  • Theme Naming:
    • As a Sonic fan game, many of the tracks and arenas end in "Zone", though some exceptions apply.
    • Most of the Cups are named after item box items, with the Water, Lightning, and Fire Cups being named after the shield types from Sonic 3 and Knuckles. The exceptions are the Emerald Cup (not counting its appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble, though it is still an iconic Sonic item), the Chao Cup (named after an iconic Sonic species instead), the SMK Cup (named after the game its tracks are based on, Super Mario Kart), and the Community Cup (named for its tracks being creations of the game's community).
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Class I characters (7 to 9 top speed and weight) like Metal Sonic (8 top speed and weight) lack acceleration to recover from spinning out and precision to take sharp corners precisely, but their heavy weight allows them to knock lighter drivers off-road and once they reach their top speed and anticipate sharp turns, they are nearly unstoppable.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • You can run into Toads standing in the middle of the track in Arid Sands, causing them to get launched and self-destruct as a result. They provide no penalty for doing so and running them over has no impact on the overall race, but it slows you down slightly and the explosion can spin out racers that drive into it.
    • A more intentionally implemented example is with the battle mode. After running out of Bumpers, you turn into a Self-Propelled Bomb (styled after the Bomb Kart from Mario Kart 64) and can drive your kart into other racers still in the game to destroy one of their bumpers. Destroying a certain amount (or simply striking the player marked as "Wanted") will award you with an extra one of your own and put you back in the game.
  • Weak, but Skilled:
    • Class A characters (1 to 3 top speed and 1 to 3 weight) like Tails (2 top speed and weight), Bean (1 to speed and 3 weight), Silver (1 top speed and 2 weight), Nights (3 top speed and weight), Tails Doll (2 top speed and 1 weight) and Chao (1 top speed and weight) are the slowest and lightest of the default characters, but their high acceleration allows them to quickly recover from spinning out, and their excellent handling makes it easy to zip around corners while chaining boosts.
    • In a similar way, class B characters (4 to 6 top speed and 1 to 3 weight) like Amy (5 top speed and 2 weight), Cream (4 top speed and 1 weight), Charmy Bee (6 top speed and 1 weight), Jack Frost (6 top speed and 2 weight) and Carol (4 top speed and 3 weight) are very easy to control and benefit of both decent boosts and top speed, though not at the same extent as class A for the former and class C for the latter.

    Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart 
  • Always Night: Roughly 20 race tracks and at least 4 battle courses take place at night.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battle Field: MKSC Rainbow Road is an available course. SMK Rainbow Road can also be found in Map Hell.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • The main way to get the various unlockable tracks and modes in game is through Record Attack, but for those who aren't skilled enough to unlock everything can instead unlock them simply by playing enough matches. Even Free Play counts. Unfortunately, the Map Hell levels can't be unlocked this way.
    • Those who want to play the Map Hell levels but are struggling to earn the necessary amount of Record Attack medals (110 out of 115) can type "banana" into the developer console to instantly unlock them all.
    • As of Version 1.2, Record Attack skips the track introduction and goes straight to the starting countdown. It's also possible to instantly retry without pausing the game by pressing the select button (or any binded equivalent). These two features will especially come in handy if you're spending multiple attempts beating a difficult staff ghost or grinding for a good time.
  • April Fools' Day: In 2020, a stealth-rerelease of Super SRB2 Kart Z with some alterations was made available on April 1st, masked as the long-awaited Version 2. It was functional, albeit noticeably broken in certain parts due to it being a test build, including all of the original Kart Z cast being broken by the transition to new sprites with new animations.
  • The Artifact: Certain tracks, such as Sapphire Coast Zone and Toxic Palace Zone, have large windows partway through the track. In Super SRB2 Kart Z, players could earn a Whirlwind Shield powerup from crossing the finish line (among abilities based on the other monitors in Sonic Robo Blast 2) and use it to jump through these openings and achieve huge skips. This power was since given to the Battle Mode-only Spring item as the ability to jump in regular races was deemed too broken and easy to exploit the tracks' intended pathing with.
  • Brutal Bonus Level: The aptly-named "Map Hell" cup, which you can rarely come across online if someone votes the "random track" option, and is not available for singleplayer until you collect 110 of the 115 medals. Not all of the maps in the cup are difficult, but many stand out:
    • Septic Quarry's layout mostly lacks guardrails and typically has at least one side of the track surrounded by pits, reminiscent of Colorado from Mickey's Speedway USA. As of the 1.0.2 update, it has been Dummied Out of the official track rotation.
    • CK Cloud Tops 1 almost completely lacks guardrails and features some tight turns, making it all too easy for an inexperienced player to fall off the course.
    • CK Dungeon Maze works less like a track and more like... well, a dungeon; all kinds of obstacles and traps appear to potentially ruin the racers' day.
    • CK Death Town has a very unforgiving layout, mostly featuring turns that can have you careening into a pit if you mess up. One particular turn near the end happens to be much narrower than usual, making drifting around it very risky in comparison to just slowing down and taking it cautiously. Like Septic Quarry, it has been removed from rotation as of the 1.0.2 update.
    • Silence from F-Zero makes an appearance here. While it doesn't have any hazards itself, the map only has 90-degree turns and barely has breathing room for driving, making a race between several players a claustrophobic nightmare.
    • The infamous five-lap smaller-scaled SNES Rainbow Road from Super Mario Kart also shows up here (instead of the larger-scale version from Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8). Expect players to constantly fall off the track, especially if items are cleverly (or poorly, in the case of speed-up items) used.
    • Crystal Abyss is one of the game's longest tracks, even though it only lasts for two laps, and is peppered with tricky turns to boot. In addition, the level is arguably the most visually-detailed in the entire game, thus it can (and likely will) cripple performance with weaker computers, especially in multiplayer. Crystal Abyss was actually the very first track to end up in Map Hell; the aforementioned issues meant that having it only appear occasionally worked best.
  • Build Like an Egyptian: Ancient Tomb Zone is a sprint track taking place in a pyramid.
  • Casino Park: Casino Resort Zone is a casino-themed race track, featuring slot machines and giant poker chips along the edges of the main path, and even a giant roulette wheel as part of the track itself.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Despite both Vector and Espio of the Chaotix being present and accounted for, Charmy Bee is absent from the base roster, and doesn't seem to be planned anytime soon. Fortunately, he found his bus ticket for Ring Racers.
  • Crystal Landscape: The Map Hell track Crystal Abyss, as its name suggests, takes place in a dark, mysterious realm surrounded by crystals.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Do you have an habit of mashing your item button to get an item faster, like in Mario Kart? Doing so here will give you an item faster as well... but you will also get a significantly worse item in returnnote , represented by the item flashing red.
  • Death Mountain: The sprint level Canyon Rush Zone, which takes place in a rocky canyon littered with crates and falling rocks to slow down racers.
  • Demoted to Extra: Robo-Hood went from a playable racer in Super SRB2 Kart Z to a background prop in Eggman's Nightclub Zone.
  • Eternal Engine: Comes in two flavors: Petroleum Refinery Zone, which is barren save for the occasional ball and chain obstacle, and Red Barrage Area, a much busier track that doubles up on spiked balls (with or without chains) and even has switches that can enable or disable boost panels. Map Hell adds a third flavor in the form of Chemical Facility Zone, which is surrounded by hazardous chemicals and filled with conveyor belts that are all too happy to drag you into the toxic pool.
  • Floating Continent:
    • Silvercloud Island Zone is a floating island track that even has a small town.
    • Cloud Cradle Zone K, a sky-high temple of sorts that's slightly less safe than Silvercloud Island.
    • CK Cloud Tops 2, which is less populated than Silvercloud Island or Cloud Cradle, and much easier to fall off of. This applies to Map Hell's CK Cloud Tops as well.
  • Green Hill Zone:
    • As one would expect, the Trope Namer is the first level, though it takes its style and theme after Green Hills Zone from the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
    • Paradise Hill Zone also qualifies, though it is much larger than Green Hills (to the point where it only has two laps).
    • Sonic Speedway Zone fits the trope as well, but it also serves as an equivalent to Mario Circuit, Royal Raceway and other "circuit" tracks from the Mario Kart series.
  • The Grim Reaper: Appears as a hazard on the Mementos arena.
  • Hornet Hole: Honeybee Industry Zone, a drive through a giant beehive with sharp turns and wide roads without rails. The racers even start the track inside a wall of honeycombs.
  • Left It In: One of Darkvile Garden Zone's staff ghosts involve the developer boinciel standing still on the 1:30 minute mark, and not moving until 2 minutes later, finishing in under four minutes in a map that's usually finished in a minute and forty seconds. It was left in because it was funny.
  • Lethal Joke Character: Despite being just one of the many tiny animals Sonic rescues on a daily basis, Flicky can be a formidable opponent in the right hands, being maxed out in both Handling and Speed. Before 1.0.2, these stats belonged to Aigis (who is now closer to a Jack of All Stats).
  • Level in Reverse: The unlockable Encore Mode, which mirrors the track and also gives it a palette swap, obtained from getting 70 medals or playing 300 matches.
  • The Lost Woods: Midnight Meadow Zone, a nighttime track taking place in a forest with falling apples as obstacles.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Not in the default cast, which only includes 5 Sonic characters, but among the 30 bonus characters, 12 of them are from other games. All of these characters (with the sole exception of Doomguy) are actually from Sega's other franchises, making the complete roster very reminiscent of the Sega Superstars racing games. And that's not even getting into mod support, which allows for virtually any character to be made playable.
  • Multiplayer Difficulty Spike: Inevitable in v1, given that its only single-player mode is Record Attack. Playing multiplayer races is a whole different beast because, unlike Record Attack, you have to deal with a lot of items whose behaviors you might have never seen until now, not to mention player collisions. Even once you get over this hurdle, it's not enough to take advantage of shortcuts - it becomes a lot more important to perform star boosts (which is a two frame window during the race's countdown) and take better racing lines in order to keep your advantage... But once you have enough of it, the Self-Propelled Bomb will start chasing you down, meaning that playing perfectly effectively becomes enforced. It's not uncommon for very good players to take an advantage early from lap 1, get a Self-Propelled Bomb on their tails and either slip up and have said slip-up cost them the entire race (either through player error or a stray item/enemy player knocking them into the SPB) or win while racing against it for 3 laps straight. In addition, there is a lot of nuance behind item usage, not to mention many little behaviors that can be exploited. And if you join a server with custom levels...
  • Nostalgia Level: Map Hell includes several levels from earlier incarnations of SRB2Kart that were removed from the main map rotation:
    • The Peach's Castle race and battle courses date all the way back to when the mod was just a mode for the SRB2 Riders mod.
    • Black Bliss and Chemical Facility both originated in the Super SRB2 Kart Z version of the game.
    • "Classic" versions of Volcanic Valley, Diamond Square, and Blue Mountain based on the aforementioned Kart Z versions are also present.
  • Off the Chart: In earlier versions of SRB2Kart, it was possible to make racers that had stats higher than 9 or lower than 1 that would shoot off the chart on the character select screen. This wasn't reflected in gameplay, as a character with 0 in either stat would round up to 1, while a 10 or higher rounds down to 9. Later versions fixed the graph to show the actual stat, regardless of what speed or weight the character was assigned.
    • It is, however, possible to create characters that go off the stat chart using lua scripts. It doesn't work as well as one would expect, however, as speeds higher than 10 usually result in the characters not being able to accelerate at all, and weights higher than 10 may cause characters to barely make sharp turns and maintain speed at all or drift the opposite way.
  • Palmtree Panic: Sapphire Coast Zone and Aurora Atoll Zone both take place in tropical environments, with Sapphire Coast taking place during the day and Aurora Atoll taking place at sunset.
  • Player Elimination: Elimination mode. Instead of racing a fixed amount of laps, the racer in last place is eliminated after a set amount of time. This goes on until one racer remains.
  • Shifting Sand Land: The tracks Sand Valley Zone, Desert Palace Zone, Barren Badlands Zone, and Egg Quarters all take place in deserts.
  • Toy Time: Megablock Castle Zone is constructed from colorful blocks, and features jack-in-the-boxes as obstacles and various giant block soldiers watching over the race.

    Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers 
  • Action Commands: A type of floor panel launches racers into the air and brings a pair of half-circle icons on the screen. You must input a direction as the half-circles join up to either airdash or double jump, or else the kart will flop and tumble all over the floor when it lands. Fast-falling after a successful input will trigger a super boost.
  • Alternate Timeline: In a hidden path on Frozen Night, there is a Jack Frost who insults your character when you approach him. Approaching him as Shadow reveals to the hedgehog that they're in an alternate timeline where Shadow did not survive the events of Sonic Adventure 2.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • In the Tutorial levels, getting blown up will send you back to the last checkpoint you reached, and even in the Self-Propelled Bomb escape sequence in the Drifting course, there are multiple checkpoints about so that you don't have to redo the whole chase from the start if you mess up.
    • There's often two methods of completing specific challenges, which is convenient for specific challenges that would either never happen due to luck or something a player wouldn't think to do - two prime examples with primary unlock methods being Carol Tea being unlocked by loading an addon, and Jack Frost becoming unlocked after the game crashes. You can actually get both at the same time by loading an invalid addon file (likely from the origial SRB2K) to cause the game to crash, which will still fulfil both conditions.
    • A post-launch update adressed the main complaints about its Forced Tutorial and unlock system. The player is now allowed to leave the tutorial or access its racing challenge at certain sections, and the race is made easier on top of immediately unlocking online mode if won (which actually gives incentive for taking that route). Mod support and Time Attack mode are also unlocked sooner. Chao Keys for unlocking content appear more often and there are more passwords for unlocking categories of stuff. The Rubberband AI is also made more forgiving.
    • The Sealed Star levels can be frustrating, as you need many conditions to unlock it at the end of a cup, the minimap is way too simplistic, the barrier protecting the Emerald is extremely resistant, and you may need to start the cup all over again if you lose all your lives. However, there are some safety nets:
      • If you manage to get a Self-Propelled Bomb, once it reaches the Emerald, it deals significant damage to the Barrier, making it easier for you to destroy it and get the Emerald.
      • As of the 2.2 patch, some of the damage that you’ve done to the Barrier will persist between lives, so if you stock up on them and get some good hits with each failed attempt, it becomes much easier to snag the Emerald in a last-ditch effort.
    • Likewise with the 2.2 patch, the difficulty of CPUs now decreases by one level for every continue you use, and they will never get any tougher after getting an A rank in the Relaxed cups.
  • Balance Buff: Many of the new racing mechanics in Ring Racers including the tether, were created to allow high acceleration, low top speed drivers like Tails, the Chao, Motobug, Ray, Eggman, and Gamma to compete more reliably against racers with high top speed on a wider variety of tracks. On the other hand, the Spin Dash allows low acceleration, high top speed characters like Sonic, Flicky, Fang, Metal Sonic, and Omega to recover more easily if they got off-road or were hit by an item.
  • Black Comedy: One of the harshest things Jack Frost says in his easter egg room is how he needs to escort Maria as much as he needs a bullet in his head.
  • Blackout Basement: The switch puzzle cave at Espresso Lane in Encore Mode has barely any visibility to work with as you toss bananas onto said switches in the distance.
  • Bonus Level: Ring Racers has two types of bonus level included in the Grand Prix mode:
    • Prison Eggs: Each cup has two of these, with the objective being to take out a bunch of Prison Eggs in battle mode stages in a limited amount of time, the amount of time you have increasing with each prison destroyed.
    • The second requires more specific conditions to be played, and its difficulty puts it on the Brutal Bonus Level trope below.
  • Boss Subtitles: Blend Eye (Mean Blend Eye in Encore Mode) is introduced with its name and a title ("Here to serve" or "Promoted to assistant manager"). The WARNING and VENGEANCE messages on each variant of the boss also have mysterious ramblings written on them.
    "THE FALLEN MAN — CAN THE DESCENDANT OF PROMETHEUS ESCAPE THE SHADOWS OF THE FIRE SET ALIGHT 50 YEARS AGO? THE RISING STAR — 50 YEARS ON, WHO WILL KNOW ALHAZEN'S NAME AND NOT FIRST THINK OF THE BROTHER'S MANY DEEDS?"
  • Brutal Bonus Level: Sealed Star: The game's version of the Chaos Emerald special stages. You must get enough points in a cup to access it (usually by either getting first place in every race and/or placing high enough with 20 rings). In these stages, you have to chase a UFO Catcher carrying a Chaos Emerald much like Sonic Mania, but with the catch being that you must use items to destroy the catcher. At that point, the Chaos Emerald will begin moving on its own, and you need to touch it. The track also doesn't loop, so you have a limited time to do all of this - reach the end of the track without collecting the Emerald or fall off the track, and you lose a life. Lose all of your lives and you are forced to the cup results screen, forcing you to redo the cup all over again, or to unlock the stage again in the next cup (or a previous one if you reached the 14th cup, as you can only unlock Emeralds via the cups on the first select screen).
  • Call-Back: The dialogue between Tails and Eggman in the tutorial, particularly the section where you pick your first spray can, features a few nods to past Sonic games, primarily (and surprisingly, given the game is styled after the Classic-era games) those set in the "Modern" era:
    • As seen in the opening sequence, Tails has his Miles Electric from the Modern games, and it'll also get mentioned when picking yellow as your color. Picking yellow also has Tails mention it as the color he chose for his fake Chaos Emerald from Sonic Adventure 2; similarly, picking black has Tails mention that he's thinking about the Space Colony ARK.
    • Tails will mention that Sonic likes his car colored red when it's picked as your color, referencing the Cyclone from the Sonic Drift games.
    • If you pick purple, Tails will bring up how he used it as the color for the SS Tornado EX from Sonic Rush Adventure. This will lead to Tails wishing that Eggman had been nicer when they met Blaze, which the doctor retorts, stating that they wouldn't have met at all if he'd been nice, referencing how his plot from Sonic Rush involved merging Sonic's world with the Sol Dimension.
    • Picking white as your color has Eggman suggest Tails visit Robotnik Winter Zone from Sonic Triple Trouble. Tails rejects Eggman's offer on the basis that he "prefers [his] snow un-irradiated," an acknowledgement of the fact that, according to the game's Japanese manual, the "snow" is a result of Eggman testing the weaponry of Atomic Destroyer Zone in the area.
    • Picking green for your color has Eggman ask Tails if he's "had enough of green and hills to last a lifetime", alluding to how often Green Hill Zone has re-appeared throughout the games (including this one, multiple times). Eggman's remark about how "nature lovers would kiss a plant if [they] could get with it" is also a subtle reference to Tails and Cosmo's relationship in Sonic X.
    • Tails will note that the Spin Dash was a technique he invented, calling back to the American manual for Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
  • Cave Behind the Falls: In Espresso Lane, spin dashing onto the wall behind the waterfall on the river of coffee will launch you up to a hidden Trick Spring item. There is a point to it besides reaching the spray can on a cliff by the end of the track...
  • Cluster F-Bomb: In keeping with the mature nature of his series (and in stark contrast to the Sonic franchise's family-friendly nature), Jack Frost's dialogue on SRB2 Frozen Night tends to involve a looooooot of swearing and adult references.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The rival AI, assigned from the second race of a Grand Prix cup onwards, gets blatant advantages over the player and even other AI racers:
    • Their top speed is 10% faster than the assigned speed stat, meaning a speed-focused character, such as Sonic, makes for a formidable rival.
    • Their tethering slipstream and ring boosts are twice as powerful as the standard versions.
    • They outright get better item odds, and gain more powerful items, such as Invincibility, more frequently.
  • Comeback Mechanic: If you're close behind a racer, you can tether to them to slingshot and overtake them. Consequently, anyone else can do this to you.
  • Continuing is Painful:
    • You are allowed an attempt to skip the long tutorial by instead racing against the CPU on a special track. If you fail this, then you will go back to the tutorial and you will like it.
    • To access the Sealed Star stages, you need to clear any of the first 14 cups on Normal difficulty or higher with a high score, which requires using little to no continues. Those are very tough stages meant to burn through your remaining continues, and if you run out of them, then it cuts to the cup's final results and you must play it all over again.
    • The secret route to a hidden boss fight in Espresso Lane involves multiple steps that can be failed very easily and two items required to progress do not respawn once collected. The trial and error involved will require you to reset the level several times, and losing to the boss results in a No Contest to force you to square one as well.
  • Developer's Foresight: If you skip the tutorial, the section where you pick your first Palette Swap adjusts depending on how many spray cans you've collected. If you've collected at least one (and therefore unlocked one of the initial nine colors), it'll be replaced with a different one; the game will also acknowledge that the new color isn't supposed to be here if you pick it. If you're crazy enough to have collected all of them without doing this section of the tutorial, there'll be no spray cans to pick from, and an extended bit of exclusive dialogue plays.
  • Easter Egg:
    • In Kart, the password "banana" unlocks everything. In Ring Racers it brings up a special screen with the previous game's title crumbling and various characters driving and spinning across the camera, all set to a remix of the theme that plays when a game incompatible with Sonic & Knuckles is inserted into the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge.
    • You can find Jack Frost in a hidden corner of SRB2 Frozen Night. He mocks your character and has a quote for everyone including a generic one for custom characters, with lots of Black Comedy and Breaking the Fourth Wall.
  • Easy-Mode Mockery: While the cups themselves can still be unlocked as of version 2.2, if you only ever play on Gear 1 (Relaxed), during GP races, you never have a chance to see the Sealed Star Stages or get any Emeralds, and the end of the credits will tell you to Challenge a harder difficulty.
  • Excuse Plot: While SRB2 Kart had no plot at all, Ring Racers features a long and embellished opening tutorial full of dialogue between Tails and a seemingly reformed Dr. Eggman as they use a new source of power for motorsports. The viewpoint character is Metal Sonic, with hints at him being a possible future threat to the peace they've achieved. Unfortunately, the whole thing comes off like a prologue to a non-existent story mode, as there's no more plot for the remainder of the game.
  • Extended Gameplay: Ring Racers starts out with a set of seven cups played in order. Beating Extra Cup plays the credits, and then it unlocks most of a second set of seven cups all at once. And then it keeps going for a grand total of 30 cups.
  • Fairy Companion: You can unlock a little companion who will fly around your character and warn you about racers and items coming right behind you. There are many of them, ranging from Flickies to Badniks and even the Barrel from Carnival Night. The Mystic Melody in particular is required to interact with the little hidden shrines taken from Sonic Adventure 2.
  • Forced Tutorial: Ring Racers requires players to play a tutorial before making it to the title screen, which is framed as Metal Sonic viewing a record of Dr. Eggman and Tails doing a test run in a factory racing course. However, rather than a tutorial, this is really a half hour-long story scenario with multiple sets of platforming and puzzle challenges that introduce every ability in the player's moveset and every mechanic and object featured in the game. Players are allowed to "skip" it only by finding a path that instead challenges them to ranking high in a race against difficult opponents. And then, knowing a lot of people are really there for the online multiplayer, the game forces them to unlock it by first proving their skills on the Grand Prix mode. However, both of these requirements can be skipped with the right passwords and knowing how to open the password feature before entering the tutorial, and the 2.1 update added new exits that would end the tutorial quicker, as well as lowering the difficulty of the secret race.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • If you pick the black spray can in the tutorial, Tails says he had The ARK on his mind. Dr. Eggman suddenly turns very gloomy in response but doesn't elaborate why. An easter egg in the Frozen Night track reveals that Shadow died in this setting's version of the events of Sonic Adventure 2.
    • Part of the process for unlocking the final character is inputting the password "race as a ring". In the secret room in the Controls tutorial, you are required to stand next to a static monitor that displays a view taken from a certain screenshot from a particular SRB2 Message Board character mod thread. Indeed, the final secret character is that same Ring, but now with a body.
  • Genre Throwback: The game is presented as if it were a Genre Shift sequel to Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine released for the Sega Saturn and then ported to PC, utilizing the Saturn's controller icons wherever appropriate for controller inputs, an art direction for the menus similar to Sonic Jam and promotional art for the franchise at the time, and even a Retraux release trailer designed to feel like a commercial you'd catch on TV while recording something.
  • Gameplay Grading: Just winning races isn't enough to score high. You must clear as many laps as possible in first place and cross the finish line with 20 rings, avoiding their very helpful use as a boost on the final stretch of a race. You must also beat the bonus rounds and avoid losing continues. If you do well enough, you'll get either an A or an S Rank at the end of the cup and, in the first 14 cups, a few chances to take on a Special Stage.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Part of the premise of Ring Racers is Eggman/Dr. Robotnik having apparently turned a new leaf and starting a joint venture with Tails to create less evil/destructive inventions, such as the High Voltage Ring and the titular Ring Racers, which are essentially powerful karts. In a secret scene, it is implied by Jack Frost to the playable Shadow that this is a timeline where he died and Dr. Eggman reformed out of guilt for it.
  • Home-Run Hitter: Invincibility, the Land Mine, and the Gardentop send their victims flying across the map, while also putting them in a Tumble damage state that extends the launch with a few extra bounces. Getting hit by a larger player (either due to them using Grow or you being under the effects of Shrink) inflicts a weaker variant called the Stumble, which doesn't launch players very far and has no hitstun.
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: With the release of v2.2 came the addition of these to swap out for Easy, Normal and Hard, these being "Relaxed", "Intense" and "Vicious" respectively. The unlockable Master difficulty remains unchanged.
  • "It" Is Dehumanizing: In the tutorial, when Eggman and Tails reprogram Metal Sonic, the Doctor refers his robot in masculine pronouns, while Miles mentions Metal with the neutral pronoun "it".
  • Jack of All Trades: The unlockable Heavy Magician has this in spades, being bang in the middle of the character chart despite not having an actual defined position, and for good reason; every time a lap starts when you're playing as her, she'll utilise Voluntary Shapeshifting to morph into any of the unlocked characters in your roster, complete with inheriting their stats. The only giveaway that it's still her underneath the disguise (if she isn't taking damage) is the fact that she retains her own unique voice clips. Who she shapeshifts into also changes at the end of every lap, before she reverts back to normal at the end of the race.
  • Kaizo Trap: In the Sealed Star stages, collecting the Emerald is not an Instant-Win Condition. If you fall out of the map while you're carrying the Emerald to the goal, you'll be sent back to the start and forced to break the UFO Catcher once again.
  • Level Ate: Espresso Lane is a land of sweets that starts on a cafeteria, goes over a river of coffee and ends on an ice cream climb.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • One of the unlockable companions, the "C.H.R.O.M.E.", actually comes from one of the Kart Krew's earliest mod endeavors, Sonic Robo Blast 2: Top-Down for Version 2.1 of the original game.
    • Zipp, from the cancelled Sega Technical Institute title Astropede, is unlocked by activating the shrine in Hidden Palace Zone, referencing how an early gameplay demo of Astropede reused the level's assets.
    • While comparing Mighty to Knuckles, Jack Frost'll note that "at least the other guy got a TV show!" This reference is particularly notable given that Ring Racers released within days of the Knuckles series' release.
  • Nostalgia Level: Several tracks from Kart are recreated in this one with varying amounts of changes in their level design. Some like Hot Shelter share a location but are really entirely different courses.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If you pick up the black spray can when given the option in the Tutorial, Tails mentions that he's thinking about the ARK, and because of this, Eggman doesn't give any of his usual quips (likely for the reason stated under the Alternate Timeline trope), instead hanging his head low and just responding "Right. Yes. Of course.".
  • Obvious Rule Patch: The Bubble Shield allows players to repeatedly bounce along the ground at high speeds and get over shortcut tripwires. This was a very powerful strategy in several tracks when the game first launched, so the developers ended up making an arbitrary rule in version 2.2 that causes the bubble to burst after a bounce if you're in first place.
  • Opening the Sandbox: The first set of cups are played in a fixed order from first to last. Clearing the Extra Cup unlocks most of a second set of cups all at once, allowing the player to tackle them in any order until the final cup is unlocked. Then after clearing the Egg Cup, 14 more are unlocked at once.
  • Optional Boss: Going off the beaten path and taking a complicated secret route in Espresso Lane will allow you to fight the Blend Eye robot in a single-player boss fight, and successfully beating it will unlock the robot as a companion. Of course, the robot won't hold anything back, and like with its brethren before it, it has two phases to fight through, all the while you cannot get hit more than three times like in the Prison Eggs levels, or you're out.
  • Platform Hell: The game prides itself on having tracks designed like they're 3D Sonic levels played with a car, so many tracks in later cups have a significant focus on gimmicks, hazards and platforming.
  • Press X to Die: If you overcharge an Insta-Shield, the kart takes damage and loses some rings. If you keep charging anyway over and over on purpose, the kart will leak rings and spikeballs before finally exploding at -20 rings.
  • Punched Across the Room: Taking significant enough damage or driving into a Drop Target can and will send you flying.
  • Put on a Bus: A large chunk of the SRB 2 K bonus characters are missing, including most of the guest characters
  • Reformed, but Not Tamed: Dr. Eggman is a fair bit nicer than he used to be, but he's still got a mischievous side. As seen when he "forgets" to unlock a door for Tails while he goes to get a drink for the two of them.
  • Rubber-Band A.I.: Players now all have a tether, which causes them to drive faster based on a speed and distance determined by their stats. This also serves as an interesting inversion, as the player can instead rubber-band off of CPU players as a Comeback Mechanic.
  • Secret Character: The game features many unlockable characters, but Ring the Racer stands out among the rest, having an unlock method which is nigh impossible to discover by accident.note 
  • Secret Level: A few can be unlocked in the Lost & Found submenu.
    • An engine test sandbox area is unlocked by first unlocking all the other normal courses. It can be played as a battle mode arena.
    • Test Track is an optional challenge in the tutorial that counts as a clear condition for it and is accessed by leaving the intended path via a backdoor. It is based on the virtual world-like visuals of test levels from fangame engines such as Sonic Worlds. In the initial version, there was no indication that this course existed but updates added huge neon signs and dialogues to inform players about it.
    • Hidden Palace replaces Mystic Cave in the Emerald Cup if you find its entrance in the latter course. It is only very vaguely hinted at in the Achievements menu and you can only access it in free play after unlocking the Lost & Found section of the cup menu.
    • The Blend Eye fight hidden in Espresso Lane can be accessed as a Boss-Only Level in the Special Stages section.
  • Self-Deprecation: Inputting "gaster" on the password screen in the beginning of the tutorial resets the game and skips it. In Undertale and Deltarune, typing this as the protagonist's or the player's name causes the game to reset or outright crash because Dr. W.D. Gaster doesn't take kindly to people speaking ill of him or assuming his identity. If doing this here has the beneficial effect of skipping the tutorial, then it implies even he doesn't like the thing.
  • Sequel Hook: The Lost & Found submenu on the Special Stages section that contains the Blend Eye boss fight has hints towards future content for the game. A banner with a greeting from Amy is marked as R2, one with an ominous Metal Sonic is marked as FUTUR3 and a final mysterious one without a character is marked as R4.
  • Sidelined Protagonist Crossover:
    • Carol Tea is an unlockable racer, but Lilac herself is nowhere to be seen. Jack Frost lampshades this fact in his dialogue with Carol, telling her to head back to Parusa and "send back a new Freedom Planet rep while you're at it."
    • Likewise, Gum appears as one of the unlockable racers, but compared to SRB2 Kart, Beat didn't make it along to the roster.
  • Story Breadcrumbs: The game starts out with a prologue-tutorial with lots of dialogue where Tails and Dr. Eggman somehow are BFFs but there is no Adventure mode to go with it except for a "preview" for future content in the form of a secret boss. Several secrets and easter eggs in the game give clues about the backstory, which involves Shadow dying at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 and Tails preventing the events of Sonic Heroes due to befriending Eggman and thwarting Metal Sonic's betrayal.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Streamer-Friendly Mode: As of v2.2, Ring Racers has an option in the Sound Settings to turn off all copyrighted songs in the game that could give red flags on websites' copyright policies. There's plans to expand on it later (possibly such as adding copyright-free alternate tracks), but for now, it just mutes the offending songs.
  • Take That!: Talking to Jack Frost on Frozen Night almost always leads to this (though given that he's a snarky demon, some of his insults are very clearly not meant to be taken seriously):
    • Bringing Tails Doll will have Jack Frost warn it that it'll scare the children... before questioning whether or not kids'd be even creeped out by Tails Doll these days and telling it to get with the times.
    • He'll sarcastically tell Headdy that he'll get a sequel someday, potshotting both SEGA and Treasure.
    • Bean's father Bin gets called "a duck from a crappy arcade game."
    • Carol gets told to go back to Parusa and send a new rep for her series, as noted above.
    • Jack Frost expresses confusion at the confusing nature of Blaze's origins, unable to figure out whether she's from another world or if she's from the future (and also died). He then "fires" the staff and demands a real writer.
    • When Billy Hatcher drives up to him, Jack Frost expresses disappointment at Ring Racers being about an "egg man" and not the Eggman before going to see about getting a Steam refund, taking a jab at Steam users who make refund requests for absurd reasons.
    • He'll also snark at how Azusa's games tend to not make it overseas.
    • Working Designs gets a potshot when Mail talks to Jack Frost, who notes that her game's translators "almost have a worse potty mouth than I do!"
    • When Zipp approaches him, Jack Frost tells him that his game's fate was better than that of the infamously-cancelled Geist Force, one of the first games revealed for the Dreamcast.
    • He'll tell Honey the Cat that "[his] two cents talking to you is richer than your dead career" and "Depending on some poor simps to help you scrape by is all that's left for you now."
    • With Espio, he'll ask if he does "that ninja run thing weebs are obsessed with".
    • Aigis naturally gets called a "wannabe mascot."
    • Mighty gets snarkily compared to Knuckles, and Jack Frost questions whether or not "we need to keep dredging you up every decade for nostalgia points."
    • When Jack Frost finds out that Metal Knuckles was in Sonic Superstars, he goes to look... only to change his mind upon finding out that he needs to log into his Epic Games account just to see him, referencing the PC version of Superstars' multiplayer mode requiring an Epic account regardless of storefront.
  • Take That, Audience!:
    • The developers really want you to play through the tutorial. If you fail to skip it via the secret race, you're denied from attempting again while either Eggman or Tails insist they should resume training. If you do skip the tutorial via the race or a password and only clear it after collecting every spray can in the game, there is a special cutscene where Tails encounters no cans in the end and repeatedly shames himself for skipping the tutorial.
    • The passwords for instantly unlocking Add-ons are "McDonalds" and "mustard gas".
    • Jack Frost also takes aim at the game's playerbase (and the Sonic fanbase as a whole):
      • If you take Ring the Racer to Jack Frost, the latter will act like a player who's whining about how SRB2 Kart doesn't work on their computer.
      • He'll compare Amy to the most fanatic and deranged of Sonic fans (unfavorably, mind, but the point still stands).
      • Sonic himself gets called "washed-up," especially given Eggman's the title character this time around.
      • Modded characters get called "out-of-towners" and told to buzz off.
  • Token Human: Of the unlockable characters (not counting guest racers), Maria Robotnik is the only one to be a human.
  • Tutorial Failure:
    • The Forced Tutorial is too taxing due to lasting over half an hour and is divided into platforming challenges mostly irrelevant to actual racing without the game even having a single player story mode to justify it. The many cutscenes and banter between Tails and Dr. Eggman also distract from what the game is attempting to teach the player.
    • Despite having Tails and Dr. Eggman playable, the game never takes the chance to explain how their stats affect driving. It makes players use the Insta-Whip to hit switches and solve puzzles that never happen in live gameplay but doesn't inform them about how it can be used to parry opponents and items. It never says anything about the rules of race start-ups either, which comes off as very ironic once you finally get to truly play the game.
  • Unlockable Content: Even things taken for granted in the previous game like Online mode and color palettes start out locked in Ring Racers. Similarly to Kirby Air Ride, it features a wide board of icons with hints for their unlock requirements, and playing enough matches grants keys for bypassing those conditions. Large icons require both 10 keys and for the surrounding items to be cleared, though. Players are allowed to input passwords easily found in a text file in the game's own folder to unlock categories of content, but at least one item in the list, Ring the Racer, must be unlocked legitimately.
  • Villain Respect: Though bothered by Tails's loyalty to Sonic should the player pick blue as their spray can of choice in the Tutorial, he isn't ashamed to admit that the blue blur's doing something right if he raised someone like the little fox genius.
  • Visual Pun: One secret character, the final one specifically, is Ring the Racer, a robot with a ring for a head in a game called "Ring Racers". He started out as a joke mod for the previous game that was just a floating ring on the kart.

 
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Video Example(s):

Lythero Pulls a Dick Dastardly

Lythero lies in wait by the finish line hoping to snipe the racer in second place, while also discussing this trope's use in Wacky Races. (Video source: https://youtu.be/mcE_3vSlP7A)

Example of:
Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat

Alternative Title(s): Dr Robotniks Ring Racers

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Lythero Pulls a Dick Dastardly

Lythero lies in wait by the finish line hoping to snipe the racer in second place, while also discussing this trope's use in Wacky Races. (Video source: https://youtu.be/mcE_3vSlP7A)

How well does it match the trope?

5 (40 votes)

Example of:

Main / DickDastardlyStopsToCheat

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